![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The United Methodist Church, for instance, is undergoing a formal split into at least two different churches over the presenting issue of human sexuality. Yet this fragmentation seems quite different from the kind we saw back in the 19th century. This came to mind as I started paying attention to the fact that almost every church tradition in this country seems to be splintering right now. ![]() Some of them are still split more than 150 years later. The only difference was that once the country came back together-following the victory of the Union and the emancipation of enslaved people-the churches remained apart. The churches split before the country did, but for all the same reasons. And if one went to a white church in Alabama-almost regardless of denomination-that church was probably pro-slavery. If one went to church in Massachusetts, that church-whether it was white or Black-was probably abolitionist. Most places split neatly along regional and political lines. I’m not sure whether his diagnosis is accurate, but we cannot deny that many clashes linger, sometimes for generations-long after everyone has forgotten what the fight was about in the first place. That’s affected the churches till this day.” “Nobody could be sure back then whose side anybody was on, so there was a kind of mistrust that just became a habit. “It’s because we were a border state in the Civil War,” he said. Sure, there was fighting everywhere, but Missouri seemed even more on edge than most places. Several years ago, I asked an older, lifelong Missourian minister in my tradition why so much fighting seemed to happen in the Missouri Baptist Convention. And the religious divisions happened just as the political ones did-roughly along the Mason-Dixon Line. In those years, our churches and denominations were splitting not over the deity of Christ or the right way to baptize but over the exact same issue dividing the country as a whole: whether to perpetuate human slavery and proliferate white supremacy. If people had wondered then whether the country would hold together, they could have seen an eerie omen in the fact that its churches seemed to be tearing apart. What’s also noteworthy is the timeframe: These splits happened well before the actual onset of civil war-the Baptists’ split took place a full 16 years before. What’s relevant about this split is, first, that it happened alongside similar splits in almost every other American Protestant denomination, most notably the Methodists and the Presbyterians. Yes, there was a dispute between northern and southern Baptists over the nature of missions-but the real debate was over whether to appoint slaveholders as missionaries. And yet most of us knew that 1845 wasn’t really a “founding” at all it was a split. We always spoke of our founding as having been spurred by a passion for world missions and evangelization. In 1845, the denominational structure I grew up in-the Southern Baptist Convention-was formed. In the Baptist tradition, the year 1845 was key-we learned about it in church history alongside other momentous years like 325 (the Council of Nicaea) and 1517 (the start of the Protestant Reformation). To answer such questions, perhaps even the most secular Americans should look to a religious phenomenon that has proven in years past to be a leading indicator of our nation’s future: church splits. They look at a country seemingly at the breaking point and begin to wonder whether we may indeed be heading for a national conflict of some kind. Some speak openly of preparing for “civil war,” while others crow about the need for a “national divorce” between red and blue states. Subscribe here.Īn uncanny number of people are imagining the looming collapse of the United States. This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. ![]()
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