Samuel Boykin, editor of Georgia Baptists’ Christian Index, identifies slavery as the main issue between North and South, equates black slavery with God’s purposes and the Christian faith, and calls upon white Southern Baptists to defend slavery and support the Confederacy.
In so doing, Boykin voices Christian Nationalism, linking the Confederacy and the Church as partners in enacting and protecting certain ethnically-oriented religious and social values, constructed upon racial divisions, as God’s will for the southern nation:
“Whether the secession of the plantation states was justified or not – whether the Government of the Union has violated the Constitution and oppressed the South and imperiled our institution of slavery, and therefore made Southern life insecure, or not …. we see … a special interposition of Providence. Behold what God has wrought! …. [The Confederacy’s] foundations are right, justice and equality … Christianity has consecrated it to Liberty …. the interests of the Church are inseparably bound up with those of the new Government.”
From a slaveholding family, Boykin remains an ardent supporter of slavery and a consistent voice for Christian Nationalism throughout the war years.
Source: “Our New Government – Shall We Sustain It?” Christian Index, April 3, 1861
