Mine Eyes Have Seen the Gory
Two historians tell why Christian thought went AWOL during the civil war.
Reviewed by Elesha Coffman | posted 8/01/2006 12:00AM
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Stout's conclusion is unsettling. If 19th-century warmongers' faults lay not in their context but in themselves, then one has to wonder whether every society—despite or because of its piety—is prone to the same grisly excesses. But another concern also arises. Stout has allowed his subjects' faults to subsume their selves. In demonstrating how participation in total war dehumanized Civil War Americans, Stout dehumanizes them further, depicting their actions as morally inexplicable.
Perhaps this danger frets any high-stakes moral history. The risk is lower for Noll, because he limits his critique to elites. Stout, by contrast, indicts an entire generation. And despite his valiant introductory attempt to separate "moral as ethically weighted" from "moral as ethically correct," he reflexively holds discourse of the first type to the standard of the second. Stout argues persuasively that the enormity of the war, as well as the general shallowness of thinking about it, requires condemnation, and he backs up his judgment amply. Still, one cannot help feeling that even the immoral deserve gentler handling.
Elesha Coffman is a doctoral student at Duke University and a senior editor of Christian History & Biography.
Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Related Elsewhere:
The Civil War as a Theological Crisis and Upon the Altar of the Nation is available from Amazon.com and other book retailers.
More information about Upon the Altar of the Nation is available from Viking Press.
More information about The Civil War as a Theological Crisis is available from The University of North Carolina Press.
A webcast of Mark Noll discussing the Bible in American public life, including much discussion of the Civil War is available from the Library of Congress.
Christian History & Biography devoted an issue to The Untold Story of Christianity & the Civil War.
More articles from Books & Culture on the Civil War are available from CTLibrary.com.
For book lovers, our 2006 CT book awards are available online, along with our book awards for 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, and 1997, as well as our Books of the Twentieth Century. For other coverage or reviews, see our Books archive and the weekly Books & Culture Corner.
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