Baptized in Fire and Blood

Collin Hansen
This is Gospel Bound, a podcast from The Gospel Coalition for those searching for resolute hope in an anxious age, wherever you’re listening from, welcome. I’m your host Collin Hansen. And I’m glad you’re here for today’s conversation

Our cause is sacred How can we doubt it when we know it has been consecrated by a holy baptism of fire and blood, also set a North Carolina Minister about the Confederacy in the aftermath of the South’s defeat, the Battle of Shiloh in 1862. This arresting quote contributes to the title of James P. Byrd’s new book, a holy baptism of fire and blood, the Bible and the American Civil War, published by Oxford, he writes this, this is a book about how Americans enlisted the Bible in the nation’s most bloody and arguably arguably most biblically infused war. Byrd is chair of the graduate department of religion and associate professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University Divinity School. And if you’re interested in this book, you need to also pick up his previous work sacred scriptures Sacred War, the Bible in the American Revolution. Now just the Battle of Antietam four times, as many American soldiers died compared to 80 years later on the beaches of Normandy in World War Two, twice as many Americans died that one horrible day outside Sharpsburg, Maryland, as in the War of 1812, the Mexican War and Spanish American War combined. Americans should have known from the Bible that civil wars are the worst wars, and even God’s chosen nations could self destruct for it argues in this book, they may not have expected such a tragedy at the outset of the war, but by the end, they had draped the whole conflict in Scripture, culminating with father Abraham killed on Good Friday after setting the captives free. Bird rights this Americans were never in more disagreement over the Bible, and yet never more in agreement that the Bible proved the sacredness of war. Bird joins me and gospel bound to discuss the jeremiad Akin, Exodus camp revivals, Frederick Douglass and abolitionist views of inerrancy. Dr. Byrd, thank you for joining me on gospel bound, calm. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Let’s just start basic here. How did Americans tend to view the Bible in the years leading up to the Civil War?

James Byrd
Well, most Americans look to the Bible for various facts, for consolation for truth. The nation at that time was primarily Protestant in its religious makeup, not completely, of course, never has been completely and you have a good number of native peoples who were not worshipping in a Christian context at all, you had a lot of people who had come here from various parts of the world who were not Christian, for sure. But for those who were Christians, the majority of them were Protestant at this point in some way. And so the Bible was probably the most read book, it was certainly the most talked about book and the most cited book. So the it made sense then that they would quote the Bible, like use the Bible a lot. And a lot of people thought the Bible was just common sense and that they could understand the Bible by just picking it up and reading it that the Bible was just easily understood. A Methodist Phoebe Palmer, who was very influential at the time said the Bible is a wonderfully simple book, and a lot of people believe that so the Bible was just literally everywhere.

Collin Hansen
So give a context for people just have kind of the religious feeling of the nation. Are we talking a high tide low ebb? Where are we exactly in terms of religion, American history when it comes 1860? I don’t think there’s a real really accurate way to depict the the nation’s religious sensibility at the time, I don’t think we can say that there was like an upsurge of revival or that there was a down surge. It was just all over the map. Some places were experienced in revival, some places weren’t. There were just a lot of people who were concerned about the nation’s division. And that concern led them to religious convictions. They were turning to their ministers. They were turning to the Bible, to try to find find some solutions to the crisis that they were seeing because the crisis was escalating, and seemed that everyone seemed to know that

Would you subscribe to the view, which I’ve heard from a number of others that more or less the nation was not getting?

To find able to find a political solution when the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and the Southern Baptists, the Baptist, I should say, had all split 1840s 50s. That’s I just think that’s so true. There was a wonderful book written about this broken churches, broken nation years ago by cc going. And it’s just this is something that they said over and over. I mean, the method is split north and south, primarily over slavery, Baptist split north and south primarily over slavery, Presbyterian split. Well, it was more complicated than that. But slavery was involved in it. They, they had a sense, these Protestants, that if the churches can’t keep things together, if the ministers can’t get along over slavery, then what’s the nation going to do what we expect from politicians? So the writing seemed to be on the wall?

Well, yeah, took up arms. I mean, there was no, there was no alternative to that. Hence the book. Now, New England Puritans, they introduced the Jeremiah to Colonial America. You’re right. But you describe southern preachers as trying to perfect this perfect it tell us a little bit about this genre, the jeremiad. And when it went out of style, assuming that you think that it has gone on, though? Yeah, you know, it’s, there’s still people writing about the Jeremy ed, and there have been,

James Byrd
It’s a consistent pattern in American homiletics. And basically what it is, it’s, it’s named, of course, after the prophet Jeremiah. And it’s just this this rhetorical pattern. It says, basically, that the nation is sin, the nation is in trouble, or the people have sin, the people are in trouble.

So it’s calling people to repentance, repent of your sins, but with the understanding that if the people do repent, God will forgive them. So it’s a sense that it’s it’s it’s a, it is bad news, good news, right? It’s saying to the people, you’ve sinned against God, you’re being punished for that. But if you turn to God, God will bless you. So the idea then is still, you may be still God’s chosen people, that people may be God’s chosen people. It’s just God chastises God’s chosen people. And looking at the Hebrew Scriptures, looking at Old Testament, seeing examples of that.

Collin Hansen
You know, well, I would say, I mean, did it did it? Was there a point at which it came to be used less often? Or? I mean, I guess you could probably argue Second Chronicles 714 could still be in that genre. My own people will humbly pray and turn back to Me and stop sinning, then I’ll hear their prayer from Heaven forgive their sins and heal their country. Would that be in that same genre? or would there be some differences there?

James Byrd
Yeah, I think so. I mean, it’s an I think that the Jeremy had still echoes through pulpits, here and there. I think it was much more prominent in the 19th century for sure. Through the 17th century through the 19th century. Frederick Douglass, for instance, was an expert. You know, he wasn’t a preacher, but he he certainly spoke a lot and spoke prophetically. And he said he tended to use that term of the Jeremy the style the Jeremy a David Blight really great book on, Frederick Douglass points that out.

Collin Hansen
Great one. You could, I mean, if we want to be real controversial here, then we connect that through to Malcolm X and Jeremiah Wright himself, and the namesake here. I mean, it’s been an ongoing theme in there. You know, the nation has been afflicted by God because of its sins. And obviously, they’re talking about their sins of slavery, segregation, racial subjection, colonialism. We could go on and on with that list.

James Byrd
Yeah. And it’s a prophetic. It’s an in many cases is intended to be prophetic. And the Jeremy had cuts in several different directions. I mean, the southerners and you mentioned southerners and I do say this and other historians have pointed this out.

Even if the Jeremy had was popularized in New England with the Puritans. It certainly made its way south and white Southerners, white southern evangelicals use the Jeremy had quite a lot during the Civil War, saying that the white South, the southern the Confederacy was God’s new chosen nation from their perspective and, and then that feeds into the Lost Cause mentality later that, of course, remains prominent throughout American history.

Collin Hansen
So I’d love for you to talk a little bit more about Frederick Douglass because I love the way you phrase this. He summarized him as arguing that the Bible was not the nation’s book. It was the nation’s judgment. That tell us a little bit more about that.

James Byrd
Frederick Douglass knew the Bible extremely well, as many Americans did at the time. Frederick Douglass was also an international celebrity he was very well known, he was very popular on the speaking circuit. He was the most popular African American speaker in the United States. He was photographed, that read historians who said he had more photographs taken of him than anyone in the 19th century, including Abraham Lincoln. He was firm believer photography, his biblical knowledge came through his speeches. So he was consistently using scripture, using scripture in using scripture to, to bring about change, trying to convince people that the Bible was an abolitionist force. Whereas he knew quite well that the Bible had been a slave holding force in the hands of many people. So he was trying to counteract that. Not from the pulpit, of course, because he wasn’t a minister, but from the speaker’s podium and from from print. So he was very well versed in Scripture and, and, and, and just about all of his major speeches, you hear the Bible like his speech, and what to the slave is the fourth of July, you get biblical text through that, too. So yes, he was. He was very much a Bible, believer and a quarter of Scripture users scripture.

Collin Hansen
Let’s go back to those denominational splits. And let’s try to work that project that forward. So he’s denominational splits over slavery in the first half of the 19th century. How did they affect attitudes toward the Bible among Americans in the latter half of the century, after the war, what was the effect?

James Byrd
I think that and more research needs to be done, I think on this, but what you start to get with the Civil War is you get pockets of places in the United States and denominations that start to start pick up particular approaches to the Bible. One of the most instructive ways to see this is to look at the way the Bible was used in slavery, regarding slavery, so with white Southerners, quite often the Bible is quoted littler, literally, because the literal argument often seems to be more conducive to slavery, more supportive of slavery, so people can like, like Richard Herman, in South Carolina, in the south can say, hey, you know, the Bible talks about slavery in the Hebrew Scriptures in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament. And yet, nowhere does Jesus say slavery is wrong. Nowhere does Paul say slavery is absolutely wrong. So it looks like slavery is part of the biblical framework. So reading the Bible literally that way, they can make that argument. Whereas the abolitionist and anti slavery preachers in the north who can argue that you have to look beyond the letter of the Bible, you have to look at the Spirit. Do you believe that Jesus, the preacher, the Sermon on the Mount, would condone the brutality of slavery.

As Frederick Douglass once said, If If slave if an institution is inhuman, it can’t be divine.

You know, how do you argue that the spirit of Scripture overall really supports slavery? And and then they can put Look at Acts, you know, in Aryaka speech where Paul says, all are one blood. And so how can you say, how can you allow one? How would one group of humanity then enslave another, so but they move beyond those kinds of literal uses of Scripture. And so that leads a lot of white southerners more to two more favor the literalist perspective, it seems like

Collin Hansen
And I would argue, also a spiritualist interpretation in many ways, as well. Now, probably the first time I encountered some of these arguments, we mark Knowles book, The Civil War is a theological crisis and dive down a little bit more on how Abul how some abolitionist views toward biblical authority ultimately affected their reception in their cause. I mean, bottom line, maybe I’m giving away the punch line here, but abolitionists were deeply unpopular. And I think that’s we we don’t really remember that very much. Go ahead.

James Byrd
Yeah, I think what we have to do, and I think this is first order of business, when you deal with the Civil War, is you have to make a distinction between abolitionist and anti slavery. Yeah, that’s very important. abolitionist and anti slavery and Martin Knowles book civil wars theological crisis does a really good job of specifically talking

About the biblical case for and against slavery, so, so abolitionists were oftentimes more much more radical. And many like William Lloyd Garrison, who would almost have pretty much given up on the political process, and fighting slavery. And also abolitionists had the reputation of being anti religion and anti Bible, right, because William Lloyd Garrison actually made comments saying that the Bible seems to be to, to pro slavery. So and plus the way most Americans tend to read the Bible is to literalistic Lee, so he was ready to just kind of move past the Bible. Because the Bible didn’t seem to be helping in the anti slavery cause. Now, word got out about that. And people start to call abolitionists, anti biblical. And many abolitionists were making statements, saying, Well, the Bible is not so helpful. Now, Garrison himself love the Bible. But he also recognized that the Bible was not all true everywhere. He wanted to find places that he thought the Bible was true. And other places where it was more dated, and he found the slavery instructions, more dated with that. So I do think we have to make that distinction between anti slavery and abolitionists and many anti slavery preachers. Really were wishing abolitionists would just be quiet because it was making it harder for them to use the Bible to argue against slavery because abolitionists had such a reputation as being anti Bible with a lot of a lot of Christians.

Collin Hansen
So same as the political dynamics there Lincoln will be a good example of somebody who was anti slavery but not an abolitionist. Right? Yes, he now of course, a lot of Democrats, a lot of Lincoln’s opponents, including Stephen Douglas, tried their best to call him a radical abolitionist. And many white southerners probably most white southerners thought he was abolitionists, because they weren’t making those fine distinctions. But no, he claimed, you know, I’m, I’m ain’t against slavery, but I’m not a radical abolitionist. Right. Now, I’m, I’m a biblical inerrancy. Just so they have that as the backdrop, as I asked this, this question here. Would you be surprised to know that I still get criticized today from some people who claim biblical inerrancy and therefore also argue that everything went wrong with the Civil War when the slavery view was abandoned? Like literally, that’s something that’s still argued to me today. Wow, that surprise you? It does in a way it does. Yeah. So the reason one of the major reasons I wanted to have you on here and why I’ve recommended your book and recommended Mark Knowles is that some of these people who have been criticizing my work, especially on racial issues, a lot of people just don’t understand this history. But because of your book, because a nose book because of Harry stouts book on a moral history of the civil war, you could see all this so you can see can see, okay, so somebody right now, is criticizing me because of my views on racial issues. And they’re saying, See, it undermines inerrancy like, wait a minute, how does it undermine inerrancy? Here, it’s actually the exact same lineage, I had one person. One person who has been very active actually is involved with Sons of Confederate Veterans. Another major Best Selling Author once told me that he was a NEO confederate. Now, they don’t advertise this publicly. But I mean, that’s why I asked you the question, because this is exactly where it came from. There was the idea, you can’t be anti, you can’t be biblical inerrancy just and be anti slavery. And they’ve come back, you can’t. And I mean, I teach a class on cultural apologetics. And this is where we work through the hermeneutics of the biblical arguments about slavery for that reason, but I mean, did that.

Did that? Did it fall out of fashion for a time? Or I’m just trying to figure out how historically did that develop? Or did that just get so embedded in the last cause? That really there never was as much change as some people want to? might imagine, help me as a historian, understand where that’s coming from?

James Byrd
Yeah, I think it’s important to remember that a lot of anti slavery preachers in the north, were what we would consider to be very conservative and their views of the Bible. I mean, it wasn’t just the abolitionists, who were looking askance at parts of Scripture who were anti slavery. I mean, you had a good number of evangelical preachers in the North, who were anti slavery. So it so I don’t think it breaks down all that neatly. I think people are recognizing things like, Well, what is slavery? What does the term slavery mean for Paul, what does it mean in that situation? You know, is it are we talking about a one to one correspondence between the institution of slavery at that time and the institution of slavery as it was in the 19th century? I mean, even somebody like Furman, who was trying to argue for slavery was saying, you know, there’s just a lot going on with this system of slavery in the Confederacy that the Bible would Paul would not tolerate. So you know, there was a lot of room for, for biblical interpretation there without just saying that, Well, the Bible, if you don’t accept slavery, you can’t accept that you can’t accept the Bible.

Collin Hansen
Well, and part of the argument is not just the history before the Civil War, it’s the history after the Civil War. And the argument extends that see, all those northern denominations that were anti slavery, all became liberal, they all dropped their theological views, the southern churches that have been pro slavery, they all through the lost cause and extend it through, they wouldn’t use the phrase lost cause but they would say, they remained conservative, and say, This is why and so they’ll say, see, this is why when you change your views on racial issues, or when we speak out on that, you lose the Bible. Again, I guess I’ve been a little bit surprised by that. But more equipped to handle it, thanks to some of your work. Now. This is there’s so many insightful aspects here and disturbing aspects of this work. How did Confederates managed to turn exodus from a story about liberation from slavery into a celebration of slavery that was, you know, this is really amazing.

James Byrd
I mean, part of the struggle that I had in writing this book is there were some there were some sermons that just didn’t pass the laugh test for me. Yeah. I mean, there were some sermons that just I’m like, Ah, you gotta be kidding me. And I really wondered, does this minister know that he’s just completely enlisting scripture for his own agenda, and he’s not really thinking through the revelation that could be going on here. So and when you get when you get Confederate, favoring ministers saying things like, well, the the the Egyptians, the Pharaoh is Abraham Lincoln, and we’re, we’re like the children of Israel fleeing from the slavery of the Union. But you remember, I mean, a lot of this was going on in the Revolutionary period to Methodist ministers, like John Wesley used to point out, like other Brits did at the time, the British did that. I’m saying, you know, these these patriots are talking about, they’re fleeing the slavery of the British Empire than King George the Third. And they’re actually holding, literally supporting slavery. So using slavery in Egypt, the Egypt story Exodus as a metaphor. And in trying to downplay its abolitionist appeal, is something that’s happened a good bit in American history. And so you get to you see that there? You do see that with the Confederate to take that turn on the Exodus story?

Collin Hansen
Well, there’s the advantage of having traced the similar arguments chronologically through time, if you could go back and see their, their genesis back then I hadn’t even thought about that before. Now, let’s go back to famous biblical story of Akin. And how that story explain how that story came to be used by both sides to justify their views.

James Byrd
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s just one of those stories where, you know, the accursed that thing, right? You know, talking about that, and, and, you know, what, is this really about? Is this about stealing? Is it about doing something forbid? Or is it about slavery? So, you know, it can you know, from this, from one point of view, it can be Kherson thing is slavery and the other well, there’s their slavery in this story. It’s just an example of how even a narrative that doesn’t specifically talk about slavery can be turned to a conversation about slavery in the hermeneutical atmosphere that was going on at the time. So you get various biblical stories that can be well, if anything dealing with some kind of property could be turned to talk about slave property in slavery. So yeah, it’s just one of those cases in which Biblical verses can get turned one side, up one side and down the other.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, one of the things that I’ve have concluded recently is that it’s not so much usually the divide between people who don’t believe the Bible at all, or people who do it’s more or less people who accept some parts of the Bible and reject other parts of the Bible. And just just simply a good example of how biblical stories can be called Well, this is the literalist interpretation thing, but that’s actually a complete abuse of the actual intent of the passage. So anyway, I just, I love history because it gives me this context. Now. One thing that stood out to me and I was glad that you jumped into this because it’s a major part of the Lost Cause mythology. But how did religiosity hold both armies together?

In the terrible year of 1864, so you’ll see a lot of people who celebrate the Confederacy still today, it’s talking about these tremendous revivals during that time, but it is the carnage of 1864, which I find to be vastly overlooked by people who study, I mean, just people who are interested in the Civil War, because you don’t have the same kind of dramatic battles as some other times, but just nonstop horrific carnage. Right, right, with Grant and Lee. So what was the role that religion played during that time?

James Byrd
Well, you know, I read a lot of funeral sermons during that time. I read a lot of a lot of newspapers during that time and look for Bible verses there. And I can tell you that the theme of martyrdom that comes out of Scripture, I mean, we see it everywhere in the Bible, right? I mean, you are you have to, you just have to look to the crucifixion, to see, the Jesus is depicted in terms of martyred in the book of Revelation talks about martyrdom, that theme of martyrdom comes out over and over again, that the idea that that there’s value to the suffering, and also that there’s meaning in the violence. So attaching, redemptive meaning to the bloodshed. And Bush now especially I’ll probably does this more vividly than anyone does. And after the war is over, and but he does it did during the war, too. He’s making these same kinds of statements, that this this, this bloodshed is making the nation sacred, that is providing a sacredness, God’s ordaining baptizing by blood donation, and this term of baptism by blood is used consistently that there’s such meaning here, because the sacrifices cannot be in vain. And the Bible reinforces that for a lot of people that

There’s no redemption without shedding a blood, right? So I see that over and over, that they, of course, the Bible value, sacrifice, willingness to die, lay down your labor, exactly. Willingness to lay down your life, your friends, I mean, there’s no greater love, right? Willingness to kill, which, you know, Drew Gilpin Faust and others talk about the really hard courage of the Civil War was to try to convince these Christian soldiers, many of them young, it’s not as hard to get them to lay down their lives, it’s hard to get them to kill, and, and to say in to show them how the Bible and God say it’s okay that it’s even demanded to kill. That’s the harder curves, Orestes Brownson said and Drew Gilpin house talks about so both these agendas going on and others agenda is trying to make sense of the violence. There are so many ways in which the Bible is able to be be slid into these and to be placed into these positions, to provide comfort to provide agendas to provide motivation for people on various sides of this war.

Collin Hansen
This this war killed, killed men, three times the rate in the South as in the north, one of five men and military in the age in the south died, it’s it’s bound to change a region tomorrow region. How did the Bible come to be seen in light of this Apocalypse for the South, and then ultimately us to explain it? I have a feeling that you’ve already begun to answer that question a little bit. And your last answer. Yeah, I mean, it’s, again, it’s that it’s that sense of the meaning of our death,

James Byrd
The meaning of our life, given the fact that the life did not end as they thought it would. The war did not end as the Confederates thought it would. So what is the meaning of that? And that the Bible get gets grafted into this and, and again, it gets turned into kind of a Confederate Jeremie, Id by a lot of white southerners saying, Well, God’s punishing us, and God does punish those that God loves. And God in Scripture used alien forces like Babylonians and the Persians in all to, to both punish and deliver God’s people. So that kind of mentality found in Scripture, that kind of interpretation. feeds into the last cause. what’s called a lost cause civil religion by Charles Rainn Wilson.

Collin Hansen
Right now, did it southern ministers or other leaders who had been invoking scriptures all along for their cause? Ever acknowledge that they got it wrong or misled the people into disaster? learn their lessons. Did you find any evidence of this?

James Byrd
I’m sure there is. I can’t think of any offhand where you are totally about things I can’t think of any. Yeah, I can’t, I really can’t. Now I can think of some who said, we sinned. We were we deserved it. We were too prideful. Stephen Elliot is really interesting Anglican minister of the South who, who said, basically, when Sherman was marching to the see that we will be punished, we will lose, finally got the point we will use, but it’s because it’s a way to eventually win and had concocted this way. So. So basically, it was a way even when we’re losing God still on our side, we’re still in the right. So not a sense in which don’t get a lot of, you know, we were totally wrong about slavery. We’re totally wrong about this. And we need to and, and that’s why, and we need to totally reform our way of thinking about race didn’t get that. But certainly they were saying we’ve been we lost because we send and that’s typical Jeremy ID.

Collin Hansen
Right. So the control is still it’s not blaming God, not blaming, no. Right. So it’s still so that’s how you continue to trust God? Well, it’s not his fault. We he gave us the freedom we send we forsake our God and each other through a lot of job pointing to a lot of job and and in some apocalyptic stuff, too.

Well, one of the one of the reasons I asked that is because as a as a northerner who lives in the south and loves the South, I think if I had one thing to say, and I’m interested know, your feedback on this would be that one thing thing to say to the north, for people to understand, but the South that I don’t think they get is that there was never a collective southern acceptance of responsibility or apology for either slavery in the Civil War, or civil rights and segregation. Would you say? That’s what that’s fair or accurate?

James Byrd
Yeah, I think that’s fair, I think it’s, I think we really have to come to terms with the critical place of, of this white supremacist assumption, and, and this assumption that, that the the nation was on the white basis, as I think, you know, several people put it. So this concept of white supremacy was just, in many ways, just really assumed by a lot of whites. Not just in the south, but in the north as well. But in the south, with around the issue of slavery, they were, they really weren’t hiding it. I mean, it was pretty, it was out in the open and tied to the Bible, as well. And this is where Martin Oles, very helpful. And some of his research because he’s talking about how, how thin those biblical arguments were, I mean, when it comes when talking about race in the 19th century, and how they, there was the, there were these consistent attempts by some whites to make the Bible into a white supremacist document. And it was difficult to do. I mean, you know, you affirm, and James Furman says that, you know, basically, that there’s no equality among races, or the Bible is not true and attacking the Declaration of Independence that happened a good bit, because of its proclamation of equality there and saying the Bible is the Bible doesn’t do that. Did they blame somebody else than other than Jefferson for drafting that or he was writing consensus, or they turn on Jefferson? I don’t I don’t recall that what I remember here, seeing in several cases were the Declaration of Independence, especially around the the secession and 1861, you know, coming around 1860 1861, after the election of Lincoln caused that the the arguments that I start to see are in you, of course, these are not particularly new, but that the founders were just wrong.

Many Confederates were saying this founders were just wrong about the Declaration of Independence. And this because the founders believed that slavery was going to go away. They didn’t want to deal with it, they believed it was going to die out. So they just kind of left it to future generations to deal with hoping that basically they saw slavery as a necessary evil at the time. And you get southerners starting to say this before, well, before the war southern slaveholders start to say, they were just wrong about that, that slavery was a positive good in the corners. Organization. Yes, yes. So you start, you start to get that with the OG Senator Stevens, and thanks to the thanks to the cotton gin. Right. Jay changes things right.

Collin Hansen
It changes the economics of the situation. And so the founders were right in terms of what they understood, or at least we think probably they were right, that it was going to die out because economically tobacco was not viable. But everything changed with the cotton gin there. Well, the reason what I what I thought was so held

About what you said about white supremacy is that I think it’s been recast by many Americans as being associated with the Ku Klux Klan and the specific violence perpetuated all the way from the end of the Civil War all the way through civil rights. But I think this is why so many people did not like Harper Lee’s to kill watchmen enter, because that is a more accurate description of the kind of white supremacy as expressed by Atticus Finch in that book that is far more normative throughout the south, and in fact, so normative to have been taken for granted, almost entirely, it was not always with the violent face, it was simply assumed to be part of the order of things that good people were called to uphold. least that’s how I explained that book and why I liked them. It’s not hard to find evidence for this.

James Byrd
I mean, you know, just let’s look at the Lincoln Douglas debates. Oh, you’re talking before the Civil War here. And Stephen Douglas, makes it a point to try to call to try to accuse Lincoln of equality between the races. He tried to try to accuse Lincoln of believing that in racial equality, and he tries to tie Lincoln to Frederick Douglass, he said, you know, Lincoln’s buddies, Frederick Douglass, you know, so Lincoln believes in racial equality, and and Lincoln goes out of his way to deny that, right, exactly what goes out of the way to deny that No, he’s I don’t believe in racial equality. So Lincoln, who’s very clearly anti slavery, denies that he believes in racial equality, because he knows well, the poor does probably didn’t believe in racial equality. But But even so he he knew that that was political suicide in the north, even not just the South, right. So this assumption of white supremacy was white superiority was fairly, it’s fairly easy to see in the in the documents.

Collin Hansen
And that’s why it’s that’s why the the north south boundaries are often so confusing to us even today, because so much of you know, Lincoln, having come from Kentucky, a slaveholding state that did not fight with the South, then does you know, then works in Illinois, and then goes up against, of course, another Illinois politician. But there are all these arguments that are white supremacist, there actually thought this was one reason why the Lincoln movie was actually helpful in how it depicted these arguments about slavery, it showed the nature of the Democratic Party have been deeply racist. Even as even as a you know, a decent measure of it in the North was Unionist at the same time.

Last question about about Lincoln our last question here, overall. Now, one of the things Harry stout argues is that Lincoln, if I remember him correctly, would argue that more or less Lincoln was the only person to transcend the sort of moral dissent. I mean, I think you could clearly point out Frederick Douglass and other though Douglass, Douglas was a little bit more eager in terms of the violence, I would say that Lincoln was one commanding it. So he’s the one responsible for it. But Douglas was a little more eager in that he would also argue that Charles Hodge had a change of opinion at some course that allowed him to see differently, but how do you assess what was Lincoln, as he evolved in this process? I mean, with a with an almost unparalleled, at least recall of Scripture? How how do you assess his place in this? Is he able to rise above? Or is he just sort of caught in this maelstrom that he of course was was directing in so many ways?

James Byrd
Yeah. I mean, the the sectional division, I mean, Mark Knowles, America’s God book, Mark, no, you know, the subtitle that books interesting from Jonathan Edwards, Abraham Lincoln. And he talks about Lincoln’s theological approach in the second inaugural address and other places where Lincoln refuses to see things in terms of the sectional divisions that Lincoln is able to see, you know, both sides were were wrong, both sides are, are being judged in this war. And that no gives Lincoln credit for his ability to see beyond the sectional divisions. It’s interesting after the Second Inaugural Lincoln, you know, late second inaugural dress was not it did not receive rave reviews. It was not your typical.

I mean, it has since of course, it’s one of the most recent speeches in America. I think historian Jill Lepore says that when presidents are planning their inaugural dresses, they could read all the other ones or they could just get the rest and just read Lincoln’s. So his second inaugural dress was very much appreciated. Of course, since then, it was but at the time, it wasn’t a rah rah patriotic speech. We were all right, the wars were ending and things are great for us. In the north. It was much more of a sober, sober analysis. And after he was responding to a letter, someone wrote a letter

Saying to Lincoln, well, I think I appreciated your speech. And he said something like, well, something like people are used to hearing that God’s purpose is not their purpose, or their purpose is not some other than God’s. But it was a truth that I thought needed to be told. So there, you know, there is that he did have an acute knowledge of Scripture and did have a sense of provenance. He talked about Providence a lot. And he seemed to dwell on Providence, and exactly what is going on in the world. What is God doing in the war? Were questions that were pressing for him, even though he wasn’t a church member, who wasn’t. And after his assassination, there was all this argument of or was Lincoln a Christian? Well, it’s a tough question to answer and I’m not going to answer it either.

Collin Hansen
I wasn’t even going to ask it. Wasn’t even going to ask it. But that’s, but that’s why I thought sounds framing was insightful because of just describing how of his his critique of the pulpits is that the pulpits more or less ceased in the main almost ceased as a whole to be transcendent, spiritual pulpits to be being purely partisan for their sides. And so that’s why Lincoln stands out in exactly that way. Well,

I’m grateful for the time you’ve given here guys, check out it check out James P. Byrd’s new book, The Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood, the Bible and the American Civil War. I say as somebody who who reads about everything I can on the Civil War, this has made a significant contribution, especially to me, I’m always trying to figure out the ongoing implications, but also the interplay between theology and culture and history. And your book has been a great contribution to that field. Thank you, Dr. Bird.

James Byrd
Thanks so much. It was great to be here appreciate you having me on.