Thursday, March 5, 2009

Patriarchy, Kinism and the Confederate Cause PART I: Patriarchy and the Constitution Party

A review of the disturbing connection between the so-called "Biblical patriarchy" movement and the confederate cause. From a series of individual blog posts at Under Much Grace Blog.

The other day, I received an email asking about what I knew of the “racist roots of the Constitution Party.” I denied that there are racist roots but I did explain that I believed that there were Christian Reconstruction roots from a vein that appealed to the writings of Confederate Presbyterian ministers who were, by. I don’t think it’s fair, right or reasonable to say that the roots of the organization extend much beyond states rights and a notably Christian perspective, but the Constitution Party (CP) unfortunately does attract "racialists," racists, and neo-confederates. There’s also the problem of the League of the South (LoS) which, at its inception, did not appear to be an organization with any racist or racialist interest. (This may be idealistic naivete on the part of my husband and myself, but this is what we believed.) I’ve never heard anything racist or anything remotely racialist from the CP itself during our participation which ended in 2003, and I know only what everyone else does about its inception. Our departure from the CP came about because of the patriarchal rhetoric from both Doug Phillips who directed the CP efforts of the state we lived in at the time and from Michael Peroutka during the 2004 election.

My introduction to Christian Reconstruction came about through my mentor who attended Lee University (then College), the Church of God institution in Cleveland, TN that had a notably Reformed presence in their Theology Department. During Christian school devotions every morning, he would sometimes play tapes from D. James Kennedy. I supported Coral Ridge Ministries for many years thereafter, particularly when Kennedy started highlighting Creation Science. In the early ‘90s, my husband and I also began supporting American Vision (Gary DeMar’s organization) and the then Taxpayers Party (now CP) because they strongly reflected our views (to the best of our ability to discern at the time). Neither of us would have even entertained the thought of promoting theocracy, let alone racism. In fact, American Vision’s website hosts Gary DeMar’s articles noting the errors in Dabney’s arguments justifying slavery.

We moved to Maryland in the early ‘90s, and we eventually participated in the then Taxpayers Party (which later became the CP). About this same time in ‘93 -‘94, Coral Ridge launched their Washington, DC office, and we received all sorts of appeals to participate in what basically sounded like a Christian lobbyist group in the summation of it. We prayed about participating, and though I loved the concept, surprisingly, “I had no peace about it.” At about the time that Coral Ridge launched these efforts, we started receiving three or four large mailings from them per week. I understand marketing techniques and their effectiveness at generating income, but I found this barrage of waste quite ridiculous. We were so put off by this that we dropped all support of Coral Ridge Ministries and have not contributed since. We like to give to worthy causes, but we do not like to be coerced into doing so. I don’t believe that coercion and manipulation demonstrate good Christian character, particularly concerning fund raising.

During our time in Maryland, we eventually participated in the CP. I never heard anything remotely racialist or racist from them, in theory or practice. I never had any indication that the group was anything other than a group of Christians who wanted to restore the system of government that our founders had given us – that of a decentralized federal government. The group was notably Christian, though there was not any type of flavor of this American nationalism that is purveyed by Vision Forum. (If there was, I did not recognize it as anything overt or inappropriate for a Christian.) I could tell that Howard Phillips held to a Reformed view, whether he stated this openly or not, I do not specifically recall. I really loved attending the local meetings of the CP, and I still strongly agree with Howard that the Republican Party does not significantly differ from the Democratic Party anymore. I did like certain Republican Candidates like Alan Keyes, and it was interesting to note that the CP featured him as a speaker then, and I believe that the CP still invites him to speak at their functions. Were it not for Keyes’ strong view of world government which the CP platform opposed, I would have expected Howard to offer him the VP ticket in ‘96.

In ‘97, we moved to the San Antonio, TX area and became busy about life outside of politics. Shortly thereafter, I heard Doug Phillips on a local, afternoon radio program when he filled in as host for the week, realizing that he too had moved to the area. It was then that I realized that he was Howard’s son. About a year later, we learned that he attended the same Presbyterian church that we did, though I don’t know whether he was an “official member” of the church. Homeschoolers and church members frequently mentioned his name and beliefs, as many of the churchgoers there participated in his local homeschooling support efforts. The Phillips family attended there irregularly, so we rarely saw them. We anticipated meeting Doug, considering that we would like to participate in the Texas CP efforts. But this meeting at church proved disappointing, as it was clear that we did not meet Doug’s “legalistic standards of acceptability” for participation, even with the party efforts. We asked to help with the party as we had done in Maryland, but we were clearly not welcome.

About this time, my husband decided to start contributing to the League of the South. At their inception, though they supported secession, the group seemed to be something of an historical society that preserved the Southern and Christian Perspective. My husband had studied Southern History under James I. Robertson, Jr. (the preeminent authority on Lt. Col. “Stonewall” Jackson) while at Virginia Tech, and the LoS appealed to his fondness for that course work and perspective. My husband cannot recall if he found out about the group from “The Lofton Letter” or from some tie to the Chalcedon Foundation, but all of these groups interconnected informally with individuals involved in the CP. When my husband approached me about the LoS, he assured me that the group had no racist interests. I would later learn that though the LoS made no racist statements at its inception, it would later make formal statements in support of kinism, “racialism” or a preserving of one’s own ethnic and racial group. We were also unaware of Steve Wilkins’ and Doug Wilson's interest and support of Southern slavery. (We had no knowledge of outwardly “racialist” ideals that were openly expressed by Michael Hill in his capacity as LoS President circa 2004. We did not learn of kinism as a concept or that it was formally associated with the LoS until 2007 when we investigated Doug Phillips’ increasingly notable influence with American Vision and the Chalcedon Foundation, choosing then to withdraw support from them because of Doug Phillips spiritual abuse and aberrant teachings. We certainly would never have participated with the LoS if we knew that anything like kinism was a factor.)

After spending more time at the Presbyterian Church in San Antonio (circa 2000) and watching the exodus of families that left when Doug Phillips formally founded his local church, we believed beyond doubt that his group demonstrated significant spiritually abusive practices. I believe that in 2002, the CP held a local conference which my husband attended, though I refused to attend the sessions because Doug Phillips had no interest in our offers of help with the Texas CP. (Why would I want to participate in local efforts if we were not welcome when Howard Phillips left town?) At that time, Howard Phillips said to my husband in an open session of about 12 people that “We could sure use your help again back in Maryland.” What was not spoken was that we were not welcome as active participants in the Texas efforts of the party, and Doug would not so much as make eye contact with either my husband or me. In addition, the better part of a day of the CP conference involved a trek to Vision Forum and I assume Boerne Christian Assembly’s grounds or Doug’s home for a BBQ which my husband declined. That CP conference communicated Doug’s position of influence in the party, one that we found deeply disconcerting.

About that time as well, we started to receive small, cardboard boxes from the CP with fundraising letters enclosed. I assume that sending letters in a box instead of an envelope would decrease the chances that the information would not be discarded as junk mail. We gave regularly and fairly generously to the CP at this time, so I found this additional fund raising tactic to be disturbing, just like the four and five letters per week from Coral Ridge Ministries that we’d received in years past. Shortly thereafter, Doug Phillips published the declared “sins” (any alternative to homeschooling, educating or working of women outside the home) in his short-lived, revised version of his“Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy” and became quite vitriolic with other ministers who disagreed with him. During the expensive process of another, cross-country move and in consideration of our growing concerns about the party, we ceased contributing to the CP in 2003. We also ceased contributions to the LoS around this same time.

Then Michael Peroutka formally entered the scene as the 2004 Presidential Candidate, just after we relocated and settled into our new state of residence. When the 2004 election approached, I reviewed information about the CP candidates, learning of Michael Peroutka for the first time. I find it odd that we’d never encountered him (like we had John Lofton), particularly considering that we lived so close to Annapolis when we lived in Maryland. Within months of studying Doug Phillips’ family rhetoric while writing an article addressing cultic Christianity, I found Peroutka’s rhetoric to be far too similar to Vision Forum’s language. Both my husband and I found Peroutka’s message to be very disturbing and we did not vote with the CP in the 2004 election.

We also observed a shift in American Vision’s approach and philosophy from one of what I esteemed as a libertarian honor of freedom to a more theocratic approach. Doug Phillips’ materials also began to appear regularly in American Vision’s publications. I’d never observed any kind of openly theocratic sentiment in Gary DeMar’s writings until sometime after 2000, one that has grown so that patriocentrists (and their products) now figure prominently if not centrally in American Vision publications and emails. They also now openly promote Gary North's products, another individual with many troubling beliefs. We seemed faced with a new concern: In the off-chance that the CP candidate would ever win the Presidential election, it seems likely that Doug Phillips would be awarded some position of influence (?ministry of containment and habilitation of the non-normative?). And we wondered whether Peroutka also formally held the odd view of family advocated by Doug Phillips because of the similar language. It also raised questions as to where Doug Phillips first learned and developed his odd gender obsession. Did his father encourage his love for R.L. Dabney, his odd views about women (very different from that of the CP) and Doug’s reputation of threatening to sue his critics and fellow believers? With these concerns in mind, I wrote to Howard to ask if he would make a position statement about Doug’s beliefs or if he could tell me what kind of role his son would play in the party. I never heard a response.

So our reasons for leaving the CP had to do with the worship of family mixed with Christian nationalism, not racism or racialism specifically. We left the party because of the hierarchical view of the family and the authoritarian style of both Doug Phillips and Michael Peroutka’s similar messages and disturbing tone associated with the 2004 election. Peroutka’s message was notably different to us, not carrying the spirit of liberty that we heard from Howard Phillips, but rather a message of paternalism and something akin to Doug Phillips’ folk religion of ersatz-Calvinism, family and American nationalism. I wonder now how much of my naivete in the past stemmed from my own denial, desiring to see only what I wanted to see in Christian Reconstruction or whether the paternalistic, authoritarian leanings that may have always been a part of Christian Reconstruction had become more mainstream and public? As others share the same sentiment about the shift towards more authoritarian styles and an advocacy of what could be considered a theocratic goal, I believe that BOTH this new paradigm shift in Christian Reconstruction AND my own idealism likely contributed to my ignorance.

That “racialist” factor did not unfold for us until we started to study the roots of Doug’s patriarchy and his worshipful devotion to R.L. Dabney, an individual who would be considered openly racist by today’s standards, or what some describe as a white supremasist. Prior to actually reading the writings of Dabney himself, my husband denied that Dabney did make such statements because Dabney had been portrayed as virtuous during his study of Southern History. In the process of studying the “church and home” connection, the reality of the neo-confederate groups presented as an unavoidable factor because of their presence within Doug Phillips’ demographic.

The patriarchs venerate Dabney and their vision of “the natural religion of family” which reads nearly identically to the writings of Palmer. Doug Phillips has spoken publicly in the past about his views that slavery of some variety (I’m assuming indentured servitude) as a part of his answer to current economic crisis in the U.S. He’s made apologies for his birth above the Mason Dixon Line, characterized Yankees as a generalized group of unbiblical Unitarians and Transcendentalists, and expressed fondness for the 17th century Puritan colonies who persecuted and exiled anyone who did not fit their often cruel and intolerant religious paradigm. He has posted poetry online that makes racist statements, something that many have viewed as a serious error in judgement. This is all in addition to his views on women – views that were never openly communicated by his father and not included in any way in Constitution Party policy or function. Brad Phillips, Howard’s other son once stated that his favorite book was authored by Dabney (as opposed to C.S. Lewis or Tolkien or Schaeffer or Rutherford, etc.). As I stated in a previous post, I believe that the Christian Reconstruction efforts of Rushdoony influenced men like Howard Phillips who founded the CP. And Rushdoony who regretfully made some “racialist” statements in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s (though he did not live like a racist or racialist to my knowledge) did appeal to the writings of the Confederate Presbyterians to aid in the efforts of Christian Reconstruction.

Though I have not seen anything racist or racialist emerging from the Constitution Party itself, I find serious problems in the ideology of at least one of the sons of the party’s founder. In the last election, I found Peroutka’s message to be far more authoritarian than that of Howard Phillips’ message. There is a great deal of crossover between the leadership in the CP and the LoS, including many speakers like Peroutka. They may only be participating because of an opposition to a top-heavy and highly centralized federal government and shared Christian beliefs. But they are also responsible to answer for the professions of LoS founder and president Michael Hill who argues for the centrality of Christian white men in the South and for the ideology of kinism which calls for a separation of the races as a Biblical mandate. If they want to associate with an organization whose president espouses such beliefs, they will have to bear the weight of criticism and scrutiny for that association. Key leaders within the CP (just look at the plenary speakers of the recent annual conferences of the LoS) and the 2008 CP Presidential Candidate Chuck Baldwin boast membership and/or involvement with the LoS.

Here are some legitimate questions:

1. Did Howard Phillips’s sons acquire their deep love for if not worship of R.L. Dabney because Howard shared these same sentiments with them, training them as a dutiful father?

(Doug Phillips quotes from Dabney and others agrarian ideologues, writings that Rushdoony advised should be studied and republished for the benefit of Christian Reconstruction.)

2. If Dabney was a trustworthy and notable prophet, was Dabney only an accurate prophet concerning women, children, homeschooling and secession and an inaccurate prophet when advocating for slavery and white supremacy?

(What Dabney said of Native Americans was just as offensive as his statements about those brought from Africa, and it was racial and personal. He may have started out with an argument against them because of paganism, but the hatred he communicated was definitely racial.)

3. Can Dabney and the other pro-slavery Confederates be the only advocates for homeschooling, social order and responsible government?

(Are there other advocates for these things that did not boast openly racist sentiment? If there are, why are they not used and hailed as prophets? If there are none, why are there no strong disclaimers made against slavery and racism?)

4. Is the League of the South truly the only organization that advocates for decentralized federal government and strong Christian values?

(If their president and founder and many members have issues concerning race and racialism, why would anyone in the CP want to have such close ties with the LoS, if only for the sake of the CP? They may not share all the sentiments of the organization, but if so many prominent people in the LoS hold to pro-slavery and pro-“racialist” views, why would key leaders in the CP continue to have anything to do with this group?)

5. If Howard Phillips and the CP deny kinism and slavery, why do their most notable members and candidates continue participation with the LoS?

If Howard Phillips’ son preaches that Dabney was a prophet and the CP Presidential Candidates are all notable participants with the LoS (after publication of openly kinist and white supremacist statements), why would that not reflect poorly on the CP?

If someone like Billy Graham started speaking at Obama rallies, appearing at Islamic organization meetings and started advocating for stem cell research, wouldn’t people take notice? If Franklin, Billy Graham’s son, attended these functions to applaud his father’s speeches, would not and should not many people have legitimate concerns about the beliefs of the both of them? How likely would you be to give to the Samaritan’s Purse thereafter? In the reckoning the central message preached with everything else, the equation does not produce an answer that is remotely consistent with either of the Grahams’ primary and public professions. That’s not an informal fallacy of “guilt by association,” that’s reasonable discernment at work.

So, the answer to the question of whether the CP has formal racist roots is a definite “No.”

But do they give cause to question whether those who participate in the party have issues with racism or with slavery, an issue that the Southern Confederates attached to race and not religion? I believe the answer to that is “Definitely.” It has nothing to do with what has been formally stated by the party itself or even from what I’ve heard from Howard Phillips, but it has much to do with professions and activities of those close to Howard and those who are powerful in the party.

I was raised in Eastern Pennsylvania, and upon researching it a few years ago, I discovered that sixty of my relatives from just one branch of my family alone fought for the Union in what I was taught was called the Civil War. I knew that brother fought against brother and that it was one of the bloodiest wars in history, touting what may still stand as the highest death toll of any U.S. war. I believed, as the writings of Union soldiers attest, that the war was waged to liberate slaves that were held in the South. I knew that there were slaves held in the Northern States, but I also knew that many of our founding fathers and their wives advocated that all individuals be granted freedom, including slaves. I know that my husband admired Abraham Lincoln’s speeches, particularly the Gettysburg Address, and he kept a vellum print of the speech in Lincoln’s own handwriting among his precious, boyhood treasures.

I knew nothing of any kind of contemporary controversy regarding the cause of the South until after I married my Pennsylvania born husband and lived in Shreveport, LA for 18 months while he finished graduate school. During my first month there, on a rare Saturday that we were able to spend together, we drove down Kings Highway, accidently turning right into the middle of a huge KKK rally. I rolled down the window and tried to sit on the car door, screaming “Jesus was a Jew” (My only experience with contemporary racist groups involved skinheads that hated Jewish people.) My husband grabbed me and pulled me into the car, explaining that these men were not concerned about Jews. He also reminded me that we lived in the drive-by shooting capitol of the U.S., and he didn’t like the idea of taking me to the hospital or burying me. On a couple of other occasions thereafter, I did have to both drive through and drive to avoid rallies of these hooded men while on call for the “charity hospital’s” recovery room where I worked as a nurse. I remember on the way in one morning, I considered that I was likely going in to recover a patient who had been shot at the rally I was now trying to traverse. I had taken that job because I left a job at what I called “the rich, white people’s hospital” because, among other things, the staff there was more concerned about a new patient’s skin color than they were their medical diagnosis.

When I first moved to Louisiana (when David Duke was in office), my husband and I both changed denominations and started fresh at a new church together, attending a Southern Baptist church. (I didn’t last very long there, either.) It was huge, and I joined the choir, so I had a good view of the congregation which had not one “person of color,” except when a local newscaster came as a guest of the local sportscaster who was a church member. The pastor acknowledged her from the pulpit which surprised me as it drew attention to her. At the next choir practice, I asked an attorney and former minister in the choir just why our church was entirely Caucasian in a town with a Black majority? He told me that “they have their own churches.” I was then told that our church supported Black churches financially as missionary efforts which is where he understood the “Missionary Baptist” denomination came from. (That may well be an urban myth.) I then took note of the pastor’s mention of our church’s “missionary churches” in the area that very next Sunday. And not long after this, when a local TV station signed off for the day (back before 24 hour infomercials), the local Shreveport station played the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” to the shock of my husband. I had no idea why he would find this provocative until he explained that Shreveport played an important role in the War and that people there still hated the North, not necessarily because they were from a different place with different traditions but because of the War itself. These experiences mark the beginning of my education in all things Southern. That was almost 20 years ago.

As previously stated, my husband studied under one of the most notable experts in the history of the War Between the States, James Robertson, where his fellow undergraduate classmates declared my husband to be an “officially domesticated Virginian.” He was taught that the War only concerned economics, something that had little or nothing to do with slavery according to that perspective. My husband was taught and believed that the most notable figures, devout Christians who argued the Southern Cause, did not make racist or racialist arguments. He was taught that the South fought against a greedy and manipulative North who had exploited the South for their own financial gain and to increase their political power in the process. The Southern States eventually withdrew from the union, one by one, a right that they believed was provided by the Constitution. The Constitution provided for recourse against a tyrannical ruler, and the Southern States believed that the Northern interests that dominated the federal government at the time induced a state of tyranny that exploited the South.

At this point in my understanding of the history and both perspectives of the North and the South, personally, I believe that the South had due cause to secede from the union based upon the Constitution which afforded men the right to resist tyranny. But, I deny that this was a holy war but one that was waged over money and was fueled by greed on the part of both North and South. And unfortunately for those who hold the Southern Perspective, I cannot find any writings and have not heard any arguments to date that can separate slavery from the economics of the Confederate South. I believe that America suffered serious detriment that resulted from the South’s defeat including broad expansion of the power of the federal government over individual states and the establishment of personal federal income tax. It established a detrimental sense of governmental paternalism that I believe that our founding fathers strongly opposed (including both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison). I also deeply appreciate the concerns that the Christians in the South felt in regard to non-orthodox religious movements that were far more prevalent in the North. I also appreciate that there were numerous slave owners in the North at the time of the War who shared both the religious, racial, and economic sentiments that typified the South. But none of those factors made the South’s efforts holy, Christian and virtuous. At the heart of it, I see only issues of autonomy and economics.

I offer this simplified synopsis as an overview of the Southern Perspective, the perspective that argues that the War had nothing to do with slavery. (Please bear in mind that I don’t claim to be any kind of historian. This is just an honest reiteration of what I’ve been told and what I’ve read in support the Southern Cause.)

The South produced cotton which was shipped to the North and sold to Europe, transported to Europe on ships that were owned by wealthy Northerners, many of them bankers. Goods were primarily shipped to Europe through these Northern shipping routes and not through ports such as Charleston and New Orleans, presumably because the North had a great advantage by means of their larger ships. Because of this shipping advantage, the South could not compete against the North in Europe, an argument that I admittedly do not understand. The North reportedly gouged Europeans on the prices of the cotton by adding exorbitant shipping fees and taxes, revenues that benefited only the largely industrialized North and the infrastructure of the federal government within the North. The South produced the goods, but they felt that they saw very little return or only an inequitable return on those goods. When their secession threat started to crystalize into reality, the North blocked and fired upon the shipping port of Charleston, and South Carolina seceded from the union.

The War was then perceived to be an aggressive North who wanted to continue to exploit the South, while their own industrialized cities put children to work in factories. The primary industries were founded in the North, and this growing industrialization generated a great deal of money. New immigrants migrated to the cities where they could find work in industry, so their representative numbers grew along with the general wealth in the cities. The primary banks were located in the North, and as the Jewish Rothschilds would later earn the disdain of Europe for their wealth acquired in banking, so the Northern bankers would earn the disdain of the South. New states that were admitted to the Union were encouraged to align with Northern values and interests, adding to the power of the North and thus diminishing the political and financial power of the South. Our founding fathers stated that democracy was tyranny at the in of the majority who swayed governance with opinion, not necessarily governing by what was right or true. This democratic tyranny was ascribed to the actions of the North who worked to diminish Southern interests and the Southern way of life. They were losing their representative power in the federal government based on sheer numbers alone at the hands of a North, one that was believed to be largely godless, ruled by the Modernist ideals of the Unitarians and the Transcendentalists who believed that man was basically good and had only a little need for a god that they’d made in their own image.

I can relate to many aspects of this accounting of history, a perspective with an ideology that I was not raised to believe. Let me offer a simple analogy that occurred to me. I can imagine running a home-based business from my home where I made cakes. I can only sell a limited number of cakes in my neighborhood, so I can imagine contracting with a couple of local businesses who would sell my cakes for me, earning some profit from the transaction. I can imagine feeling some angst if I realized that they sold my cakes at a price that was 10 times what I had calculated to be a fair, retail price for the product. And at the end of the day, when I go to my modest home and the business owner goes home to a mansion, I can appreciate the disparagement on a personal level. And if I attempted to find a new market for my cakes, I would be very upset if that first local business owner came and barricaded my home to prevent me from taking my cakes elsewhere. When I offered a similar analogy to my husband he added that it was as if my own government came and barricaded my exit “because the didn’t like my ideas.” I can also imagine what it would be like to try to get out of a supply contract with this first business upon deciding that they were exploiting me for their profit and perhaps my own, personal loss in some circumstances. In some ways, this is a good analogy of the economic factors that the South perceived about their relationship to the North.

I believed this gentle version of the South and I still agree with aspects of it, primarily that the Southern States had the right to secede just as our colonies claimed the right to establish their independence from King George in 1776. For the South, the North was perceived as becoming altogether tyrannical, and I think that they had a Constitutional right to do secede. But I’ve searched and read and researched this topic, and though I believe that many of those who fought for the South were devout Christians, the cause was far from pure and holy. I have not read the writings of Lee or of Jackson who I understand did not express racist sentiments. I have spent some time studying the writings of both Dabney and Calhoon, and of Thornwell and Palmer to a lesser degree, hoping to prove that the claims that these men were white supremacists to be exploitive misrepresentations of what they really believed and lies meant to throw mud at the good men of the South. And I cannot. What I did discover is that the so-called "Biblical patriarchy" reads like the writings of these Confederates.

And I don’t think that those who draw arguments from these Christian men in order to support their doctrines of hierarchy of gender can rightfully argue against the racist and racialist statements made by these men without jeopardizing their contemporary arguments. I don’t think that they can avoid the related stigma of racism and racialism, either when they choose to draw from these writings. If racial hierarchy falls apart, then as Dabney aptly predicted, the authoritarian hierarchy of man over woman as an ontological argument also crumbles.

We don’t need man’s invented ontological arguments if the Word of God teaches Believing husbands to lay down their lives for their wives and wives to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord. Do we? I guess it depends on who you ask.

From Mark Noll's
"The Civil War as a Theological Crisis"

The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill, 2006

Pg 50:

Pgs 159 -160:

The theological crisis of the Civil War was that while voluntary reliance on the Bible had contributed greatly to the creation of American national culture, that same voluntary reliance on Scripture led only to deadlock over what should be done about slavery.

After the shooting stopped, two great problems in practical theology confronted the United States. One was the enduring reality of racism, which displayed its continuing force almost as virulently through the mob and the rope as it had in the chain and the lash. The other was the expansion of consumer captialism, in which unprecedented opportunities to create wealth were matched by large-scale alienation and considerable poverty in both urban and rural America...

But the Civil War was won and slavery was abolished not by theological orthodoxy but my military might and a hitherto unimaginable degree of industrial mobilization. Although the war freed the slaves and gave African Americans a constitutional claim to citizenship, it did not provide the moral energy required for rooting equal rights in the subsoil of American society or for planting equal opportunity throughout the land. Although the war showed what could be accomplished through massive industrial mobilization , it did not offer clear moral guidance as to how that mobilization could be put to use for the good of all citizens.

Pg 162:
From the historical record it is clear that the American Civil War generated a first-order theological crisis over how to interpret the Bible, how to understand the work of God in the world, and how to exercise the authority of theology in a democratic society.

Critics of Noll would say that the War was won by the North. (stop) The slaves were liberated. (stop) It is improper to say that "slavery ended because the North won the war." The two events did not result directly from cause-and-effect and it's wrong to reinterpret history to suggest that the freeing of slaves motivated the war. They would also assert that Lincoln realized that he could liberate the slaves, not so much because he opposed slavery itself, but he realized that it was an attainable way of finally crushing the South economically and ideologically. Emancipation was a war tactic, a war that was not fought over ideology but over economics and states rights.

It is also naive to suggest that the war was a theological war. All societies rally sentiment to inspire citizens from their religious pulpits during times of war which does not make those wars ideological. Some would insist that the war was about economics and economics only.

From Mark Noll's
"The Civil War as a Theological Crisis"

The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill, 2006

pg 51 - 52:

“The negro question lies far deeper
than the slavery question.”
(Philip Schaff)

What Schaff saw when he defined “the negro question” and “the slavery question” as two distinct matters and what Schaff practiced in assuming that they could be treated as one problem constituted a theological crisis. The crisis created an inability to distinguish the Bible on race from the Bible on slavery meant that when the Civil War was over and slavery was abolished, systematic racism continued unchecked as the great moral anomaly in a supposedly Christian America. The crisis reflected a greater difficulty than when a large Protestant population drew incommensurate theological conclusions from a commonly exalted sacred text that it approached with common hermeneutical principles.

The crisis identified by Schaff involved two badly handled questions. The first concerned how to regard African Americans and their relationship to Caucasians. This issue pointed to foundational theological difficulties since most of American’s white Bible-believing Christians addressed the issue with commonsense solutions derived neither from the Bible nor from the historical storehouse of Christian moral reflection.

The second mishandled question was the issue of what the Bible had to say about the general economic organization of the United States and its practices, potential, and problems. This issue also betrayed the theological difficulties because, while oceans of ink were spilled in trying to decide whether the Bible legitimated slavery, far less biblical analysis was devoted to the broader American economy of which slavery was a part and to principles of economic justice.

David Brion Davis once highlighted the underpinnings of the confusion involved here:
In the Untied States...the problem of slavery...had become fatally intertwined with the problem of race. Race had become the favored idiom for interpreting the social effects of enslavement and emancipation and for concealing the economy’s parasitic dependence on an immensely profitable labor system– and for concealing as well the challenge posed to capitalist individualism by the patriarchal communalism of the slave South. Buying and selling slaves so monopolized theological attention that little energy remained for evaluating American systems of buying and selling in general.

Though I do not even remotely assign his writings to a level of importance as equal or necessarily within the same category as the Word of God, I do appreciate aspects of the writings of Henry David Thoreau. I enjoyed his style, his appreciation for nature, his encouragement to be good stewards of both land and government, social responsibility and stewardship, and particularly his love for solitude. He may have embraced evolution (a point that I would enjoy arguing with him as I have with many a professor and friend), but he alluded to all sorts of Scripture in the process, something I noted and greatly appreciated. (We share knowledge of the "borrowed capital" of a Christian society.) “Simplify, simplify, simplify” should also offer a strong appeal to those who follow agrarian idealism. Held in balance with the Word of God and as a general outworking of “the golden rule” (Christ’s second commandment of doing unto others as we would have them treat us), I find the social gospel principles to benefit American society. For those who do not hold to a Calvinistic or Reformed view, it offers a climate of cooperation and general Christian principle within which all Christians and even agnostics can find common ground. It is however, no replacement or rival to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the full counsel of the Word of God.

I also find that the social gospel does hold it’s own concepts of moral and social superiority. It promotes its own type of caste system that results in its own variety of paternalistic arrogance. The “bleeding heart liberal” can feel the same type of superiority and paternalism that the “Patriarchal Servitude” of the South promoted, but out of a sense of self-salvation. It is a man-centered view, it’s own special variety of Christian existentialism. Ultimately it’s up to man to carry out God’s will, and it has a very high degree of confidence in man’s own ability apart from God. Again, it is a gospel with Christian elements, but it is no substitute for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I offer here another perspective that challenges the views of Transcendentalism that were held in the South, views that many still carry today in one manner or form or other. I’m not a big fan of Mark Twain, not necessarily because I disagree with him so much as I don’t find his writing style easy and natural for me to read. Maybe I was dropped on my head when I was young, but I find the writings of the Russian Moralists much more easy to digest. I’ve plugged through Twain out of necessity but did not click with his style and therefore really developed no opinions about his work from a philosophical or theological standpoint. I became interested in the subject however, following a discussion of the topic on Mars Hill Audio. I do find his work to be quite essential to the American landscape, both from a religious perspective and an historical one. We do live in a pluralistic society, one with which our founding fathers entrusted us.

From the Book Jacket of Harold K. Bush, Jr.’s
“Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age”:

Mark Twain is often pictured as a severe critic of religious piety, shaking his fist at God and mocking the devout. Such a view, however, is only partially correct. It ignores the social realities of Twain’s major period as a writer and his own spiritual interests: his participation in church activities, his socially progressive agenda, his reliance on religious themes in his major works, and his friendships with clergymen, especially his pastor and best friend, Joe Twichell. It also betrays a conception of religion that is more contemporary than that of the period in which he lived.

Harold K. Bush, Jr. highlights Twain’s attractions to and engagements with the wide variety of religious phenomena of America in his lifetime, and how these matters affected his writings. Though Twain lived in an era of tremendous religious vigor, it was also a time of spiritual upheaval and crisis. The rise of biological and psychological sciences, the criticism of biblical texts as literary documents, the influx of world religions and immigrant communities, and the trauma of the Civil War all had dramatic effects on America’s religious life. At the same time mass urban revivalism, the ecumenical movement, Social Christianity, and occultic phenomena, like spiritualism and mind sciences, all rushed in to fill the voids. The rapid growth of agnosticism in the 1870s and 1880s is also clearly reflected in Twain’s life and writings. Thus Twain’s career reflects in an unusually resonant way the vast changes in American belief during his lifetime.

This reminds me of discussions of men like Kierkegaard who were criticized as miserable modernists and existentialists who rebelled against God. I’ve heard R.C. Sproul, Sr. defend Kierkegaard as one who earnestly wrestled with the problems and thinking of his day, writing honestly about the religious challenges that these dilemmas posed. Many are quick to label these men who write honestly and with the logic that Galileo once esteemed as God’s gift and not a curse. Those who lived in the Antebellum Period also confronted the challenges of their own day and were just as subject to the influences of their generation. Twain was no different, and we miss a significant perspective of American life if we dismiss him and cover our eyes and ears as he took on the dilemmas of his time.

In defense of faith in God’s providential work that is ongoing over the course of the life of a believer, I often remind people that Martin Luther was once a willing and zealous participant of the Catholic church. We’re all on a learning curve, and if we dare be brave and honest, we all traverse serious tensions in our times. Many of these tensions will not be resolvable – one such example of this is the poor that the Word tells us we will always have with us. To wholeheartedly discredit the Transcendentalists with a broad brush in their earnest struggle to make sense of God, themselves, and the world is not Christian and is far from American. A wholesale denouncement of any group proves fallacious and demonstrates the arrogance and the insecurity of man’s carnal nature something to which we are all subject. Though the North may have wrongly been caught in the sensational trappings of the slavery issue and thus exploited by those with the greedy interests of economics, the South was certainly guilty of stereotyping and dehumanizing their brethren in the North.

We all have a starting point, and I believe we should rejoice if that starting point includes godly principle. We should be ever mindful that our hearts, beliefs and our very societies are also sovereignly governed by the Holy Spirit’s guiding Hand and under the care of our providential God. We must start somewhere, showing tolerance and God’s love and grace to those who believe differently, remembering that our nation requires that of us. We must also yield to God’s providence, something that may not make sense to us or yield to our expectations.

As in all times of war, particularly in the United States, religious pulpits become ideological rallies for the cause. Though our nation was very Christian at its inception, though there was no established state religion, prior to the “War of Northern Aggression,” even the Unitarian pulpits reflected our nation’s Christian nature. Thomas Jefferson who drew heavily from the writings of John Locke in his works concerning our independence from England had a deep and thoughtful prayer life which openly acknowledged God and drew our inalienable rights from God and not from the State. How did the Calvinistic Puritans cope with the religious tensions posed by the differing views of the theistic Unitarians? They did so under a natural and unavoidable tension, but one that our founding fathers provided for through representative government.

Young America comprised a group of different people with different beliefs, yet our common respect for one another and our liberties that were granted by God (and not man or the state) and observed by the government afforded a milieu of religious freedom and protected private convictions in matters of faith. Here, too, the significance of states rights plays a role, because each local state could determine their own laws and inject their unique religious beliefs into their states and local governments as they saw fit. I was raised in Pennsylvania’s Quaker country and within a community of Moravians, both evangelical Christian groups that are classified as pietisic groups. Massachusetts contained many Puritan communities as well as Unitarian groups. The Puritans often exiled those they found to be in violation of their Calvinistic based beliefs to Rhode Island where many Anabaptists dwelled, giving Rhode Island a negative connotation for some. Religious interpretations were delegated to local governments, and the federal government possessed only a limited role and limited power.

From the many diverse peoples and groups, we relied upon respect for one another’s rights, avoiding the tyranny of the state in specific matters touching on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (Jefferson’s reiteration of enlightenment thinker John Locke’s “life, liberty and property” statement). In so doing, our founding fathers did advocate some degree of faith in the goodness of man, an ideal of the Enlightenment that many Christians believe was an outgrowth of and was fostered by the ideals of the Protestant Reformation. The Constitution delegated all these matters to the discretion of the individual states, attesting that majority rule resulted in a type of tyranny that is unavoidable in purely democratic systems. For this reason, our founding fathers gave us a system of representative government – a republic – by which to govern our affairs, though this process worked by means of the principles of a democracy on a local level. By this unique process of representative government that was utilized both house and senate that voiced both the concerns of each state and balanced by representation by population also, through a system of checks and balances, one nation that truly represented the people could emerge from many diverse beliefs and peoples. E pluribus unum – "from or out of the many, one." Representative government then held back the tendency for tyranny of the mob based on sheer numbers, fleeting popular opinion and other such trappings of collectivism.

Religious creatures by nature, man creates religion out of any system of belief that helps him transcend the problematic factors of the human condition. For this reason, nationalism or a love and devotion to one’s homeland and country proves a type of religion for those who strongly identify with their peoples and nations. God created us in this manner, and when we displace Him, we easily find ourselves making religion of our nationalism. In America before the Civil War, our religious Protestantism mixed fairly well with our nationalism, though this created tensions because of our political system that counted upon man’s higher reason and capacity to respect one another. From this perspective, men like John C. Calhoun wrote extensively about privileges that were afforded to men, not arbitrarily (based only on an assumption of the inherent goodness of mankind) but based upon that which each man merited. When studying some of his writings (with the League of the South), the phrase “If a man does not work, neither shall he eat” crossed my mind, something I offer here to give the reader a general flavor of a portion of his arguments. I’m also reminded of a quote from Harold O. J. Brown from “Heresies” wherein he says that our pietisitc religions aided our national efforts in America’s early history, but in some sense, America may not survive because of our religious beliefs. America will then always suffer an unavoidable degree of perpetual tension and conflict because we afford citizens this right to diversity. We are human after all, and our system was not perfect, and our greatest strengths also create reciprocal weaknesses – an unavoidable aspect of the human condition.

In very general terms, the Southern States based their economy on agrarian means, a system that relied upon slavery as an integral element in a way that the Northern States did not. Though the North utilized as many or more slaves as the South did, their economy was more diverse, drawing increasingly more revenue from industrial sources in their growing cities. For many Southerners, this industrialization and the growing cities were an outgrowth of the religious idealism of Unitarianism, Transcendentalism and even the increasingly popular Spiritism. I would like to briefly mention that transcendentalism has nothing to do with the unrelated “meditation” but refers to an idealistic movement that developed in response to rationalism that stressed social responsibility (eventually birthing the social gospel). The transcendentalist viewed man’s degree of inherent goodness by virtue of the imago dei and by virtue of man’s ability to reason as sufficient for reasonable conduct within government. In contrast, the higher numbers of Confederate Presbyterians in the South held a far more pessimistic view of man based on the principles of Calvinism, eventually stereotyping the North as a group of religious individuals who followed an heterodox Christianity that they found highly offensive if not outright heretical.

Slavery advocates like Robert Lewis Dabney railed against Enlightenment thought while arguing against the North, though he seemed to ascribe to a view of the Enlightement as a monolithic movement rather than a general category used to describe a vast variety of convictions and beliefs. I find this ironic, for without the Enlightenment thinkers, Dabney and Virginia would not have their rights to state sovereignty and autonomy. It was the Enlightenment concepts – the best of the Enlightenment that avoided the pitfalls of other nations by deriving rights from God and not from man’s goodness – that gave Dabney the very platform from which he spoke, the idealistic foundations of which he railed against quite vehemently. Dabney then characterized the North as a group of collective Jacobins, a group of godless, self-determined zealot Arminians who rejected God and God’s ordained order. Other minsters also stereotyped the whole of the North in this same manner. . J.W. Tucker, a Methodist minister said in 1862 that “your cause is the cause of God, the cause of Christ, of humanity. It is conflict of truth with error – of Bible with Northern infidelity – of pure Christianity with Northern fanaticism” ( cited in Mark Noll, pg 39).

Within the South, not all but many believed that slavery was both a religious and economic matter over which the federal government should have no control. In Benjamin Palmer’s autobiography of James Thornwell, he points out that the tensions and arguments regarding slavery were most notable as early as two years after the first U.S. Constitution was ratified. Mark Noll cites James Henley Thornwell as not only the South’s most effective defender of slavery on the basis of the Bible but also one of the South’s most powerful defenders of secession as a strictly constitutional step (pg 23). In general, the advocates of slavery in the South argued that slavery was advocated in the Bible and was not condemned as an institution. It was seen as a type of “Christian philanthropy” that the whole counsel of the Bible taught as a very natural institution and a means of controlling poverty when carried out benevolently. The Presbyterian advocates also relied heavily upon the arguments that God sovereignly placed slaves in their station, the place that divine providence chose for the slave for justice and reasons beyond our understanding but for the overall benefit of man.

The whole of the country and the activities in the war were believed to be God’s sovereign plan on part of both North and South, though the South held that God also sovereignly ordained slavery and social hierarchy as well. Though Heman Humphrey spoke strongly against the errors of his cousin John Brown, he also advocated agrarianism and believed that the hierarchical system of slavery was God’s providential care of those whom God ordained to their social station, an institution that should not be challenged or transcended as to do so would amount to rebellion against God’s natural order. The slavery system demonstrated a high degree of paternalism for those within the lower ranks of hierarchy based on race (and upon gender).

In contrast, the North held that the full counsel of the New Testament worked toward freedom for all men in a general and overriding sense in great opposition to “Patriarchal Servitude.” Many founding fathers believed that slavery was not God’s ideal and that all men should be free, all based upon a broad American ideal supported by self-evident truth and common sense. In 1776, Samuel Hopkins, one whom Noll describes as a close friend of Calvinist Jonathan Edwards, argued that the “whole divine relvelation argued against slavery,” and that tyranny and slavery were both moral evils that “the Gospel thoroughly opposed” (pg 40). Noll also includes a very telling argument offered by Rabbi Raphall in 1861, one strongly influenced by a Catholic commentary on the subject that maintained that the American system of slavery dehumanzied the slave. “The slave is a person in whom the dignity of human nature is to be respected; he has rights. Whereas, the heathen view of slavery which prevailed at Rome, and which, I am sorry to say, is adopted in the South, reduces the slave to a thing, and a thing can have no rights” (pg 47). This also adds to the weight of the argument that the modern so called “Biblical patriarchy” movement draws more of it’s ideals from the pagan Roman paterfamilias than it does from Scripture. It also reflects the testimony of Stan Gundry who observes that the arguments made in today’s gender debate do not differ from those once made in defense of slavery, arguments that do not derive purely from the Word of God.

Sadly, these same arguments and a similar war still rages today, mostly played out in the arena of the ongoing evangelical gender debate. Noll states that though the Northern and Southern theologians of the past largely agreed on God’s providence, “they were in almost all cases powerless to convince others that they were correct, unless the others already shared the partisan perspective on events” (Noll, pgs 92 -93). I believe that part of this rings true today, and certain camps and cadres within evangelical Christianity are very much engaged in this very same argument. Full or partial Arminian-oriented Christians still deeply offend some Calvinists, though now it seems as though the Calvinists have become more like “Southern fanatics” who argue for the old hierarchies that characterized the Confederate South. Many groups of evangelical Christians rage against individualism, argue for paternalistic views of salvation and sanctification by means of hierarchy and seek to establish these ideals as the only acceptable interpretations reflective of proper Biblical Authority. These same ideologies also play out in paternalistic politics, both in those who desire the state to assume the social gospel concept of serving as one’s “brother’s keeper” (as in Obama's campaign) and in those who oppose Sarah Palin, advocating servitude and their family religious issues as just another, different type of social gospel. Both amount to a type of an American national folk religion with zealous goals for saving mankind.

Doug Phillips quotes Heman Humphrey’s mention of the first U.S. Census, noting large families and their benefit to the agrarian family. This same census data also strongly influenced growing concerns about population and wealth at that time and provides some interesting glimpses into the "aggravated" mind of the South in the years leading up to the War Between the States. The first census near the turn of the century in 1800 revealed that the residents of the country outnumbered city dwellers by a factor of ten to one, but near the end of the 19th Century, the agrarian population accounted for only one-third of the U.S. population. Rural wealth increased four-fold during the latter half of the 19th Century, but urban wealth increased by a sixteen-fold factor. Farmers also watched their children depart for the cities where they could earn more wealth by working shorter hours under better conditions. In addition to the aforementioned price gouging of Southern goods shipped to Europe, the Southerner paid a higher percentage of tax than did those who worked in industrialized cities.

As Solon J. Buck notes,

It was easy to demonstrate that the farmer...paid taxes higher in proportion to his ability to pay than did the business man or the corporation... The revenue of the Federal Government was raised wholly by indirect taxes levied principally upon articles of common consumption; and the farmer and other people of small means paid an undue share of the burden in the form of higher prices demanded for commodities.”
This steady proportionate decrease in wealth and population added to the troublesome ongoing efforts to eradicate slavery, a conflict and struggle that developed shortly following the ratification of the first U.S. Constitution according to Palmer.

My original 1875 edition of Thornwell’s biography (penned by Palmer) paints the scene of the political landscape and the federal government’s efforts to marginalize and limit slavery in the new states admitted to the union. In 1790, when “Dr. Franklin headed a petition” to abolish slavery in the States, Congress resolved at that time that slavery was a States rights issue (pg 471). Palmer then goes on to describe that the Louisiana Purchase, the ceded territory, would enjoy the same liberties that the existing states were afforded. But this was not true of Missouri, eventually resulting in the adoption of the Missouri Compromise, contributing to the South’s minority voice in the defense and free exercise of slavery.
When, however, in 1818, Missouri knocked at the door of Congress for admission upon these terms [Louisiana Purchase], the attempt was made to fasten upon her the restriction of slavery, in the provision “that the further introduction of slavery, or of involuntary servitude, be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been fully convicted; and that all children born within the Union shall be free at the age of twenty-five years” (pg 472).

When California presents for Admittance as a State of the Union, the subject of slavery produces much discussion ultimately resulting in the Compromise of 1850, and California is admitted as a free state. By this time, Former Vice President, Constitutional Attorney, now Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina has grown ill with tuberculosis, so Virginia Senator James A. Mason reads his speech for him, arguing for the constitutional rights of the South. Calhoun not only argues the disparagement in the growth of the population and the wealth outside of the Southern States, he also argues that only 25% of the land mass of the new territories added to the Union classified as Southern States, those that provide for the free exercise of the practice of slavery by definition. He argues also that the North has essentially strategically “stacked the deck” so that the North grew in power and financial gain.

So even in Calhoun’s well reasoned argument, he acknowledges the issue of slavery and the nature of the practice as an integral element of the South’s economy and structure. To abolish it will further impoverish the already suffering South who cannot begin to compete with the growth in both numbers and in wealth of the Northern States and Territories. California became what Calhoun therein calls the “test question” and asserts that the real issues are “power and aggrandizement.” Certainly, the South did suffer after the approaching war under Reconstruction which was not only impoverishing but emasculating.

The “gentle view” of slavery then seems to hold up until the very difficult problems of racism present themselves. Some claim that advocacy for one’s own race constitutes “racialism” and differs from “racism,” though by today’s standards, most of my contemporaries would agree that their position amounts to bigotry. And I fancied Calhoun as someone who did not capitulate to this view, basing his arguments purely on the integrity demonstrated by individuals, the rights of individual States based upon Constitutional arguments alone and the North’s exploitation of power and circumstance. In this discourse, I realize that Calhoun does argue that there is a disparagement between peoples based upon their race and admits to this paternalism. It is somewhat reassuring that he does not argue this as a central factor or with the vitriol that his other contemporaries did. He seems to justify the good of slavery by comparing it to the free societies with poorer conditions.

Slavery a Positive Good, (6 February 1837)
To maintain the existing relations between the two races, inhabiting that section of the Union, is indispensable to the peace and happiness of both. It cannot be subverted without drenching the country or the other of the races...I appeal to facts. Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually...In the meantime, the white or European race, has not degenerated...This is not the proper occasion, but, if it were, it would not be difficult to trace the various devices by which the wealth of all civilized communities has been so unequally divided, and to show by what means so small a share has been allotted to those by whose labor it was produced, and so large a share given to the non-producing classes...I might well challenge a comparison between them and the more direct, simple, and patriarchal mode by which the labor of the African race is, among us, commanded by the European. I may say with truth, that in few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where there is more kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age...

I have yet to read any writer so miserable on this point as the great Robert Lewis Dabney. He did advocate kind and fair treatment of slaves and wrote in support of humane treatment of those entrusted to a person, but they were “heritable property” and “mere chattels,” not truly human like those of greater races and sons of Noah. And though he may have been noted for his wisdom on other matters of theology as I have observed myself in his Systematic Theology, he did not hold non-European races in high esteem. I was shocked to see that he actually did have a modicum of respect for the African race, but only when he compared them to the Native American. Blacks would at least work and could be subdued, but the miserable Native American could not be broken. They would not work and made too many attempts to escape from their captors, so they were not as valuable of a commodity. They were not described as people in need of Christ but as some lowly type of farm animal.

There are also the miserable comments that he made claiming how futile it was to educate any Negro because among other scandalous things, it was not only impractical, it was also “dishonest.” This rhetoric was quite offensive, perhaps just as offensive as the denigration based on pagan religious belief but upon race. The Negro was an inferior race, “constitutionally prone to improvidence” that could not transcend their condition and the European was divinely superior by God’s providence.

From the Conclusion of
A Defense of Virginia and the South”:

In Alexander Stevens' “Cornerstone Speech,” Presbyterian and Vice President of the Confederacy, we also see the same element of the Canaan curse that Dabney details in his “Defense of Virginia.”

I expected to believe, according to the gentle view of the Southern Perspective, that slavery in the South was actually short lived and would have been gradually and eventually abandoned. It was supposedly a dying institution, and slavery had nothing to do with the instigation or the waging of the War. Yet the Christians who argued for the right to enslave others for their economic gain also did so based on the superiority of their race and their views that slavery actually solved problems of poverty and anarchy. Why is it then that those who argue states rights also argued for white supremacy, the white man’s duty to assume their paternalistic care of their lessers, that the Africans could not be taught anything, that it was evil to mix the blood of the races and that it was actually God’s will to maintain a slavery system? And why then am I supposed to believe that not only was the South on course to relinquish their slavery system in due time without resorting to extreme measures, but I am also to believe that the war was not waged over the issue of slavery? States rights certainly played a major role, and the precedents set as a consequence have been detrimental to the U. S. The source of the difference between the North and South was indistinguishable from slavery and the economics of it, though the Confederate also fought for Southern chivalry, their homeland, tradition and a Christianly way of life.

And I can’t help noting that the attention paid to the changing demographics of the country as revealed by both the census data and as cited in the works of those who advocated for the Southern Cause noted the disparagement in economic growth and political power. Did the government system really fail, or was the world changing in response to many other forces? Were there truly no other alternatives? And if God’s divine providence provided for the system of slavery, why did providence see to it that the South lost the war? And though reconstruction was horrific, why did people not heed the admonishments of Lee after the war who called for unity and healing under God’s providence? Perhaps agnosticism skyrocketed after the war because these issues of secession were wrongly presented as providential and people became disillusioned when they realized the that providence would have them loose the war? And these were men of their day, reflecting the contemporary views, contending for truth and liberty and faith just as I do my writing here. God has mercy on us and shows patience beyond my ability to fathom. But why then to men of this day still make these old, tired, bigoted arguments?

Lincoln, Lee and Jackson all stated that God may have intentions that are higher than ours, and that He was sovereignly guiding us all. I don’t doubt any of that. I wish Jackson had survived to encourage the South to accept God's providence with patience like Lee did. But why resurrect all this and hang on to anger, strife and hatred for generations? And why preach hateful racial superiority from pulpits today? Are the gender arguments so weak that we do need to resurrect ideals that center around racial superiority in order to prop up those gender arguments? This does not mean that all those who make gender arguments based on hierarchy are racists, but why dredge up the writings of the past when we have the all-sufficient Word? That's not enough?

“The fact that one man, or race of men, may have more intellectual capacity than another man, or race of me, gives no just ground for enslaving the inferior; otherwise the most intellectual man that exists may have a right to enslave every other man – white man and black...

Otherwise, he who has a fairer skin...than you or I, may have a right to enslave us;
and the fairest man in the world may enslave every other man.”

John G. Fee,
The Sinfulness of Slaveholding Shown by Appeals to Reason and Scripture

List of Questions for Voddie Baucham about the FIC, Kinism and the Neoconfederate Element in Patriarchy

Dear Voddie,

In previous emails to me you wrote:

~ and ~

B. How can this best standard be achieved?

A. Do you share this view?

This introduces a host of other questions:

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

All Rights Reserved


Follow Here To Purchase Beyond Broccoli, Creating a Biologically Balanced Diet When a Vegetarian Diet Doesn't Work

Author:  Susan Schenck, Lac, MTOM

ISBN: 978-0-9776795-2-2

Publisher: Awakenings Publications

For years now vegan and vegetarian diets have been touted as the healthiest ways for humans to eat. Enter any bookstore and you will find the shelves lined with books on the subject and author Susan Schenck, LAc, MTOM, is no stranger to them. Five years after the first printing of Live Food Factor, : A Comprehensive Guide to the Ultimate Diet for Body, Mind, Spirit & Planet (Awakenings Publications, 2006), Ms. Schenck returns with a new book Beyond Broccoli, Creating a Biologically Balanced Diet When a Vegetarian Diet Doesn’t Work (Awakenings Publications, 2011). In it, Ms. Schenck has reversed much of her earlier praise for the benefits of plant based diets that where so much a part of the first book. Based on the question of whether or not humans are meant to eat diets free of animal products, Ms. Schenck presents the reader with twenty eight chapters meant to examine the history of vegetarianism and the pitfalls of omitting animal products from the diet long term.

Starting with a short introduction on how her own health had been suffering as a vegan, Ms. Schenck leads the reader forward to explore some of the more popular claims about vegan/vegetarian diets. Each claim is examined against documented research on human history, anatomy, and physiology. Ms. Schenck makes it a point to tell the reader that her focus is on helping people to avoid nutritional deficiencies in their diets. She does acknowledge that there are people who do quite well on vegetarian and vegan diets but many more don’t regardless of dedication, use of supplements, or consumption of imported super foods.

A good portion of the book is spent discussing essential nutrients such as DHA and EPA (for brain health), the need for cholesterol and fat in the diet, and why proteins and other nutrients from plant sources alone often are not enough. Ms. Schenck also does due diligence to the topic of carbohydrates and their role in metabolism, brain health, obesity and diabetes. On the topic of grains, Ms. Schenck asserts that most are an anti-nutrient and not a natural part of early man-kind’s diet, and that the grain merchants and our own American government have benefitted from perpetuating a lie. The theory is a familiar one; corporations share a bed with politicians and together it is they, not unbiased science, who decide what (profitable) products get promoted to the public as necessary to well-being.

As the book moves more toward examining the benefits of eating some animal based products, Ms. Schenck takes the time to explore some of the moral and spiritual dilemmas often associate with eating animal products. She first points out that we live in a creature eats creature world and mankind has never been an exception to that. Ms. Schenck uses this common knowledge to illustrate her point; our ancestors thrived on animal products and without them, we may not have survived as a species. It should be pointed out that Ms. Schenck states that she in no way supports the modern day practices of factory farming. Instead she proposes that people obtain animal products from wild game or from farms with a reputation for ethical treatment of their animals.

As the book comes to its end chapters, the author reasserts her original theme of avoiding nutritional deficiencies by reminding the reader of the importance of balance in the diet and introduces the importance of eating food raw. She asserts that most people today over cook their food and this leads to loss of nutrients, the production of toxins, and increases the work the digestive tract must do. Recognizing that eating raw meat or eggs would be unappealing to most people, she does offer up suggestions for preparing and lightly cooking certain foods. The book closes with an epilogue discussing the author’s thoughts about our culinary future, a resource list, and bibliography.

Although staunch advocates of veganism/vegetarianism may scoff at the assertions made by the author, there is no doubt that Beyond Broccoli, presents compelling evidence that plant based or plant only diets can do more harm than good. Regardless of one’s personal philosophies, this book is a good resource on nutrition and challenges the reader to become better educated about their dietary choices.


505 TUNING GUIDE - North Sails, Ethan Bixby

How to get the most from your new North 505 Sails.

Before calibrating your mast rake, check that the mast is even in the boat athwartships. You can do this by tensioning the rig and measuring with a tape down to the gunwales, even with the chainplates. Next sight up the back edge of the mast to ensure that it's straight athwartships. If the measurement to the gunwales is even, and the mast isn't straight side to side, then either the spreaders are uneven in length or the mast partners at deck level are uneven and pushing the mast to one side. It is important that the mast is straight in the boat and tight in the partners. Any side to side play in the partners depowers the rig, which is especially bad for reaching.

MAST RAKE - Mast rake and rig tension are the two most significant tuning variables. To measure your rake, tension your rig to your standard sailing tension, and hoist a tape measure to the top band on the main halyard. This should be hooked on the halyard lock.

Ensuring that the mast is straight with the mast ram, the tape measure should be read at the hull/transom intersection, passing the tape through the cutouts in the transom. Heavy air settings will show some compression bend. A good range of settings would be:

25'9" with 300 lbs. shroud tension - light air

25'8" with 500 lbs. shroud tension - moderate air, full power

25'7" with 600 lbs. shroud tension - beginning to depower

25'6" with 800 lbs. shroud tension - heavy air

25'? max depowering with large waves and footing

In light air and flat water, some mast pre-bend should be used to flatten the main, open the slot and ease the leech. It is a good idea to mark the partners for normal mast bend range.

HULL - The mast step should be close to the maximum aft position which is 10' from the transom.

MAST RIGGING - Shroud pin location effects the amount of fore and aft bend due to compression loading with rig tension, and the athwartship stiffness of the mast above the headstay. We recommend the hounds about half way between the spinnaker halyard sheave and the jib halyard sheave. The highest position would be at the spinnaker halyard sheave.

The pole ring should be at about 48" above deck black band. Topping lift sheave at about 11.8' above deck level. This should support the pole at boom level when stored on the boom. A good height for spreaders is between 10' and 10'4" above deck-level black band.

Spreaders should be pinned to deflect the shrouds about 2.5" to 3' outboard to restrict side bend and 1.5" to 2" forward to restrict fore and aft bend. You can use your trapeze wires as a rough guide, held next to the shroud. When measured from a straight line between the shrouds, the distance to the aft edge of the mast should be between 4.5" and 5". Spreader length of about 17.5", although this will vary depending upon the location of the shroud base, hounds, and spreader bracket. Also you should have nicopress stops under the spreaders so the spreaders don't drop in angle.

BOOM VANG - In light to medium conditions, trim your vang so the top batten is about parallel to the boom. If you are sailing in very smooth water, trim hard enough to hook the top batten 5 degrees to windward. When overpowered sailing upwind, if you have speed with no pointing, try straightening the mast, or vanging harder. If you have pointing with not enough speed through the water, try bending more or checking to see that you are not vanged too hand.

JIB LEAD POSITION - Your fore and aft jib leads should be set so that the jib sheet lines up with the trim line on the clew of the jib. In choppy conditions it may be faster to move the lead forward from this point. At this setting, the jib sheet will be angled down from the trim line on the jib clew. [The trim line is a line drawn on the clew, defined by the center of the clew and intersecting the luff exactly midway between the tack and the head.] Move the jib lead aft as the wind increases, and/or more rake, to accomplish the same end result of twisting off the top of the sail. If you have speed with no pointing, try moving the leads forward. If you have pointing with not enough speed through the water, try moving the leads aft. Experiment with different lead positions, especially in stronger breezes, as changes are readily felt. For rough numbers, launcher boats should have the lead at about 8'7" aft of the tack, and about 12" up from the floor.

JIB LUFF TENSION - Tighten just enough to remove wrinkles.

Good luck and sail fast! If you have any questions or suggestions call Ethan Bixby of North Sails Florida, (813) 898-1123, Fax (813) 898-0211.


Our Disease

What is Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis?

HLH stands for Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis and is a life-threatening immunodeficiency. It affects people of all ages and ethnic groups.  Common symptoms are fevers, enlarged spleen, low blood counts and liver abnormalities.  At least half of the patients with Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis will also experience inflammation of the brain which can lead to a wide variety of neurologic problems.

Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis has traditionally been divided into genetic forms (Familial or FHLH) or acquired forms which may be associated with infections, autoimmune conditions or cancer. HLH patients have overactive histiocytes and lymphocytes, which are white blood cells that can cause swelling, redness, heat, pain and malfunction/damage of organs when they attack and accumulate on healthy lymph tissue (ed: Liver, Spleen, Lymph Nodes). To date, 7 genetic causes of FHLH have been discovered, accounting for about 60% of childhood cases in the U.S.A. FHLH can be inherited in either an autosomal recessive manner (where both parents are carriers) or in an x-linked manner affecting only males. HLH is considered to be rare, but specific incidence is unknown.

HLH is not a cancer.  Over the years cancer treatments have been used in patients with HLH. Consequently, Hematologists and Oncologists who treat cancer also treat children with HLH.

Because the disease is relatively new from a research perspective (1985) and causes as well as symptoms are still being discovered, may cases go undiscovered (or too late) and lead to fatality for the patient. It is important to catch the illness early.

The Doctors at Cincinnati Children's Hospital treat more cases of HLH each year than any other pediatric hospital in the United States. Dr. Lisa Filipovich at Cincinnati Children's is regarded as the world renowned expert on this rare immune disorder.

If your child has been diagnosed with HLH, ask your doctor to run the genetic testing to see if the genetic mutation can be found.  Our recommendation is to get your child to a hospital that has treated multiple cases of HLH in the past and has access to Novimmune's NI-0501 drug and/or the HIT study (Hybrid ImmunoTherapy). It is also important to be at a hospital that specializes in bone marrow transplants. Do everything possible to increase the odds of a positive outcome.

To learn more about HLH please visit http://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/service/h/hlh/about/ or to contact the experts at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, please visit https://go.cincinnatichildrens.org/service/hlh/contact.php

HLH | Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis


Asian Delights: Some Of The Best Destinations In This Vibrant Part Of The World

Do you have a bucket list? A list of destinations in which you want to travel to at some point in your life? I think many people do, perhaps associating them with a time of retirement from work and living day by day, but a lot of people get to experience these places throughout their lives and love the idea of seeing some of the most amazing places on this planet. I often think that a bucket list can have a lot of common destinations on there. Of course, I understand why as some of these places people can only aspire to see, but I also think that we live in such a vast world and there are destinations people don’t even consider for one reason or another. There will be the likes of Australia in there, swimming in the Great Barrier Reef and seeing famous places like Sydney or Melbourne. Then you have the USA featuring highly on the list with road trips down Route 66, a Californian adventure, spinning the roulette table in Las Vegas and shopping in New York City. However, Asia, being the largest and most populous continent on the planet has some amazing destinations in which to visit and I thought now would be the ideal time share with you some of these Asian delights.

Singapore is one of the most extraordinary places in Asia. It is an island city-state off Southern Malaysia and is multicultural vibrant place to be. It has a tropical climate which makes it hot and humid all year round, however the months of June and July tend to be the most hazy when it comes to the humidity and the heat. You may also need to consider your visa options, like anywhere in Asia, and this is when articles from Singapore Immigration Solutions could help you be guided in the right direction. There is plenty to see and do in Singapore. You could head to the Universal Studios, the botanical gardens and also the night safari where you get to nocturnal animals do there thing. It definitely should be a place that you add to your bucket list for sure.

Thailand is a South-East country that is most well-known for it’s tropical beaches and mesmerising island paradises, and it can also be a popular destination for weddings and honeymoons. Possibly one of the most well-known parts of Asia, Thailand has fast become a hotspot for backpackers and student travellers wanting to take in some of the most iconic events such as full moon parties, but to also enjoy some of the great value when it comes to how much you need to spend here. There are also some wonderful temples to visit in Thailand as well as the hustle and bustle of Bangkok. It might be a popular destination for the bucket list already, but if it hasn’t made yours yet then it needs to be added, pronto!

The Philippines
The Philippines is a South-East country in Asia in the Western Pacific ocean. It comprises of seven thousand small islands, which sounds immense. The capital, Manila, is most famous for its waterfront promenade, but there is also much to see and do in these small and quaint islands. Some of the places are also famous for beautiful beaches and resorts with a more touristic feel to them, but it isn’t hard to find some of the more traditional villages and towns, especially in the old walled part of Manila. Often, The Philippines is seen as a place that could be a little too far to travel to, but as combined trip with other destinations or as stopping off point before heading further afield to places like Australia or New Zealand, it could prove to be the ideal destination to enjoy, and certainly not one to forget.

Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is an island nation south of India in the Indian Ocean, and has a real diverse landscape to witness. Ranging from rainforest and arid plains through to sandy glorious beaches and highlands, there simply is something for everyone here. It is most famous for its Buddhist history and ancient ruins that can be found here, including the 5th-century citadel Sigiriya. Many of the ruins found in Sri Lanka date back more than two thousand years ago. Which certainly makes them an eye-catching destination to visit and one for the bucket list. There are other things to do in Sri Lanka, you could take a tour and also see some of the most beautiful animals in their natural habitats.

China may already be on your bucket list, and I guarantee that might be for one reason only. Walking the Great Wall Of China. One of the seven wonders of the world and something that can actually be seen from space, which is mind blowing on its own. While, of course, that is something worthy of your bucket list there are other factors to the country China that you should definitely consider adding to your trip. Of course, one main factor being the food. But other places to see would be the capital of Beijing. This is the place where you could witness the Forbidden City palace. However another city to see would be Shanghai, which also has many historical tourist sites that are worth a visit. China is vast, and happens to be one of the most populated places on earth.

Japan is an island nation in the Pacific ocean with dense cities, imperial palaces, thousands and shrines and temples to see and some of the most beautiful mountainous regions you have ever seen. Tokyo is the capital and is well-known for its skyscraper building and shopping culture. Japan tends to be known for some of the most out there and modern technology pieces, with toilets that can talk to you and an AI culture that would certainly fascinate even the most scientific among you. Other places to visit would be Osaka, which is a modern port but there is also Osaka castle there to see. You could consider visiting Hakone, famous for its hot springs and more relaxed vibe, or finally another hotspot in Japan would be Kyoto which also has its fair share of temples and shrines to witness.

India. A huge country with so many options to consider it possibly requires its very own article. But, to highlight a few reasons why you should visit India I will start with the food. Indian food has vastly grown in popularity and if you happen to be a fan of the spicy delights yourself then actually eating authentic Indian food could take your taste buds to a whole new level. The landscape is vast, with Himalayan landscapes to ocean fronts and beautiful beaches, India simply has something to cover all types of holiday-goer. New Delhi is the capital, and one wouldn’t be surprised if you found this city completely overbearing. The roads are rushed, people fill the streets with animals and food stalls, but you cross that vision with tall architectural buildings and you have what this city is all about. It is diverse and exciting. One of the most famous sites in India is the Taj Mahal, and many famous people have had their pictures taken in front of it on that iconic bench. Other places to see would be Mumbai, Agra and Jaipur each with their own offerings of historical places. You may also find that going in land you will find some of the finest boutique establishments focusing on zen and different lifestyles such as yoga, and there are also plenty of opportunities and starting points to go trekking in the Himalayas if that is more your thing.

Indonesia is a Southeast Asian country that is made up of thousands of volcanic islands. It is also home to hundreds of different ethnic groups making Indonesia completely multicultural. There are some great places to visit though, and one of the most popular is Bali. Bali is an Indonesian island and is famed for its outstanding beaches and fantastic resorts, making this a real luxurious holiday hotspot. Again much like Thailand very popular for weddings and honeymoons. Indonesia could also see you getting up close and personal with animals such as elephants and komodo dragons, where many establishments take pride in keeping these animals in their natural habitat. On the island of Java, you will find Indonesia’s Vibrant and fast-paced capital, Jakarta, which is famous for its national museum. There is a real mix of cultures in Jakarta ranging from Chinese, Arab, Indian and European, making it a real diverse place to visit.

So there you have it, some of Asia’s delights when it comes to holiday destinations. Some may already be on that bucket list of yours, others you may know but never even thought of visiting. Perhaps this has offered some inspiration of some of the other places in the world you could see at some stage in your life. It is, after all, a very big world out there, and it just needs us to explore it and live life to the full.


At Balboa High School, one of the big WALC tasks is the senior Environmental Legacy Project. WALC seniors actually identify a specific environmental issue affecting the school and conduct a campaign to address the problem and implement real solutions that become part of the institution. A total of seven legacy projects are ongoing each year impacting the entire school. Through the work of successive generations of WALC seniors real changes have been made at Balboa, such as a new salad bar option in our cafeteria, recycling procedures for computer ink cartridges, the groundwork for a native garden, and cleaner restrooms. WALC students learn that they should not go through systems and institutions as passive objects, but active participants that affect these systems and institutions positively.


Breeding a better bee

Save the (Wild) Bees

Want to know more? Read about it here.

Ocean Bees

Yes, you read that correctly. There are bees. In the ocean.

Well, sort of. Similar to land plants, sea grasses need pollinating. But it’s long been assumed that pollination is facilitated by the current, and the pollen just floats from one plant to the next.

But it turns out that some crustaceans are actually pollinating the grass. Making them the bees of the ocean.

Read about it here!

More about bees

Working with snails was easy. They are easy to catch, easy to keep alive, and people are largely not interested in them.

Bees, however, are a challenge. They are picky about the weather, they fly around and people are coming out of the woodwork to talk to me about them. I’ve never met so many people who are engaged about bees.

So much so that after my recent Notes from the Field post, a friend sent me an article from NPR. That’s right, NPR wrote an article about things I’m working on.

Read about bees and viruses over at NPR!

Notes from the Field: The Maelstrom of Bee Viruses

I recently completed my PhD (yay!) and started my postdoc (eep!). I’m working at Martin-Luther University in Halle-Wittenburg. It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with the genetics of coevolution, I studied it in snails and trematodes in New Zealand for the last 6 years. So this postdoc is a change of pace in a very similar subject.

I’m studying the genetics of host-parasite coevolution in bees and their viruses. Specifically, I’m looking at host shifts, the genetics of increased virulence and the effect of recombination and migration on local adaptation. WHO’S EXCITED JUST BY READING THAT LAST SENTENCE? Me.

Honey bees with their varroa mites (the red dots near their wings)

Let’s start with a little background. Bees have been declining across Europe and the US for the last few decades and the reason why isn’t quite clear. One hypothesis is that it is due to infestation with varroa mites, tiny mites that feed on the hemolymph of honey bees and increased in prevalence across Europe over the past few decades (similar pattern around the world except for Australia). However, the extent to which the varroa kills/harms/reduces the fitness of honey bees is unclear.

Enter the virus (and me, really). There are a series of viruses that are found in bees everywhere, including in honey bees, bumble bees and wild bees, Deformed Wing Virus (DWV). But it’s been at relatively low levels, and doesn’t seem to cause serious mortality within hives. Unless, that is, DWV occurs with varroa mites. Then the virus sweeps through the population, annihilating the hive. So, is this increase in virulence of DWV associated with an ecological shift, such that the varroa mites are injecting the virus when they feed, rather than the bees simply eating the virus when it’s found on flowers? Or is it a genetic change that has caused the virus to sweep through populations where it previously was fairly benign. And does this effect honey bees, or is it spilling over into the bumble bee and wild bee populations?

Honey bees with DWV.

Honey bees with DWV.

Which brings me to the field. The first step of my postdoctoral position has been to collect honey bees and bumble bees from islands off the coast of Scotland. Why islands? Because everything on the mainland is saturated with varroa mites. To compare the effect of the virus on bumble bee populations with and without varroa we’re looking at three types of islands: islands without honey bees (varroa can only infect honey bees), islands with honey bees and that don’t have varroa, and islands with honey bees and varroa. The list of things I want to do with this data is long, and will involve another post (stay tuned), but for starters we’re looking for transcriptional difference between the virus in these three types of islands.

And maybe looking at local adaptation. Or trying to understand how long it takes negative frequency dependent selection to act within an haplodiploid population. Or using spatial covariance to find the genomic regions involved in coevolution. Stay tuned kids, this is going to get exciting.

In the meantime, I’ve got to go collect some more bees.

Where the bees are. In this case, Colonsay Scotland.

Where the bees are. In this case, Colonsay Scotland.

Corpse flowers UNITE!

I don’t know if you have noticed, but there are a lot of corpse flowers in bloom right now. Given that these plants (Amorphophallus titanum) flower rarely, this is a particularly interesting feat. At the moment there are 10 foot tall corpse flowers open (and stinking ) in Washington, D.C., Bloomington, Indiana, and Sarasota, Florida.

That’s in addition to blooms earlier this year in Chicago, Charleston, Illinois, and Winter Park, Florida.

Given that there are only there have only been 157 Amorphophallus titanum that have been recorded in bloom between 1889 and 2008, that’s a lot of corpse flowers blooming in just one country over just one year.

Read about possible reasons why over at Atlas Obscura!


Network evolution

Network indicators are widely used for characterizing  transport network topology and its performance as well as provide insights on possible developments. Public transport networks change dramatically over time and are have a significant impact on urban and regional development. The structure of transport networks is the outcome of a large number of infrastructure investment decisions taken over a long time span. Little is known however on how rail bound public transport networks and their network indicators have evolved into their current form as it is surprisingly difficult to obtain data on historical network states.

This study reports a longitudinal analysis of the topological evolution of a multimodal rail network by investigating the dynamics of its topology for the case of Stockholm in 1950-2025. The starting year marks the opening of the metro system while the end year is set to mark the completion of the current development plan.

In the link below you can get an impression of the network evolution with 5 years intervals. Note the changes in coverage (scale) and density.

Based on a compilation of network topology and service properties, a year-on-year analysis of changes in global network efficiency and directness as well as local nodal centrality were conducted.

Changes in network topology exhibit smooth long-term technological and spatial trends as well as the signature of top-down planning interventions. Stockholm rail network evolution is characterized by contraction and stagnation periods followed by network extensions and is currently undergoing a considerable densification, marking a shift from peripheral attachment to preferential attachment. It is remarkable that in 2025 the Stockholm network will offer the same level of directness, connectivity and accessibility that were offered in 1950 for a much smaller area. This is driven by the dramatic shift in the modal composition of Stockholm rail-bound network during the analysis period.

Read the full paper following this link.