A speech that Governor Joseph Brown of Georgia recently gave to military officers and soldiers in Macon is printed in today’s Southern Recorder newspaper. The Baptist politician’s words echo familiar southern secessionist themes, rallying white citizens to the defense of the South’s slave culture (“domestic affairs”), advocating freedom and equality only for whites, and invoking…
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…
While Southern Baptist leaders, most of whom are slaveholders, are generally strong supporters of slavery and the Confederacy, common Baptists are more diverse. The differences among common Baptists are to a significant degree attributed to socio-economic factors; non-slaveholding whites tend to be poorer and less enthusiastic advocates of slavery, and Baptists are no exception. Waitman…