A Civil War Era Bapist Church
Not all white Baptists of the South are enamored with the war. An anonymous editorial in Georgia Baptist’s Christian Index pleads with pastors to keep war and pulpit separate:
“Brethren of the ministry, we earnestly exhort you not to let your minds be diverted from your legitimate business by the excitements of the day.
The care of souls is your business: we beseech you to give a more earnest attention to it according as war and the rumors of war distract the hearts of your people and tend to diminish their spirituality. God has placed you in the most respectable of conditions: beware how you neglect your duty. We know a grief smitten mother whose wounded heart, pines over the loss of a dearly loved daughter. Most especially does she need the soothing consolations of religion quietly distilled upon her soul; and yet two ministers dwelt of late for two days beneath her roof, and saw her downcast countenance and heard her sad sighs, without breathing one word of hope or christian encouragement to her ear. War, war, formed the staple of their conversation. – They went away leaving that mothers’ heart still crushed, still unconsoled, when so few words, as apples of gold in pictures of silver, might have afforded unbounded relief. We know a man of business: all the week he attends to his duties; and all the week his eyes and ears are saluted with war news. Said he to us ‘Sabbath is a relief to me, for then I can hear the Gospel and things that tend to soul prosperity. But, lately, I went to church, and the minister discoursed of the war. I went home grieved, feeling as though I wanted to hear no more preaching. I took up the Index, hoping to find some good religious reading, and it, too, was full of the war.’ ….
Ministers, preach the Gospel. At such times as these, souls are serious: death almost stares every one in the face. Souls are impressible: friends and acquaintances are dying and being killed every day.”
Continuing, the writer exhorts pastors to preach missions, church members to attend church, and all to read the Bible more and support missionaries and the poor.
While the call to support missions becomes a growing chorus among concerned ministers as the war progresses, rare are Southern Baptist voices calling for their fellow Baptists to focus only on spiritual matters in the face of war. Much more common are voices joining God and war, Christianity and slavery, and heavenly and southern kingdoms.
Source: Christian Index, July 17, 1861; image of a Civil War era Baptist church (link)
