I have been watching a series, actually several series of documentaries on
the American Revolution and the Civil War. They are more closely connected than
I imagined as the issue of the Civil War was in effect something that the
founders of our nation chose to ignore for the sake of an early union. Slavery
was a volatile hot button even before the War for Independence but men who knew
it was wrong chose not to stand. It could be said that their lack of action
was the cause of the six hundred twenty five thousand men, women and children who died eighty seven years
later.
Today I heard the words of a confederate soldier who wrote
that he had heard a sermon and the preacher had lied. The preacher said that God had fought all their
battles and had led them in victory. The soldier wrote, "If God is fighting
these battles why hadn't they promoted Him to general?" Wow, there is some insight! We are so quick to use His name but so slow to let Him be General.
That got me to thinking about the Baptist preachers both North and South. How could they have
justified their differences? It occurred to me that they were trapped in their
cultures. A Baptist preacher in the south would have fairly been committing
suicide to have preached against slavery during the Civil War. But they had
already divided from the Baptists in the North back in 1845 when the Northern
Baptists refused to endorse missionaries who owned slaves. The fact was that
all the way back to the Revolution a Baptist in the South had to support
slavery if he wanted to be effective in the South. The culture of his region of
ministry impacted his preaching and practice, even his practical interpretation
of the Bible, if not his theology.
I doubt that it is possible for us to divorce our culture
from our interpretation of the Bible but we had better be aware of the problem
and resist it with all our being.
