John Randolph Tucker, the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia, tonight lectures at the Second Baptist Church of Richmond to the Young Men’s Christian Association on the subject of “The Southern Church justified in its support of the South in the present war.”
Tucker begins his discourse with a disclaimer concerning church and state.
The divorce of Church and State is accepted as an axiom in this discussion. The union of Church and State, we think, in this country, at least, is fraught with great evils; and, though attractive in its outward form, to a superficial observer, tends, inevitably to injure the cause of pure religion by its corrupting contact with politics, and to do no good to political action, from its merely formal connection with religion. That union is fatal to both. It engenders hypocrisy in the State, and formalism in the Church.
After which the attorney general explains that the work of the state and that of the church go hand-in-hand.
The Church is deeply involved in having good government — where right will be maintained — where justice will be administered — where Liberty under law will prevail. It is false to its duty, if it fails to throw its lawful influence on the side of good, and against bad, government. . It is in as grievous error, where it takes the part of despotism against liberty — as where it sustains licentiousness against rightful authority. The Church cannot ignore the civil rights of its members, or be indifferent to the oppression to which they may be subjected by unconstitutional power. Religion cannot prosper — men cannot be brought under its benign influence, when despotism is destroying the liberty and trampling on the rights of the people ; for men in such circumstances will be diverted from their religious to their civil interests, and will postpone spiritual concerns, for the attainment of present temporal benefits.
God has ordained the State Power, as the shield of His Church : and it is the right and the duty of the Church, entrusted with the interests of His religion, to sustain the State Power, when it is a shield against wrong — and to oppose it when it is a sword wielded for outrage and oppression.
Furthermore,
Civil and religious liberty are intimately related. Religious liberty is essential to the progress of Christianity. Freedom to think on religion, is vital to its existence. Personal responsibility requires freedom of mind to think and act under religious conviction; Interference and intrusion here is, therefore, fatal to true religion. The State that dares to mediate between the soul and its God, is a traitor to God — and the church is bound to aid in its overthrow….
It is thus evident, that the Church in its freedom of religious thought — in its access to its God, through the Divine Mediator — is imperiled by the destruction of civil liberty— for, if religious cannot survive civil liberty, it follows that the overthrow of the one is involved in that of the other.
When power, therefore, seeks, without lawful authority to destroy civil liberty, the Church, charged with the protection of its religious freedom, is bound to take its part with liberty against usurped power — and to struggle, under God, for civil rights, as the defensive outworks, which, if carried, must expose religious liberty to the assault of despotism.
Seemingly lost in the discussion is the historic Baptist conviction that religious liberty is a God-given right for all persons, whether of any faith or no faith, and not merely Christians. Tucker, however, is concerned with building a case for Christian support of the Confederacy–a nation that, unlike the United States, invokes the blessing and help of God in Constitution and national motto–in the war against the United States.
I come now to the special consideration of the proper relation of the Church in the South to the present war : a war of defence — not of aggression.
War is not to be sought for aggression upon the rights of others — but it is not to be tamely avoided, when outrage and wrong threaten the heritage of liberty and right, which a kind God has granted to a people. War in defence of such an heritage, becomes stern and religious duty. It is the defensive holding of a talent, lent to promote the Divine glory — which cannot be surrendered without breach of faith and loss of character.
In such a war, the Confederate States are engaged. We vindicate its rightfulness. We neither sought, nor provoked it. We stood upon our right in the peace of God ; and met war, when pressed against us, upon our very hearthstones, by the violator of that right. We had no alternative, but to surrender our heritage to the wrong-doer, or to defend it to the death. ‘
In the fear of God, we decided to protect our birth right, assailed by war. For two years we have poured out an oblation of blood for the deliverance of our native land : and we will struggle, even to the end, for our national independence ; and never — never — survive its loss !
In all this, we feel we are right in the sight of a just God. The facts which influence, and the principles which guide our decision, have been misrepresented or misunderstood. To have a conscience void of offence towards God and men is the highest aid best support of a Christian people. It is an inferior, but a desirable blessing, that the Christian world should respect our conscience, and acknowledge the rectitude of our decision— that those, united with us, as members of the Great Head of the Church, should recognize the purity of our motives, and the justice of our action. As a christian people, we appeal to them — nor shall our appeal be in vain !
The war is about African slavery, the God-ordained foundation of the South.
By the hand of God, four millions of Africans had come to form the substratum of Southern society ; the upper stratum being composed of the Caucasian race, to the number of eight millions.
These Africans constituted the labor of the South — and being adapted to rural industry, made the South chiefly a planting section. The North was chiefly commercial and manufacturing. The two sections were diverse, and even antagonistic, industrially.
The presence of the African race, incapable of amalgamation with the white race, by natural law, fixed and unalterable : incapable of political or civil equality with the white race, by original inferiority, and the debasement of centuries; incapable of freedom, except to be licentious and brutal and savage, and only fit to be enslaved, if order and security were to be conserved; their deportation impracticable, and cruel to the African himself; the presence of this race, with these incapacities, raised questions of vital importance to the good order, to the moral character, and to the social security of the Southern States.
But with all these incapacities, there was one great Providential compensation. The presence of an inferior race with such a status fixed upon it, by necessary law, solved some political questions which have convulsed so-called free societies. It made the political institutions of the South more stable ; its action less liable to the turbulence of free Democracies ; and elevated the tone of political principle beyond the too ready influence of designing demagogues. It banished the “Isms” and political empiricism of the free States from our borders ; and radicalism was, very slowly, introduced, and only from imitation, into the creed of the Statesmen of the South.
It did more. It secured the South from the curse of all countries, where this racl| in slavery, does not constitute the laboring class. It saved us from the grinding conflict between capital and labor. Elsewhere these classes are in antagonism — here, they are, happily, at one! It is obvious, without further suggestion, that the presence of this race in the South, presented subjects of momentous interest to us — questions of industry — of social order – of political stability — of moral and religious character.
The relation of Master and Slave race, where kindness to the slave is the rule, and cruelty the exception ; under which the master has been elevated, by discipline, for the high duty of guardianship to an inferior race in its state of pupilage ; under which, the African has been civilized and christianized to a greater extent, than under any other educational process to which he has ever been, or can be, subjected — this was the relation, we, of this generation, found in existence, which we could not change with safety— and proposed to control under the law of Him, whose Providence ordained it for us, and who never condemned it, but inscribed regulations for it, as he did for all other lawful relations in life !
Since white supremacy and African slavery are clearly scriptural mandates and God’s ordained will for the human races, Southern Christians must come to the defense of the Confederacy against the evil abolitionist United States.
This being so, it is obvious, that the religious conviction of the church member, would largely control his action as a citizen. The Southern conscience, which had been goaded to rend a church upon the relations of the domicil ; which stood upon its humble threshold, under the sanction of the Divine, to protest prayerfully, but bravely for the integrity of the social tie between master and slave, against a reckless fanaticism, sowing the seeds of hate amid the scenes of a peaceful home; that Southern conscience, when State power assailed it by law, violating civil right, and inciting to insurrection, rapine and murder, was ready to rise, in the deep sense of religious duty, to break the base bonds of a prostituted union, and to hurl back the invader of its peace, with the stern defiance of war !
The views thus presented, suffice to show, that the causes of variance between the North and South, tending to Secession, were both secular and religious.
The danger to property in slaves, and to all property, valuable because of slavery ; the peril to the white race, from the insubordination of the African, under the impulse of Abolition agitation and law ; the overthrow of Southern society and the destruction of Southern civilization, by the action of ignorant and fanatical enemies ; the submergence of all the hopes for progress of eight millions of civilized men, by the tide of empirical legislation upon our social and political institutions ; the subjection of all the interests of the South to the absolute control of an alien and hating majority ; these made up the secular element, which drove the Southern people to disunion, as the only hope of safety, for their property, their homes, their liberties, their civilization.
The religious element arose from other views.
When the white race, possessed of the refinement and christian civilization of the best nations, looked upon the four millions of semi-barbarians, entrusted to their keeping by the hand of Providence, they felt a deep and growing responsibility for their improvement in character for time and for eternity. The immortal interests of such a mass of savage life, pressed hard upon the conscience of Southern masters. Nor had they wholly failed to meet it. Out of this large number of the descendants of heathen, in less than two centuries, half a million are professing members of evangelical churches. This fact is worth a thousand theories as to the savage nature of slavery. The home of the slave is the only spot, whence, as yet, Ethiopia has stretched out its hands unto God. Missionary effort elsewhere fails to point to such a triumph of Christianity among the sons of Africa, as the Southern Church can justly claim in behalf of Christian slaveholders !
Sources: John Randolph Tucker, “The southern church justified in its support of the South in the present war: a lecture, delivered before the Young Men’s Christian Association, of Richmond, on the 21st May, 1863” (link); “Interesting Lecture,” Richmond Daily Dispatch, May 25, 1863 (link)
