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A professorial overview: As Barry Hankins points out, a Christian researcher, some of the strongest elements of the abolitionist movement, the movement to end slavery in the 1800’s came out of Charles Finney’s preaching and the revival which was called the Second Great Awakening. So, there were Revivalists/Evangelicals who were condemning slavery as wrong and incompatible with Christianity.
Nevertheless, other Christians, including Evangelicals could point to the Bible to justify the institution. In a previous unit we saw that both Ephesians and Colossians in the New Testament ordered slaves to “obey their masters.” Hankins mentions Leviticus 25:44-46, where the people of Israel (who had been delivered from slavery in Egypt!) are told they can buy slaves from the nations around them.
However, slavery, in the Bible was not about one race or another being slaves. Unlike Southern slavery, when it came to the issue of racism there was simply nothing in the biblical text to support such attitudes. To a great extent, deep at heart, many Evangelicals knew this. This is why Hankins notes the frequent occurrences of racial unity in the revivals.
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I did a research paper last year on Southern Paternalism, and I won't paste it here for identity reasons.
I'll try and give a quick memory summation, without writing it in a too revealing manner:
1) 1800s-10s: Christian Revivalist tours shook down Southern Slaveholders for thousands to get their blessings. The majority of Southerns despised the slaveholders. Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians are the ones who mainly will end up promoting slavery in the coming decades and onward.
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2) 1820s-30s: Northern abolitionists tried to use the Bible as justification that slavery was immoral. This backfired, as the Bible is rife with verses that Southern clergy perverted to their own gain. Northern clergy were invited to tour southern plantations and were either offered property or marriage to daughters and part of estates if they relocated and formed churches. They were showcased plantation areas that portrayed the slaveholder in a good light. Many of these church pastors had slaves of their own. Slave riots occurred, which panicked the whole community. The idea of Southern Paternalism is hatched, saying that slaveholders are rescuing those held by slave merchants and offer the slaves an opportunity to be exposed to Christianity, and eternal salvation.
A partnership between slaveholders and clergy forms. Slaveholders want to control the slaves, the clergy wants to expand their church, their tithings, and spread the gospel. The clergy become wealthy members of the community. However, there are two variations of this:
White church services: Promote the Christian tenets of slavery, how the slaveholders are effectively doing God's work by saving the captives of the slave traders. The slaveholders gain legitimacy.
Slave church services: They are told to be good Christians, they must be good servants to their masters. That, no matter what happens to them in life, they will reap rewards in the afterlife.
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3) 1840s-50s: Southern Paternalism, with the help of the churches expands rank of congregants, this generation is the one who now embraces slavery as an institutional norm, feeding into the Civil War.
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It only took one generation to convert the Southerners over to accepting slavery. While the elders had to be swayed or convinced, the young adults just sold on the idea, the youngsters would grow up in this new institution and view it as a societal normalcy.
I'm a bit older, and I witnessed the conversion of many Reagan Republicans and even the Sarah Palin types of just a couple of years ago. They were against Putin, they were against Russia and any foreign interference of our government. They were saying how Putin would make Obama his bitch. Now, in less than a decade, we are seeing the complete reversal of those positions and acceptance of them, just to get some political and short-term hopes of financial gains. The protection of country is no longer paramount--it is just a talking point to them. I worry, that if this is not addressed quick, fast, and in a hurry--this might become an institutional norm and it will be difficult to ensure national security, on a wide range of topics, in the future.
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