The Civil War and Church Schisms in Southern Appalachia

• '?B1 The Civil War and Church Schisms in Southern Appalachia by Richard Alan Humphrey We have often heard that the "real" Civil War was fought in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. We have heard how war split families, with brothers fighting brothers, and we know of the horrible economic and political repercussions for the people in Southern Appalachia. However, very little consideration has been given to the effects upon the churches that suffered northern and southern splits between 1843 and 1874. Actually, the Presbyterians' division in 1837 into "Old Light" and "New Light" schools involved the issue of slavery as did the division within Methodism causing the establishment of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of 1843. The Methodists' major split into northern and southern churches over the slavery issue came in 1844. However, the splits of the Methodists did not occur in Southern Appalachia until the 1860's, when men were thrown out of churches and persecuted because of Union sentiments or voluntarily joined black denominations. By the end of the Civil War, counties could be found in which three or more Methodist churches were present. The effects of these schisms are still present in Southern Appalachia. The Baptists split over the issue of slave-owning missionaries in 1845. Out of this separation the Southern Baptist Convention and the American Baptist Missionary Union were bom. In 1866, two Colored Baptist denominations were founded. In 1867, a group of Union League men who had been dismissed from Southern, Primitive, and Regular Baptist Associations formed a Union Baptist Association in Ashe County, North Carolina. They were quickly joined by other associations. (There have been at least fourteen Union Baptist Associations with churches in seven states.) Today, there can be found communities in Southern Appalachia where American and Southern and Union Baptist Associations exist together. 38 Presbyterians had an experience similar to that of the Methodists and Baptists. The Southern Presbyterians withdrew from their northern brethren in 1857 and formed their own Church. The Colored Cumberland Presbyterian and the Colored Presbyterian Church were both in existence by 1874. This separation still exists today. In border areas of Southern Appalachia these churches continue to co-exist and to their credit share clergy by mutual appointment. The effects of the Civil War left numerous communities not only divided politically but also divided religiously and racially. Blacks in the mountains were seceding from the white Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian denominations. The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, The African Methodist Episcopal Church, The African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion, The National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc., The National Baptist Convention of America, The Colored Primitive Baptist, The Colored Regular Baptist, The Colored Presbyterian Church and The Colored Cumberland Presbyterian Church were all present in Southern Appalachia by 1875. Some communities experienced great religious hostility because Northern and Southern Presbyterians, Northern, Wesleyan and Southern Methodist, and American, Southern, and Union Baptist Churches, plus one or more black churches, would be living and worshipping in separate buildings in the same communities. Added to this tension was the involvement of many of the northern and black churches in the Republican Party and the Union League during Reconstruction. The Methodists The Methodists' confrontation with American Negro slavery was part of a larger drama whose first act ended with the Civil War. Yet, in the Appalachian Mountains the religious dissension was only then coming into full force. The third act began in 1939 when at least some but not all of the Methodists reunited. The Spiritual father of Methodism, John Wesley, believed Negro slavery to be a great evil. In 1743, he wrote the general rules which prohibited, "the buying or selling the bodies and souls of men, women and children, withnan intention to enslave them."l In 1774 Wesley wrote his Thoughts Upon Slavery, reviling the enslavement of the noble savage by barbarous and inferior white men. He repudiated the evil institution of slavery. In America, the Methodist movement stressed that slaves should be preached to, saved and every pressure brought on their owners to free them. The Methodist Episcopal Church was formally organized at the Christmas Conference in Baltimore in 1784. Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke were elected Bishops. Both of these men...