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Breaking the Silence
We Confess: The Civil War, the Church and the South | |
Deborah P. Brunt
Historians who've studied the Deep South lament a mindset that grew during the antebellum era and peaked after the Civil War: Collectively, the Southern people agreed to strain out a gnat and swallow a camel - and went to unbelievable lengths to silence anyone who dared suggest that's what they were doing.
"'Do not speak out,' so they speak out."
From the 1830s onward, the church in the South made much ado about personal sins - particularly overt leisure-time behaviors such as drinking, dancing and card-playing. Yet the elephants in the culture ran amuck while the church folk cooperated in ignoring them. Ministerial voices passionately proclaimed, "All have sinned," and loudly urged personal repentance. Yet they just as loudly insisted that Southern society was as close to virtue incarnate as a society could be. The preferred method for dealing with any moral wrongs that the society decided to embrace, or chose to tolerate, was not to deal with them. The church colluded in this approach.
If anyone dared to call something "wrong" that the prevailing Southern culture espoused, newspaper editors (including denominational editors) avoided printing it. Polite society avoided discussing it. Politicians avoided debating it. What William W. Freehling observed about South Carolina planters rang true across the Deep South: They "had too great a sense of their society's anxieties and weaknesses - too deep a fear that their institutions could be shattered by words - to tolerate discussion, much less action."
"'Do not speak out,' so they speak out."
In his award-winning book, Prelude to Civil War, Freehling describes an event that dramatically illustrates how the silencing looked.
On July 29, 1835, the steamboat Columbia, sailing out of New York, arrived in Charleston and delivered its cargo. The mail from the North was dispatched to Charleston Postmaster Alfred Huger, who dutifully supervised the sorting of the letters and papers. Any semblance of routine, however, quickly vanished from the postmaster's activities. To his horror, Huger found that the mails were swollen with thousands of antislavery tracts addressed to leading members of the Charleston community, including, as the Mercury made a point of reporting, "the clergy of all denominations." The American Anti-Slavery Society had begun its intensive campaign to convince slaveholders that bondage should be abolished.
Huger quickly wrote an express letter to Amos Kendall, President Jackson's postmaster general, requesting instructions for dealing with the crisis. Pending Kendall's reply, Huger determined to keep the "incendiary" propaganda under lock and key. The more hotheaded Charlestonians were not disposed to await federal instructions. By evening an angry mob, three hundred strong, assembled to seize the mails. As the mob marched toward the post office it was met by the city guard and "persuaded" to disperse. Later in the night, a few incorrigible slaveholders broke into the post office and confiscated the heavy sacks of abolitionist tracts. The next evening the antislavery propaganda was burned at an enormous public bonfire on the Charleston parade grounds; effigies of ... northern "fanatics" fed the blaze.... abolitionist propaganda could not be permitted to circulate in a community full of uneasy planters and restless slaves.
People entrusted with delivering the mail suppressed it. People who considered themselves law-abiding citizens seized the mail and destroyed it. People who did not want anyone to say what their own consciences already knew sighed with relief. Driven by fear, they all colluded in the silencing.
Nor was the Charleston mail-burning an isolated incident: "postmasters censored the mails and mobs roamed the countryside throughout the South in the late summer of 1835." |
| Reproaches turned back |
In the 1830s, slavery was the foremost "incendiary" issue Southerners refused to discuss. With slavery outlawed roughly 150 years ago, we too might sigh with relief and consider the matter closed. Yet bondage still continues wherever people cling to a false identity that wars against their true identity, given by God before the foundation of the world and redeemed with the blood of Jesus Christ.
"'Do not speak out,' so they speak out,
But if they do not speak out concerning these things,
Reproaches will not be turned back"
(Micah 2:6 NASU emphasis added).
The response of Southerners, including the Southern church, to abolitionist mail in 1835 graphically depicts a pattern that has continued until the present. Despite strong appeals from distressed Christians, despite legislative rulings and court injunctions, despite war and reconstruction and civil unrest - indeed perhaps because of all those things - the church in the South has historically defended itself and its region as "right," "virtuous" and "misunderstood" and has adamantly refused to admit its flaws.
Further, we have delighted in exporting our way of doing Christianity to the larger American church culture and to the world, convinced that we must help everyone else learn how to do it.
So why would we even consider airing our dirty laundry now?
We might be cajoled into confessing flaws of yesteryear that we consider to be behind us. But something within keeps us frightened and defensive at the thought of bringing into the light anything unholy that may still entangle us.
 We've so confused the false identity with the true - the two have become so enmeshed in our psyche - that we reject any attempt to separate the precious from the worthless as an assault against us. We're proud to be Southerners. We're deathly afraid that exposing the truth will mean losing ourselves. And, well - it will. But it won't. God will call on us to give up the imposter self to which we've clung, in order that his Bride can emerge.
Together, pride and fear cry, "Do not speak out!" But if we "do not speak out concerning these things, reproaches will not be turned back."
The word translated reproaches in Micah 2:6 means "disgrace, reproach, shame, confusion, dishonor, insult, ignominy." The Hebrew root denotes, "the sense of disgrace which attends public humiliation." Could we say the South still carries reproaches that need to be turned back? Could we say that the US church culture carries reproaches that need to be turned back?
Neither pride nor fear arise from our true identity, and yet they have for generations successfully silenced our speaking out about things we must address in order to send shame packing. It's time to throw off the silencing. But how? |
| Promised outpouring | |
In Zechariah 12, God makes a promise to the nation Israel: "I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication" (Zech. 12:10).
Reading this verse, we realize God has promised Israel something we also desperately need. Thankfully, the promise belongs to Israel - and to us. "For no matter how many promises God has made, they are 'Yes' in Christ. And so through him the 'Amen' is spoken by us to the glory of God" (2 Cor. 1:20).
The promise, "I will pour out ... a spirit of grace and supplication" is Yes to us in Christ! We cry, "Amen! So be it!" Supplication denotes an earnest prayer for favor. Grace denotes the release of that favor and supply. God promises to trigger something in the spirit realm that will release an outpouring of his grace concurrent with our cry for help.
Isaiah 30:18-19 describes God's strong desire to fulfill this promise, his yearning for the prayer to go up and the grace to flow down: "Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him! People of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you" (emphasis added).
The Amplified rendering of these verses makes even more clear how much the Lord wants to send this outpouring: "And therefore the Lord [earnestly] waits [expecting, looking, and longing] to be gracious to you; and therefore He lifts Himself up, that He may have mercy on you and show loving-kindness to you. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) are all those who [earnestly] wait for Him, who expect and look and long for Him [for His victory, His favor, His love, His peace, His joy, and His matchless, unbroken companionship]! O people ... you will weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you."
Who would not want what God offers? Who would not want his victory, his favor, his love, his peace, his joy, and his matchless, unbroken companionship? Particularly if we've already identified ourselves with him, would we not immediately, spontaneously cry for that outpouring?
Remarkably, we haven't yet. The silencing has kept us from it. Oh, individuals have cried out. Some entire groups have cried out. But collectively we in the US church culture have not cried out in a way that releases a massive, unrestricted flood of God's grace. We can know we have not sounded this cry because we haven't experienced the results God promises. |
| Glorious results | |
"I will pour out ... a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son" (Zech. 12:10-11).
As Christians, we often shake our heads over the state of our country. Yet, when we pray, confessing the sins of "our nation," how often are we mentally pointing away from "us" and toward the people we consider "them"? With our lips, we're confessing our sins, but with our hearts, we're confessing theirs.
When God's Spirit triggers our cry and, simultaneously, releases a flood of his grace, the first result won't be pretty. It won't be fun. We will see where we who have identified with Christ have missed him and misrepresented him. No longer will we point fingers or shift blame. We will see how we, individually and collectively, have pierced the Lord Jesus - and in the moment we see, we will experience the Father's deep, searing grief.
"'On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity. On that day, I will banish the names of the idols from the land, and they will be remembered no more,' declares the Lord Almighty" (Zech. 13:1-2).
Praise God, the Father's grief will not swallow us up or beat us down. It will not linger indefinitely, to hold us wallowing in mourning. Rather, on the day we experience it, a fountain will burst open to wash us. We'll be clean, clean, clean! In the wake of intense purging, we'll be free, free, free! Anything, everything, that has rivaled the place of Christ in our hearts will be eradicated - utterly gone, completely forgotten.
"On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem, half of it east to the Dead Sea and half of it west to the Mediterranean Sea, in summer and in winter" (Zech. 14:8).
In our nation, too, Lord? With the eyes of our heart we see the living waters of your Spirit flowing out, half to the east and half to the west, in summer and in winter. We say, "Amen!" to your announcement that sweeping, all-encompassing revival will happen "on that day."
"The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and his name the only name" (Zech. 14:9).
The word translated "earth" in Zechariah 14:9 also means "land."Wherever the Lord pours out a spirit of grace and supplication - where people genuinely repent, where the fountain of the Lord cleanses, where wholehearted worship of him arises and where his Spirit flows unhindered - there the Lord will be king. He will rule the whole land.
As Christians, we want that. But we have not wanted it badly enough to look on him whom we have pierced. We will not want it badly enough, apart from a spirit of grace and supplication. We will remain stuck, with our ears closed and our eyes covered, until God unlocks something spiritually that triggers our cry that triggers the flow of his grace. |
| Scanning the heavens | |
Just as Elijah waited for a tiny cloud to signal a coming downpour, I'm scanning the heavens, believing our Lord stands ready to pour out a spirit of grace and supplication on us. People who have spent their lives silencing any voice that attempted to separate the precious from the worthless will now say, "Speak!" Those bound by generations of religious confusion will trample down pride and fear. Collectively, we'll confess the imposter identities to which we've clung, the needless loss that's caused and the great damage done to the name of our God. Courageously, we'll embrace grief - and marvel as God does the rest.
To our utter astonishment, what we've always refused because we feared it would undo us, instead will reveal and restore us. As we relinquish what we thought defined us, what we felt we could not live without, the glory of the Lord will come.
Adapted from Chapter 3, We Confess! The Civil War, the South and the Church
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Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures references are from The Holy Bible, Today's New International Version™ TNIV ® Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society ® All rights reserved worldwide. Also quoted: The Amplified Bible; New American Standard Updated (NASU).
William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina 1816-1836 (New York: Oxford University Press, © 1965, 1966), pp. 125; 340-341.
Reproaches. OT:3639 kelimmah. The Online Bible Thayer's Greek Lexicon and Brown Driver & Briggs Hebrew Lexicon (Thayer's and BDB), Copyright © 1993, Woodside Bible Fellowship, Ontario, Canada. Licensed from the Institute for Creation Research. OT:3640. kalam. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. Copyright © 1980 by The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Supplication. OT:8469. tachanuwn or tachanuwnah. BDB. Also, Biblesoft's New Exhaustive Strong's Numbers and Concordance with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary. Copyright © 1994, 2003, 2006 Biblesoft, Inc. and International Bible Translators, Inc.)
Earth. OT:776 'erets. BDB.
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The 11:11 Campaign (11 days in 2011), initiated by Jon and Jolene Hamill of Lamplighter Ministries, will be jointly facilitated by two national prayer networks - HAPN, led by John Benefiel, and RPN, led by Cindy Jacobs. June 24-July 4, three teams will start at widely divergent locations and move day-by-day until they converge on Gettysburg and then Washington, DC. One route will begin in Plymouth, MA; the second, in Topeka, KS; the third, in Vicksburg and New Orleans. The Lamplighter Ministries website gives details of the 11:11 Campaign, including places to be visited by each team.
Jon and Jolene have asked me to co-lead the 11:11 Campaign and to speak out all along the way, telling what God has revealed about the Civil War, the South and the church. Jon describes the purpose this way:
"In late June, three teams will embark on a strategic journey as catalysts of God's dream of awakening and union. They will seek God's face at wells of revival from Northampton MA to Topeka KS, believing for the release of a Third Great Awakening. And on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, they will traverse historic battlefields, asking for an end to supernaturally-charged division on our soil."
You're invited to join us at any one or more locations.
Also, if you want to sow into my portion of the 11:11 Campaign, here are two ways you can give.
To make a tax-deductible donation: Make your check payable to The Epaphras Foundation, designate your gift for Deborah Brunt and mail to the address below:
The Epaphras Foundation
1346 Timberlake Road
Evansville, IN 47710
To make a donation directly to Key Truths, Open Gates (NOT tax-deductible), click here. |
We Confess
|  God is revealing what we haven't wanted to see in order that we can become who we truly are. He holds out this promise:
"I will cleanse them of bloodguilt which I have not yet cleansed" (Joel 3:21 CJB).
Crying to him for a spirit of grace and supplication, we explore how covenant with the Confederacy still hinders revival in the conservative US church culture. As we confess, cleansing, healing, life, identity, oneness, witness and true worship flow.
As we confess, our LORD is honored and his kingdom furthered.
Teaching on DVD. 90 min. Purchase at keytruths.com. |
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