Cynthia, one of the most pernicious fallacies of the present is that we can “retro-activate” our biases for those of the past. The death penalty for adultery was near-universal in agrarian societies because it could result in the dissolution of the family, which was the fundamental economic unit. The stealth of one man’s wife would result in existing children being reduced to penury (and if there was a baby, the starvation of it).

It’s the same thing in many ways with the hanging of horse thieves in 19th century America. The stealth of one horse was enough to cause a family to become destitute, which was a slow-motion type of murder in many cases. Instead, if we wanted to play the game of modern biases, we should instead marvel at what Constantine outlawed because of Christian influence: the mutilation of thieves, crucifxion, and slavery.

Is Schaeffer supporting homosexuality in this article?

Michael, I certainly agree there was a clash of civilisations between North and South. I think it is still seen in muted form to the present day.

I also agree that our discussions and debates about the nature of the Church are framed in very American terms. I don’t think this a a bad thing. I think it is one of the reasons the umbilici tying the American Church with various mother churches need to be clamped and cut. It is another clash of civilisations.

It is also another example of the struggle between centralisation and confederation. The mother churches want to centralise their own power (and the flow of American dollars), while many in the American Church realise that the hierarchy which governs best is local hierarchy.

David, thank you for your thoughtful reply. As a student of Andrew Jackson I am well aware of the almost mystical populism that prevaded the political thought of the time. Ideas and attitudes that led many to trample on and wish to discard the sovereignty of the states and the freedom of the people.

I don’t think God punished us for the communal sin of slavery, it is just the natural and logical consequences of refusing to deal forthrightly with the issue everyone knew was fundamentally divisive and could not be maintained.

There was a clash of civilzations going on, however, the industrial, utilitarian plutocratic North vs. the agaraian, feudal, aristocratic south. That is of course a gross over simplification but I think demonstrative of the truth. There was definitely a clash between centralizers and confederationists.

I would also agree that the North was the agressor and there need not have been war. The south was easily manipulated into open warfare however becasue of the rhetorical and political excesses of the leading aristrocracy. Humility, reason and good-will long gone by the time Lincoln was elected.

Certainly the reality of slavery, both its ideology and mindset persist to this day.

I actually see some of the same types of tensions, rhetoric and excess rampant in our discussions of the nature of the Church–who we are and how we should establish our polity in acord with tradition and the faith. Also how and to what extent we should be in the public square. We frame the debate in quintessential American terms without even realizing it. Our mother churches must be quite flumaxed by such an approach which has neither foundation nor resonance in their respective cultures, especially since the the impostion of the Turkish Yoke or the Soviet persecution.

Interesting thought…..

Sorry I could not get back to comment until now, but there was some sort of bandwidth problem when I tried.

Michael, you misunderstood me. I was not suggesting that the War of Northern Aggression (as we call it in our family) was fought to free the slaves. It was a regretable side effect. It was a side effect nonetheless, so it still needlessly cost the lives of 620,000 American soldiers, besides the collateral damage to civilians.

I am fully aware of the real causes, though we might debate some of the finer points, for example, whether Northern industrialist were behind the inception of the War, or rather whether they simply knew a good thing (if one can call evil “good”) when they saw it. For Billy Yank the war was no more about northern industrial supremacy (as George Michalopulous suggests) than it was about the abolition of slavery. The rank and file of the federal army was motivated by the message of the indivisible union. In the Upper South where most of my family lived and fought, this was the issue that separated neighbours. Likewise for my family (except one great-great-grandfather from Indiana, whose service to the invading army we have forgiven) the issue worth the sacrifice of my great-great-grandfather Holford’s life and the service of other ancestors, uncles, and cousins (not all of whom survived the War) was one of state sovereignty and the sanctity of their land as against the invaders.

You are absolutely right that one of the major long-term and continuing effects of the war was the constitutional upheaval and the aggrandizement of the Executive branch.

I do believe, however, that not only would it have been possible to have seen the end of the Peculiar Institution without war, it would have had much different long-term ramifications in terms of civil rights. If the sovereign States had managed their own political evolution, without the killing of their sons, the ravaging of their daughters, the destructive waste of their land, and the economic devastation of their aristocracy, followed by the radical Reconstruction pouring salt into their open wounds, there would never have been the racial hatred that developed and took generations to overcome.

Was this the result of the sin of maintaining the Peculiar Instituion? Again, I think this is debatable. Slavery was a universal reality until the 19th century. Most nations allowed it. Does God judge us on the basis of whether we are at odds with our stated principles? Some have argued that the sin of the Peculiar Institution was that it maintained race-based slavery, whereas historically slavery has been color-blind. This is an argument to which I no longer adhere. It can be a tricky thing to suss out and judge the sins of our fathers.

I also have to respectfully disagree with George about the German/Irish versus Anglo-Celtic hypothesis, which I think is much more eisegesis built on looking back at demographics than evidenced by the feelings at the time.