This is the second part of Dora Miller’s Civil War diary entry for January 28, 1861. Here’s the first entry for this date.
How Southern Churches Adapted to Secession
On this Monday Dora took note in her diary of a significant event that had taken place in church the day before. The state of Louisiana had passed an ordinance of secession from the Union on the preceding Saturday, and that change was immediately reflected in the services of the churches of New Orleans.
The church that Dora and her family attended was Trinity Episcopal. Dora noted that many people who were not Episcopalians had begun attending because the preaching there, constrained by a fixed liturgy, was less political than at some of the other churches in the city. But this Sunday was different.
Normally the service included a prayer for the President and Congress of the United States. But not on this Sunday when secession had just been enacted. As Dora put it,
“The usual prayer for the President and Congress was changed to the ‘governor and people of this commonwealth and their representatives in convention assembled.’”
This was a huge change from the previous custom of the church. The Bible commands that Christians pray for those in authority in the land. As Dora notes, until this point the prayer for those in authority had specifically named the leaders of the United States government. But now, pastors in New Orleans, and soon throughout the South, were overtly communicating to their congregations that they should no longer consider themselves under the authority of the United States. The prayer that was used on that Secession Sunday in New Orleans was a direct endorsement of the state of Louisiana declaring itself out of the Union. The “convention” for which the pastor prayed was the one that had just passed the ordinance of secession.
What Dora observed in church on that significant Sunday was the culmination of a trend that had been ongoing in the South for decades. During the early years of the 19th century, many Christians in the South, as well as in the North, spoke out against slavery. But as the “peculiar institution” became more and more intertwined into the economic and social fabric of Southern life, those voices were silenced.
Now, on the eve of a Civil War that would be fought to protect the institution of slavery, there was hardly a pulpit in the South where slavery was not preached as a positive good and the will of God. As Dora experienced, pro-slavery political and social pressure had begun to shape the message of the church rather than the other way around.
January 28, 1861, Monday (part 2)
I went to Trinity Church. Some Union people who are not Episcopalians go there now because the pastor has not so much chance to rail at the Lord when things are not going to suit; but yesterday was a marked Sunday. The usual prayer for the President and Congress was changed to the “governor and people of this commonwealth and their representatives in convention assembled.”
Dora Miller’s Diary
Photo credit: Stock Photos for Free via flickr (CC BY 2.0)
© 2018 Ronald E. Franklin