His analysis involves the End Times theology embraced by many conservative Christians (fundamentalist and Pentecostal) in the United States called "dispensationalism." This is a theory originated and popularized by A British minister named John Nelson Darby (1800–1882), a leader in the Protestant sect, The Plymouth Brethren, who later led a split-off sect called the Exclusive Brethren. He began propagating a theory of the End Times that is known as "premillenial dispensationalism," which involved the Rapture that has become familiar in American popular culture in recent decades. In this view, true Christians will be "raptured" by being suddenly taken into Heaven, while on earth a thousand years of conflict and suffering will follow on Earth until Christ returns and puts an end to worldly history and conducts the Last Judgment.
Darby propagated his idea in the 1830s and 1840s in Europe. His Rapture notion of the End Times became a one of the two major doctrinal elements of what came to be known as Christian fundamentalism in the early 20th century, the other one being the notion of "Biblical literalism." Oran Smith describes how Southern Christians in the US had worked out a vision of the End Times that expected a millennium of progress based on their understanding of Southern slave society:
In the years before the American Civil War, a millennialist myth had already begun to develop, as theologians looked to the scriptures for lessons about the end of the world. With cotton the reigning king, evangelical ministers along with political leaders convinced many Southern elites in an upbeat, positive, “postmillennial” phase that, with its economic and spiritual prosperity, Southern society was so idyllic that this earthly perfection indicated that the thousand-year or “millennial” rein of Christ promised in the scriptures would be ushered in without judgment. Christ would return to earth at the end of a millennial reign of peace already begun.Obviously the human property of the Southern planter elite weren't experiencing an idyllic life. But this religious propaganda support for the slave system was a triumphalist one, with a kind of Panglossian satisfaction in the society of the South, destined to civilize ever-larger portions of the world with its Christian institution of slavery.
But after the godly slave society was transformed by the Civil War that ended its Peculiar Institution of slavery, a more Darby-like vision of the End Times became popular, one that resonated more with white despair but also contained a more obvious angry and aggressive vision:
Then came the war. In the postwar phase, as the region lay in ruin, the positive postmillennialism gave way to dour premillennialism. A devastated South took Confederate defeat as a sign that Christ would soon rapture His church safely out of a world that was getting progressively hostile to His kingdom so that He might judge the sinful world before His thousand-year rein. In some sense, the [Southern Baptist denomination] remains in ... this latter phase, as deep within Southern Baptist religion and politics lies the notion that the South is separate from the rest of the nation: a little more righteous, a little more virtuous; believers in the absolutes of scripture surrounded by relativists, a Christian nation-state snuffed out by barbarians. [my emphasis in bold]The Southern Baptists are still the largest Protestant denomination in the US, and is particularly strong in the states of the former Confederacy. It got the "Southern" part of its name in 1845 when it split off from its Northern wing in the lead-up to the Civil War, i.e., they split off because of their own support for slavery. Oran Smith poses the questions for the world of 1997, "Why does the Lost Cause myth remain important? Why is it important for political analysis?"
Simple. Because the myth lives. According to one cultural critic, “Southern Baptists have been the largest identifiable group of victims of [the Lost Cause] myth.” Southern Baptist religion scholar and moderate-faction activist Bill Leonard agrees that the myth is not a dusty fable. He writes that “the way in which Southern Baptist leaders sought to explain the defeat of the South’s righteous cause provides insight into their continuing response to divisive theological and cultural issues. The formula seems to be: When in doubt, spiritualize. That tendency remains a significant element of SBC life” (emphasis [from Smith]).By "victims" in that quote, Leonard clearly means that white Southern Baptists were the biggest suckers for swallowing the Lost Cause ideology.
No comments:
Post a Comment