While Georgia’s Southern Baptist governor, Joseph Brown, is making headlines as the Georgia legislature is in session, some Southern Baptists in the state are talking about this week’s Christian Index editorial by editor Samuel Boykin.
Confederate political and religious leaders remain defiant in their defense of slavery and certain that God is on their side. Again and again this theme is expounded upon in the Southern Baptist press, and this week Boykin takes his turn at reminding his fellow white Southerners that slavery is God’s will for the black race, and that white Christians have a sacred duty to evangelize the inferior race from which their riches are derived.
God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Not yet have the people of the South discovered the reason why God has let this storm of war suddenly burst upon our fair land and create so much misery, cause so much distress and carry devastation and ruin into so many quarters. Our nation is peculiarly situated and occupies a station among the nations of earth totally unlike any other upon the face of the earth. A christian people, we nurture the institution of slavery against which all the civilized world is arrayed. Democratic in government and sentiment, we are aristocratic socially. To us other nations are compelled to look for the articles of the primest necessity and are thus forced to friendliness, while, if they were not dependent on us, they would crush us out of existence or, at least, place us beyond the pale of national unity and respect.
Richer in resources than any other nation of a like population on earth, we are dependent upon an inferior race for prosperity;–and that race cast upon our care in helplessness is also dependent upon us; and it is this mutual dependence which binds us together, for our mutual benefit. For our own advantage do we cherish and nurture our slaves; and at the same time for their own welfare, are we led to the same course. By a special providence has it been made the interest of both black and white that the negro be carefully nurtured; but especially do advantages, by such a course, accrue to the temporal and eternal interests of the inferior race; and in this we may behold the great design of Providence in placing that race under our care–under the care of those who least of all other nations on earth are disgraced by anti-scriptural isms and infidel dogmas, and, therefore, most likely to be faithful to the trust imposed. But have we been faithful? This is the great question; and the solution of it may aid us in ascertaining the intentions of the Almighty.
The great charge of the Southern people is the christianization of the colored people in their midst–this is the duty evidently assigned to them by the an all-wise and overruling Deity; and it may be that dereliction on their part in regard to this heavenly behest is the true cause of the punishment we are now undergoing. Beyond all controversy the overwhelming majority of our slave population is but a grade above heathenism; and this in the most christian land upon which the sun shines, and with a people more naturally religious than any other living. Yes; our slaves possess a natural bent towards religion, bestowed upon them by a gracious God, which it is our duty to cultivate; but which, to our great disgrace, has been woefully neglected. Before God, then, we believe that neglect to carry out this duty in regard to the evangelization of our blacks is one of the main causes of this war of punishment; and yet it may be meant in wisdom and goodness, because it may leave us untrammeled by Northern influence and fanaticism to carry out great and beneficent reforms.
Still the punishment is upon us, and we must wake to its realization, and avail ourselves with christian zeal and eagerness of any improved state which, under the dispensations of an overruling Providence, may the better enable us to fulfill our destiny, obey the divine will, and give the negro that elevation which his servitude seems really designed to procure.
Let christians, then, arouse to a contemplation of this great mission, and begin to enter with energy upon proper steps for the amelioration and christianization of the dependent slaves in our midst.
Thus they may soonest end this direful war, and bring about all the sweets and glories of peace, general happiness and national independence.
Sources: “[ ] cause of the War,” Christian Index, March 23, 1863
