A Kingdom Divided: Evangelicals, Loyalty, and Sectionalism in the Civil War Era by April E. Holm (review)

How does a religious group remain in the world, but not of the world? This question drives April Holm's study of the ways that evangelicals in the Border States negotiated the crises of the Civil War era. Examining the three largest evangelical denominations—Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians—she traces how these groups worked out the relationship between religion, morality, and politics in a contested region. Holm's main historical contribution is uncovering the way these Border evangelicals made it their business to avoid conflict by separating religion and politics. They fashioned a theology of spirituality and political neutrality that argued that politics had no place in the pulpit. This politics of spirituality, she argues, influenced actions before and during the war, and this desire to avoid conflict decisively shaped the evangelical landscape after the war.

Evangelical Protestantism had exponential growth in the western part of the United States during the Second Great Awakening. Holm writes in a nuanced fashion about how the importance of the West in the evangelical imagination led to an intense period of institution building that left these three evangelical denominations strong but resulted in unexpected consequences. Border evangelicals began to conceive of themselves as distinctive from eastern evangelicals, with different needs and separate institutions. The quick growth of evangelicalism in the west was also brittle, leaving evangelical churches vulnerable to fracture. As northern and southern churches increasingly associated with their region during the Secession Crisis, regional identification with the West broke down amongst Border evangelicals. These churches faced internal conflict over church property and ministerial selection.

The discord in the years leading up to the Civil War primed evangelicals in the border region to create a theology of conflict avoidance in response to the ways that local disputes damaged congregations and disrupted worship. Holm finds that Border evangelicals blamed outsiders for these disputes. Border evangelicals believed the problem was that both of these groups tried to answer the question of what to do about slavery in theological terms, while they believed it was a fundamentally political question. Border evangelicals thus concluded debates over slavery were incompatible with preserving unity in the church.

Border evangelicals conceived of their theology of spirituality and political neutrality as a morally superior choice, according to Holm. In one of the most fascinating parts of the book, she traces how Border evangelicals took this theology into the Civil War. Holm finds that many Border evangelicals rejected northern admonitions and requirements to show loyalty through patriotic sermons, displays of the U.S. flag in church buildings, and prayers for the victory of the Union Army. She sees their attempts to separate church from state as impossible. The choice to remain neutral was itself a political action that chose ecclesiastical unity over racial equality. Political neutrality also became untenable because of Union military victories and the pressure of these loyalty tests. Union officials transferred property from disloyal to loyal ministers, making it difficult to be a neutral worshipper.

This theology of spirituality and political neutrality drove Border evangelicals away from the North in the postwar period as efforts to secure their loyalty broke down outside of the explicitly political realm. Northern evangelical churches sent missionaries to the South and to the Border States during and after the war to establish churches for both African Americans and white Americans. These missionaries preached that the Union victory was providential as they rebuilt churches, demanding a kind of spiritual loyalty. Holm underscores how Border evangelicals found these efforts more infuriating than those imposed by secular authorities.

Holm's final contribution is tracing the ways this theology of spirituality and political neutrality affected reunion and memory during the post-war period. Border evangelicals joined southern churches because they accused northern churches of mixing religion and politics through the promotion of abolition. Southern evangelical churches embraced Border evangelicals because they offered monetary and...