notes for the weekend: the civil war as theological crisis

Anytime I pick up a book by Mark Noll, I know I’m going to look at the world in a new way. He’s a fantastic historian who is particularly interested in tracing how we evangelicals landed where we are: our values, our theology, our “vibes”.

I’ve also had a particular interest in how the Civil War has shaped us in particular. It was a time where we made official the divorce between spiritual/earthly/ethical realities (for reasons), began to adopt a cynical eschatology, and warped the doctrine of Sola Scriptura toward hyper-confidence in our own culture and individual intellect to grasp the Bible on our own (SolO scriptura).

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis addresses all of this. But it also makes a couple of observation new to me: namely, that the wars over what the Bible says about slavery were older than the Civil War (in the States, anyway, not elsewhere). But more than that: provocatively, Noll argues that both slave-owners and abolitionists abused the Bible for their own purposes.

Neither side, Noll argues, took the Bible’s complexity very seriously. For that reason, both American abolitionists and slave owners tended to flatten the text to say something more simple and obvious than it did, and ignored large swaths of scripture to make their point…something each side found obvious in their opponent’s arguments!

One of the reasons this was true in the States was the low level of education, and the low value on education: if any opinion was complicated, nuanced, and required detailed study of the Bible, it just wasn't going to fly in the American market. So of necessity, ideas had to be flattened to appeal to the masses.

Outside of America, the situation was different. The Roman Catholic church put together a nuanced, lengthy condemnation of the American slave system, and thinkers in Europe did the same, in a fairly univocal voice. In the States, however, nuanced opinions were drowned out by populist thought.

It’s a fascinating study, with lots of food for thought. It’s not a heavy book, and could be read in a weekend. I’d commend it to you…partially because Noll doesn’t offer any real solutions, and I’d love to brainstorm this book with some others who care about the issues.

You can find the book here.