The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (review)

Historians have argued for years about what caused the Civil War: slavery, social differences between North and South, economic differences, or a failure of politics. Now Mark A. Noll suggests a new entry: irreconcilable differences over what the Bible had to say about slavery. In a fascinating proposition, Noll argues that differing understandings of the Bible helped drive the wedge between Americans who supported slavery and those who did not.

The fundamental question was whether to believe the Old Testament ideas that seem to endorse bondage or to take the larger message of the New Testament, which promotes empathy and compassion. One problem with the Old Testament view, which was favored by slaveholders and their supporters, is that it ignored the fact that slavery in the Old Testament was not necessarily permanent, especially if the slave converted, nor did it extend to a slave's children. Noll points out this flaw particularly well when he examines Europeans' take on the American argument. The obvious problem with the New Testament, the view favored by those opposed at least to the extension of slavery, is that it never refutes slavery directly. And what about the abolitionists? They undermined their own cause early on, Noll says, by rejecting any part of the Bible that did not agree with their point of view.

Because of the particular way Americans absorbed the Enlightenment, they could not agree to disagree over varying interpretations of the Bible. The Enlightenment had made Americans certain they could divine the truth, and anyone who disagreed with their view was flat-out wrong. Then, as now, this made biblical interpretation a fraught, contentious, and ultimately deeply divisive issue that helped drive the nation to war.

This is a very promising argument, but Noll's project has shortcomings. The most gnawing is that he focuses almost exclusively on a small cadre of intellectuals and theologians, yet makes broad claims for American society based on this narrow sample. There is little evidence of how deeply these theological arguments penetrated into the consciousness of regular Americans. Noll offers a glimpse here and there, but not enough to support the extent of his assertions. Noll is willing to look to more popular sources such as the London Times in his excellent chapters on the European view of the American debate. This raises the obvious question of why he did not use that kind of material, along with letters and diaries, for his discussion of the domestic dispute.

My second criticism has to do with the title and its relation to the contents. This book is really about the antebellum era, not the Civil War, as a theological crisis. Noll says little about the war itself. At best, it is mentioned glancingly in a single chapter (the Europeans get two chapters). Did the war itself present so little in the way of theological crisis? How did preachers explain the hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded men? The suffering of their families and of refugees forced out of their homes by war? How did the men who had rationalized slavery through the Bible explain emancipation, either during or after the war? How could they square that with their antebellum views? In the introduction, Noll posits that the breakdown of antebellum arguments helped secularize the nation after the war, but again, this tantalizing statement receives only brief treatment in the body of the book. This leaves one to wonder whether it was disillusionment with the arguments, disillusionment with God, or a new interest in science that prompted some Americans to turn their backs on religion.

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis is an intelligent, nuanced look at theologians in the antebellum period. The book offers a convincing argument about the breakdown in their discourse, but fails to follow through on its promises of broader reception, a wartime view, or the postbellum fallout.