Reunion Overture Of The Northern General Assembly To The Southern Presbyterian Church Considered

Stuart Robinson was a prominent Presbyterian newspaper editor who took upon himself the dangerous task of distinguishing between the spiritual world and within a border state "city of conflict" during the Civil War. Presently, historians tend to depict religion during the American Civil War as domesticated under sectional nationalism -- where theologizing was directed at justifying the war in order to forge either a northern or southern Zion. Graham argues that such one-sided depictions do not sufficiently account for either the existence of a border state phenomenon during the civil war or the kind of theologizing that was being propagated from out of the border states against the domestication of religion to sectional politics. In A Kingdom Not of This World: Stuart Robinson's Struggle to Distinguish the Sacred from the Secular During the Civil War Preston D. Graham, Jr. presents a case study of a rather sizeable movement among border state Presbyterians, with special attention given to their most celebrated and influential leader, the Dr. Rev. Stuart Robinson of Louisville, Kentucky. Given the significance of Robinson's theologizing relative to the American doctrine of the separation of church and state, several primary resources are included in a reader portion of the appendix.

A Kingdom Divided uncovers how evangelical Christians in the border states influenced debates about slavery, morality, and politics from the 1830s to the 1890s. Using little-studied events and surprising incidents from the region, April E. Holm argues that evangelicals on the border powerfully shaped the regional structure of American religion in the Civil War era. In the decades before the Civil War, the three largest evangelical denominations diverged sharply over the sinfulness of slavery. This division generated tremendous local conflict in the border region, where individual churches had to define themselves as being either northern or southern. In response, many border evangelicals drew upon the “doctrine of spirituality,” which dictated that churches should abstain from all political debate. Proponents of this doctrine defined slavery as a purely political issue, rather than a moral one, and the wartime arrival of secular authorities who demanded loyalty to the Union only intensified this commitment to “spirituality.” Holm contends that these churches’ insistence that politics and religion were separate spheres was instrumental in the development of the ideal of the nonpolitical southern church. After the Civil War, southern churches adopted both the disaffected churches from border states and their doctrine of spirituality, claiming it as their own and using it to supply a theological basis for remaining divided after the abolition of slavery. By the late nineteenth century, evangelicals were more sectionally divided than they had been at war’s end. In A Kingdom Divided, Holm provides the first analysis of the crucial role of churches in border states in shaping antebellum divisions in the major evangelical denominations, in navigating the relationship between church and the federal government, and in rewriting denominational histories to forestall reunion in the churches. Offering a new perspective on nineteenth-century sectionalism, it highlights how religion, morality, and politics interacted—often in unexpected ways—in a time of political crisis and war.

Reckoning with History brings together original essays from a diverse group of historians who consider how writing about the past can engage with the urgent issues of the present. The contributors—all former students of the distinguished Columbia University historian Eric Foner—explore the uses and politics of history through key episodes across a wide range of struggles for freedom. They shed new light on how different groups have defined and fought for freedom throughout American history, as well as the ways in which the ideal of freedom remains unrealized today. Covering a broad range of topics, these essays offer insight into how historians practice their craft in different ways and illuminate what it means to be a socially and politically engaged historian.

Vol. for 1958 includes also the Minutes of the final General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church of North America and the minutes of the final General Assembly of the Presbyteruan Church in the U.S.A.