For the last part it seems no major christian denomination promoted slavery — Shwah

That is not the case. The major denominations divided during the years before the war

The divided churches also reshaped American Christianity. Important new denominations, such as the Southern Baptist Convention, formed. And Christianity in the South and its counterpart in the North headed in different directions. Southern believers, who had drawn on the literal words of the Bible to defend slavery, increasingly promoted the close, literal reading of scripture. Northerners, who had emphasized underlying principles of the Scriptures, such as God’s love for humanity, increasingly promoted social causes

Outside of the churches, the intellectual environment of Abolitionists was influenced by the "Transcendentalists" As a development of "enlightenment" thinking, what Jefferson wrote comes from the same sources but revealing clear lines of departure regarding what ought to be done.

I've only seen southern baptists split from baptists. Right now they're a big congregation but baptists were a major congregation then even in the north.

Transcendentalism was influenced by Unitarianism and came after the early abolitionist movements. The northeners banned slavery in states by the late 18th century for some (with future unitarian and future president John Adams writing it in as a clause for Massachusetts' constitution). If I remember correctly, Quakerism had a lot of influence on transcendentalists too.

I think the following accounts are true:

Methodists divide before the war.

Presbyterians divide before the war.

Calvinists divide before the war.

It is true that the 'Transcendentalists; were influenced by a number of religious groups. That is why I put it as "outside of the churches" rather than describe it as strictly 'secular'. Nonetheless, they were also influenced by thinkers we loosely refer to as writers pursuing the goals of Enlightenment through reason.

It seems there was a divide but I see a lot of political qualifications and less theological ones. In any case christians can be wrong but I don't see any push for getting rid of slavery outside christianity. Even if nominally the enlightenment thinkers were against it (I would say founded in christian ethics), it took christianity to take the charge against secular society on this and it was secular society, through liberal capitalism, that created the issue.
Mercantilism traded slaves but it never allowed the importation of them and were generally against the institutions at home so it was more on the buyers.

Even if nominally the enlightenment thinkers were against it (I would say founded in Christian ethics), it took Christianity to take the charge against secular society on this and it was secular society, through liberal capitalism, that created the issue. — Shwah

There is no doubt that slavery was a successful capital development plan for many investors in it. There were benefactors of the system in both the North and the South. But it is important to remember that the issue of letting the system be established in new states is where the first blood was drawn in the Civil War. There was a competing system of economic expansion that was incompatible with slavery. The private interests of one group came to an existential struggle with other private interests.

It doesn't get more secular than that.

That doesn't seem to square with what actually happened though. The industrial revolution happened later and exacerbated both sides. What language you're using in terms of "private interests of one group" etc is actually rousseauian general will which the lockean north denied in favor of natural rights. The south refused to allow the slaves inside their general will to grant them freedom (except infamously with the 3/5ths compromise where it benefited them and, in any case, not granting them 3/5ths freedoms).
In any case, the main push against slavery was purely christian and not economic (there was a physical war, not an economic one with corporate takeovers/mergers etc) unless you mean economy as a byword for culture or state in which I refer back to the north not participating in general wills but natural rights which were influenced and founded, later, by the christian movements there. The whole thing seems christian and there was a ton of secular reactionism against christian abolitionism even in the north. So again unless you mean economy as not in the north but in the christian community but that would trivially concede your point.

What language you're using in terms of "private interests of one group" etc is actually rousseauian general will which the lockean north denied in favor of natural rights. — Shwah

While I am interested in those ideas as my forum name might suggest, I was referring to the specific people In Kansas and Missouri who killed each other over the issue. The Lincoln versus Douglas debates were specifically concerned with whether slavery could be introduced into new states. Lincoln's first iteration of 'Unionism' did not address the status of slaves in the places where the system was already established. The South did not accept that limitation and rejected Lincoln's legitimacy as their President when he was elected because of that nonacceptance.

The agile adoption of pro-slavery Christians to the policy that most benefited them causes me to question the utility of setting the 'Christians' against the 'Secular' as you are suggesting.

Because the abolition movement started with the christians. The enlightenment ideals freed literally nobody by the adoption of the constitution. The distinction were christian puritans/quakers etc who were against slavery and the secular institutions which allowed it for individualism and capitalism.

Also it's not hard to say that people who fought for the south fought for states rights even if they abhorred slavery and even if there was a section of christians who were pro-slavery, that still doesn't imply there was a section of secularists who were anti-slavery even though there were. The logic doesn't imply that and all the early histories of abolitionism, and even later up until near the war when it became political, are completely christian dominated in theology, ethics etc.

Edit: I'd also like to point out that saying "one group vs another group" has zero explanatory power of why it is that one group (which were christians).

You are probably correct in saying that the northern abolitionists were primarily Christian. Certainly, not every American was Christian (or a theist of some other faith) but Christianity was a dominant social influence. Naturally, many Christians--North and South--honored Christianity in the breach rather than in observance.

Transcendentalism: Transcendentalism became a coherent movement and a sacred organization with the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 12, 1836, by prominent New England intellectuals, including George Putnam (Unitarian minister), Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederic Henry Hedge.

As I recollect, most transcendentalists were abolitionist, but took several different approaches.

The Methodist Episcopal Church very actively supported the union cause, while the "Methodist Episcopal Church South" split away to follow the Confederacy out of the Union. 75 years after the Civil war (1939) the two parts reunited becoming "the Methodist Church". After the merger with the Evangelical United Brethren, they became "the United Methodist Church".

The United Methodist Church will probably split again over the issue of gay clergy and gay marriage, This split is a multinational issue where the fault line is in the US and in Africa.

I see the split but I was wondering where other sources came from. Transcendentalism came several decades after the heat of the abolitionist movement and transcendentalists grew out of the unitarian movement and some quaker and puritan sensibilities. The only slightly secular sorts of abolitionism that I can see were done by politicians who were raised puritan like John Adams but it seems the push against abolitionism was done by secularists.

In terms of the second question, I wonder if abolitionism got co-opted into the "american secular" side of history simply due to it becoming political in terms of the long split between the north and south on mostly lockean and rousseauian lines. Once it became a war it was deemed a part of secular state's history and the christian basis seems to be completely skipped over. I'm wondering if there's justification for that and, even more, I'm wondering if christianity succeeded before it became a war whether we would have sundays closed and a successful prohibition.

The enlightenment ideals freed literally nobody by the adoption of the constitution. — Shwah

They did not free the slaves at first. The contradictions did lead to a reckoning of the sort Martin Luther King Jr. emphasized.

The constitution did free a whole bunch of people to make their own messes rather than inherent them. A polity of change versus divine authority. As Churchill noted, both suck but one more than the other.

:up:

What reckoning did mlk speak about? He used christianity as a basis where malcolm x used politics and divisiveness hidden in Islam (because you need a strong religious basis) but this was well after.

It didn't free women or anybody really. I'm not sure what it did except get rid of the crown. It was noted that for all men to be created equal does not imply revolution but the opposite on the other side of the pond.

In any case the idea seems to be christianity is what had the sole ability to fight for slave freedom from an ethical position that had any decent strength. If that's divine authority then you haven't been able to explain away this purely christian movement.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. — Thomas Jefferson

Self-evident truths do not require faith to be recognized.

And yet they weren't enough. Anyways self-evident truths requires not a general will but something prior to the established polity be it nature or God or something else valid. The prior being nature clearly wasn't enough, even though it has some actionable ethics/ontology, where God and christianity clearly showed what the best of self-evident truths means.

Enough for what? If what Jefferson is saying here is correct, we are not in a condition where any particular solution will suffice for all time.

God and Christianity clearly showed what the best of self-evident truths means. — Shwah

There has been much ink and blood spilled on this topic. Across many versions of Christianity, however, the notion of what is revealed through faith versus what one might notice even if they were a pagan has been discussed. The language of salvation is not self-evident. One has to confess a belief in order to participate. So, to say that the equality of persons is self-evident is to place the observation outside of faith. Green is green, blue is blue, people are people.

Enough to free anybody and you're conflating general will with natural rights here. Self-evident means prior to man or men like a priori. The distinction is between natural rights (or before man) and general will (or after man). There's nothing self evident in the borders of a state or what basketball team I'll support unless you make the general will in natural law terms which would be appealed to instead.
The question is then what is natural law and we've seen the distinction between the liberal constitution and christianity. Rights coming from God, and not man, puts christianity in that former category of natural or self-evident rights.

Edit: Also christianity has hardly been a violent source otherwise christianity wouldn't ever meaningfully spawn pacifists which it regularly does even as Jehovah's witnesses today. There are other factors in those responses. Pagans were much more violent than christians have ever been.

Self-evident means prior to man or men like a priori. — Shwah

I took the expression to mean what everybody notices when they go out on walks.

Because that's a valid expression of self-evident truths. Another example that's unrelated are analytic truths like "all bachelors are unmarried men". It was a big issue between rousseau and locke in terms of property rights and was what marx and even the nazis inherited and justified as a means of taking property from the bourgeoisie/Jews. It justified slavery as was said. Lockean liberalism has issues too such as in the Dawes act disenfranchising native Americans so natural or self-evident rights still needs to be defined.

If anyone is an atheist and is against slavery then you need to find another a priori argument/justification against slavery besides we are all created in God's image and are saved by christ or you will end up with slavery again once power changes and keep in mind that christians have not had institutional power in usa, we have always had it chipped away and we did this with our a priori argument.

Transcendentalism came several decades after the heat of the abolitionist movement — Shwah

When do you think the the transcendentalist movement began, and when do you think the abolitionist movement peaked? Seems to me they were both in business for a substantial period of time.

split between the north and south on mostly lockean and rousseauian lines — Shwah

Once it became a war it was deemed a part of secular state's history and the christian basis seems to be completely skipped over. — Shwah

In the United States (and not only here) religion and secular affairs are not necessarily as separate as one might think. Go back to mid 1800s and this is even more true.

Major social movements (prohibition, abolitionism, women's suffrage, etc. pick up secular and religious strands and braid them together. The 'braiding' is one of the ways the movements gain maximum effectiveness. Same goes for Martin Luther King, Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, and numerous other groups in the broad civil rights movement.

Christianity isn't dead yet (though it's not the same potent force it was 100 years ago), so other resources are now pressed into service more often.

Sunday closure... you talking about blue laws?

Blue laws are peculiar. just for example, in a recent effort to change the liquor laws in Minneapolis, the small liquor stores were in favor of Sunday closing -- not because they were all in church all day, but because they stood to lose more than they would gain by Sunday opening. Large liquor stores could afford the lower returns on Sunday.

In the small Minnesota town I grew up in 65 years ago) everything in town was closed except 1 small grocery store and a couple of gas stations. There was no competitive issue because other towns around followed the same rules. Now most things are open in this small town -- bars, what few stores there are, etc.

Transcendentalists were around from the late 1820's - 1830's per the wikipedia which was after the second great revival started. The christian abolitionist movement had currency from the late 17th century with the quakers and the other mainstream branches like methodism were against slavery by the mid 18th century. There doesn't really seem to be a lot of secular positions against slavery and in fact slavery became a lot larger around 1700 when the economics for slave-trading and useage became better so a lot of formerly anti slavery states like georgia and rhode island became slave states. So an economic argument was made.

My dad and mom spoke about blue laws and they're in their 60's from Texas. I think a lot is to be gained by taking an ontological approach that isn't secular as that founds better ethics which can create better economic decisions etc.

This got me thinking. Last night I watched a debate featuring Dan Barker (ex-priest, atheist) and he said something interesting: Christians are attributing their goodness to Christian morals when the truth of the matter is the Biblia Sacra records divine commands that don't square with this. For example, homosexuality is condemned in the Bible, but gay rights are most actively advocated in states that are very Christian.

An explanation: Christians aren't true Christians or the better ethics in modern society isn't Christianity-based.

Christian abolitionists? No, can't be, oui?

Most Americans, North and South, were Christian. Most slave-owners were Christian. Both those who supported slavery and those opposed used the Bible to support their views and believed that God was on their side.

There is not much questioning the cultural power of religion in America in the Civil War years. Americans at the midpoint of the 19th century were probably as thoroughly Christianized a people as they have ever been. Landscapes were dominated by church spires, and the most common sound in public spaces was the ringing of church bells. American churches jumped to exponential levels of growth. Between 1780 and 1820, Americans built 10,000 new churches; by 1860, they quadrupled that number. Almost all of the 78 American colleges which were founded by 1840 were church-related, with clergymen serving on the boards and the faculties. Even a man of such modest religious visibility as Abraham Lincoln, who never belonged to a church and never professed more than a deistic concept of God, nevertheless felt compelled, during his run for Congress in 1846, to still the anxieties of a Christian electorate by protesting that “I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular … I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.”

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But Southern preachers and theologians chimed in with fully as much fervor, in claiming that God was on their side. A writer for the Southern quarterly, DeBow’s Review, insisted that since “the institution of slavery accords with the injunctions and morality of the Bible,” the Confederate nation could therefore expect a divine blessing “in this great struggle.” The aged Episcopal bishop of Virginia, Richard Meade, gave Robert E. Lee his dying blessing: “You are engaged in a holy cause.”

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I see it now as I have never seen it before. You are at the head of a mighty army, to which millions look with untold anxiety and hope. You are a Christian soldier—God thus far owns and blesses you in your efforts for the cause of the South. Trust in God, Gen. Lee, with all your heart,” and placing his palsied hands on the General’s head, he added in a voice never to be forgotten by the bystanders, “you will never be overcome—you can never be overcome.”

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When, by 1864, defeat was looking the Confederacy in the eyes, the arms of the pious dropped nervelessly to their sides, and they concluded that God was deserting them, if not over slavery, then for Southern unbelief. “Can we believe in the justice of Providence,” lamented Josiah Gorgas, the Confederacy’s chief of ordnance, “or must we conclude we are after all wrong?” Or even worse, wailed one despairing Louisianan, “I fear the subjugation of the South will make an infidel of me. I cannot see how a just God can allow people who have battled so heroically for their rights to be overthrown.”

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Appeals to divine authority at the beginning of the Civil War fragmented in deadlock and contradiction, and ever since then, it has been difficult for deeply rooted religious conviction to assert a genuinely shaping influence over American public life. — Civil War and Christianity

The old Testament supports slavery. Somehow Christians convince themselves the new Testament calls for more love. Why not more love in any age?

The old testament in exodus details what slavery is. One fact is you could sell yourself into slavery (leviticus 25:35/39) and the word used for slave and servant is the same (abed). So we're dealing with a slightly different entity than the economical hell-hole which was chattel slavery.

So how are abed to be treated, it applies talion (eye-for-eye etc) to the slaves in Exodus 21:26-27. Talion is used in a few other verses and it doesn't all have to be stipulated to apply it (Leviticus 24:19-21, Exodus 21:22-25, Deuteronomy 19:16-21 with some of these using just eye for eye, tooth for tooth and some related dyad then saying "no mercy" which shows the sequential dyad is poetic and not literal as a simple map to talion). The middle eastern cultures used talion since hamurrabi and even in roman code but what makes Exodus 21:26-27 special is it says the slave is to go free. Exodus 21:23-25 goes over how extensive talion is and what "no mercy" means, "23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise." So the application of talion to slaves in the succeeding two verses says to not hurt your abed or they go free.

Slavery is hardly a surprise to anyone in that it happened in history but what is surprising to some are the preceding verses in Exodus 21:20-21 where it says, "20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property." These verses without the succeeding ones sounds like it allows beating of abed but it simply says the abed owner has no consequence unless they hurt the abed a lot and I'm not entirely sure what the reason was for that but the abed is still let go. I imagine these were applied so talion didn't apply backwards (enslavement-for-enslavement). We see this "owner-does-not-receive-punishment-unless-they-went-too-far" applied to bulls in Exodus 21:28-32 where there is a punishment and line an owner of a bull can't cross otherwise he gets punished. There were also verses about not being cruel to animals as part of the noahide covenant (which influenced the ten commandments).

The basis for all this is in Leviticus 25:42 where he says, "Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves." It uses the same word abed in the original hebrew (but conjugated/declined differently to represent case and plurality) but the point of this covenant was that they were freed from Egypt by YHWH who they were enslaved to and that was the foundation of their ethics etc.

Christians follow the new covenant as if it was ok it was not always in place

The old Testament supports slavery

Is a news reporter who provides an unbiased account of Nazism a Nazi? Does the mention of eugenics in a book imply that the author advocates eugenics? :chin:

The old Testament reports a "father" who treats his old Testament children different than the New people. In the OT he had husbands cutting off their wives' hands and being ordered not to feel compassion. Just saying

Leviticus 25:46 "make them slaves for life"