North and South may delineate the standard approach for studying the Civil War, yet scholars recently have shown that this dichotomy overlooks much complexity. In the vein of Christopher Phillips's book, The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border (Oxford University Press, 2016), April Holm's study of Christianity in the middle border illuminates how numerous evangelicals there struggled to forge a middle position that avoided the knee-jerk patriotism of most Northern and Southern believers, who imbued their respective causes with divine significance. She asserts that these well-meaning border Christians, eager to preserve theological and ecclesiastical unity, nevertheless committed an egregious error. By seeking an elusive position of political neutrality during the antebellum era and war, they uncritically regarded slavery as merely a political issue and ignored the moral dimensions of contemporary debates surrounding its impact on society and the church.
Holm defines the border as a distinct region with permeable boundaries not limited by state lines. So, while the politically neutral states of Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland typify this contested region and furnish many of her examples, the border extended into western Virginia, eastern Tennessee, or even areas north of the Ohio River, such as the southern portions of Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois, where some residents preferred neutrality and church unity over discord and potential schism. Although broadening the definition of border highlights how some people living in areas traditionally denominated North and South sometimes shared more in common with those living in a border state, it sometimes proves problematic since border attitudes could appear almost anywhere. For example, she includes the case of Presbyterian minister William Plumer, whose congregation splintered over his resolute apolitical position that manifested itself in an unwillingness to pray for Union victories during the war. He resided in a northern suburb of Pittsburgh, clearly the North, thereby illuminating how one's personal background, political leanings, or desire for church unity could lead to positions of neutrality beyond even an expanded border region.
The book's greatest strength is its scope. Holm demonstrates that sectionalism divided the three main Protestant denominations—Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian—from the antebellum era and well beyond Reconstruction. During the 1840s and 1850s, preachers and laity in the border, caught between the growing antislavery chorus in the North and the hardening proslavery interests of the South, futilely hoped that neutrality would save their denominations from breaking apart. When division ensued, border Christians felt the adverse repercussions as some congregations split or chose Northern or Southern affiliations. Hoping to avoid further conflict, they retreated to the doctrine of the spirituality of the church and repudiated political partisanship. However, secession, war, and military occupation of the South, accompanied by government demands for overt evidence of loyalty, caused these believers to drift toward and eventually embrace the ideology of their Southern counterparts. Once political conservatives triumphed during Reconstruction, national reconciliation moved much more quickly than religious reunion. Thinking that slavery's eradication had removed the primary cause of ecclesiastical division, Northern church leaders sought accommodation, but saw their overtures rebuffed by their recalcitrant Southern brethren, who crafted their own narratives of schism that blamed theology rather than slavery as the source of their disputes. Border Christians accepted this Southern nationalist interpretation of the period, and in the process denominational reunion, in contrast to political reconciliation, took much longer for Methodists and Presbyterians to achieve. In the case of Baptists, it never transpired at all.
The book effectively elucidates the contentious issues and unique storylines within all three denominations, making it valuable to any student of U.S. religious or nineteenth-century history. Holm writes lucidly and has researched her subject thoroughly, especially making effective use of manuscript sources and denominational newspapers. Her original framework, superb scholarship, and thought-provoking assessment make A Kingdom Divided essential reading for better understanding American Protestantism.
She ultimately concludes that the professed political neutrality of border moderates for approximately a half century effectively constituted a proslavery position. By lacking the moral vision to oppose slavery and see the church as a vehicle for “promoting equality and freedom,” they aided the triumph of proslavery Christianity (41). Based on twenty-first century values, of course, she's right. However, it's also important to consider their stances within their own cultural milieu. In his noteworthy essay on Abraham Lincoln published in Christian Century (Vol. 82 [1965]: 172-175) during the midst of the civil rights struggles, Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out that “good men may inherit social attitudes and become the bearers of social evil, even though their own consciences may be not perverse but merely conventional.” Lincoln and the Founding Fathers, Niebuhr claims, at times may be criticized for “moral ambiguity,” but they “pursue[d] their ideals within the framework of the harmony and survival of the community,” in their cases political union. The same might be said of these border Christians, who in preferring ecclesiastical unity sought a noble goal. That they did so at the expense of African American freedom should remind us that in our common humanity we too often fall short despite good intentions.
