The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877:Lecture 5 Yale (Evangelicals lead fight on slavery)

Yale University ^ | January 2008 | Professor David Blight

[Titus-Maximus]

.....But what began to radicalize American anti-slavery activists? First, it was Evangelical Christianity. Some of the radicalism they took from their faith. They took from the so-called Second Great Awakening. They took from this idea that somehow, it was their duty, it was their place in the world--many of them were the sons and daughters of ministers--to save souls. And if you'd been inspired by Charles Grandison Finney out in Oberlin, Ohio, or--as Theodore Weld had--or a number of other ministers across the North, that it was your duty to go save souls, it was only one step further--and Finney told them that--to save society as well. And if conversion to Christ or conversion to faith, conversion to salvation, can happen immediately in a person, why not a whole society? If you can revolutionize a single soul, why can't you revolutionize a hundred, 100,000, 1,000,000? A second source--and I can say so much more about the significance of Evangelicalism, this idea of the rebirth of faith and rebirth of the soul, the born-again notion, in this era at least. We're living in a different kind of era of Evangelicalism in the United States--although some Evangelicals are indeed reformers, they tend to be seen today largely as political conservatives, social conservatives. Some of the Evangelicalism of the 1820s in America, in the 1830s, became a much more radical kind of Evangelicalism in terms of the social changes that they were advocating. Having said all that, that same Evangelical Christian who becomes an abolitionist may indeed have been a virulent Temperance advocate and saw demon rum as as big a demon as demon slaveholding....

[Titus-Maximus]

Evangelical Christians were right about the fight against slavery - as they are right about their fight against abortion. It is the same faith, it is the same God and the barbarity and inhuman treatment against innocents is still the same. That is why people of faith still cry out.

Is it true that Christians in this nation are being recognized for their great acts? And who is responsible for the slavery today in Africa, and who is fighting it?

[celmak]

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[truthguy]

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