Topic 197: On Going to War

Carol:

     Soldiers of God

Today’s topic was one of the first we pulled from the basket eleven months ago when we started our daily theme project. Too complex, too controversial, too somber, too personal—too everything-- for a 500-600 word essay. Megan is braver than me, more honest in tackling the tough topics that enflame debate and fracture families. But, I’m thinking this morning about The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the thousands of American clergymen who had heart and spirit wrenching decisions to make about their congregations, their families and their own roles in the unfolding of the American Civil War.
 

My paternal grandmother had DeWitt, Malone and Caldwell relatives in most of the southern states. As might be predicted, her great-grandfather Lewis Lee DeWitt Senior, pastor of Bassett Creek Baptist Church, took up the battle cry of the Confederacy and volunteered for the Home Guards of Clarke County, Alabama. Four of his sons, numerous nephews and son-in-law had already joined.  But, the battle lines were not so clearly drawn in the larger Baptist denomination. By the beginning of the war, the Church had already split over the issue of slavery, with the Southern Baptist Convention formed in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia (source “Southern Baptist.”).
 

The Presbyterian Church had also split into southern and northern factions. My grandmother’s Caldwell relatives during the Civil War were mostly Presbyterians:  Rev. Cyrus K Caldwell in Tennessee, Rev Andrew Harper Caldwell of Panola County, Mississippi,  and Rev John Madison McKnitt in Rome, Georgia. Rev. Robert Caldwell Grundy had become the pastor of a Presbyterian church in Memphis, Tennessee in 1857, but despite his southern roots,  

In the climactic period leading up to the Civil war he courageously and loyally opposed the secession of the southern states. . .after the war was precipitated and the city was occupied by Confederate troops they compelled him to close his church, besides which he suffered other indignities by reason of his adherence to his convictions (Connelley and Coulter 66)

 By the end of the war, Rev. Grundy had moved his family from the hostility of the Memphis congregation to Ohio where he died in 1865.   


My paternal grandfather had numerous clergy relatives in his Grandfather Cowles’ extended family, many of whom  who had dispersed throughout the Midwest from Connecticut and New York. In September 1862, Congregationalist Minister Salmon Cowles was living in Lee County, Iowa when he wrote to a Massachusetts cousin:
 

I do not know what are God's designs by such terrible judgments upon our beloved Country -- But my mind was struck forcibly with the conviction from the first, & the conviction has been increasing up to this time, that God has some grand purpose to accomplish, by this mighty uprising, & awful chastisement.

Unlike the Bapists and the Presbyterians, the Congregational Church had escaped the divisiveness of the Civil War mainly because of demographics( few adherents in the southern states) although the Church was divided among its leadership on how to end slavery.
 
Another Cowles cousin, Presbyterian minister Sylvester Cowles of New York wrote to the American Anti-Slavery Society of of the anguish of a young church member who had visited family in Alabama. “To see members of the same church sit at the communion table of our Lord one day, and the next to see one seize any weapon and knock  the other down, as he had seen, he could not live there” (Source: American  Slavery as It Is 177-178).
 

It turns out religion in America, the twists and turns that take us in different spiritual directions, is not so simple. Religion is not a tall, steady, oak tree with a sturdy Methodist branch here and a Baptist branch there but a rambling, prickly vine that sends shoots into unexpected places. And, in 1861 for the clergy of America, soldiers of God, never was the issue of going to war more complex, more controversial, more sober, more personal.

Sources:
American  Slavery as it is: Testimony of a thousand witnesses.
Connelley, William Elsey and Ellis Merton Coulter. History of Kentucky, Vol. 5. P 66

 

Megan:

Today I have transcribed selections from my journal written in March and April 2003, when we first invaded Iraq. At that time, I had been studying abroad in England, but was back in the US for Spring Break. I could probably say more to contextualize and/or explain these entries, but I'm just going to let them stand.

March 19, 2003
WAR today.
I’m in Arizona now. Bush gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq. 

Tonight we bombed them. And the war began.
 

I have no thoughts.

March 22, 2003
The WAR. (It’s called Operation Iraqi Freedom) For f***’s sake.

I leaned against a pillar, eating ice cream and watching the protest like it was another form of entertainment, like this war itself – flip on the TV, there it is, we can watch the bombs get dropped for free, without risk, without much concern for those standing below and when it gets boring, we turn it off. And when the marchers turned the corner towards me, I practically ran to the car – didn’t want to be recognized with my ice cream apathy and I drove to the mall to complete the transition into a person I loathe. I can’t make any excuses. This is not okay.

Later:
How is a foreign attack on an American fort while we are at war considered an act of terrorism? If they resist, defend themselves, they become terrorists? Where is the logic? What am I missing? The reason I don’t pay attention is because I am so irritated by the vocabulary, the implications of “evil doers” and “regime change” and “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” It feels like propaganda.

I’m not paranoid, but I don’t believe what’s going on. I think the government is hiding information. We don’t know that he has Weapons of Mass Destruction. Aren’t we just making a country of soon-to-be fatherless children hate Americans more?

But the soldiers are surrendering. Maybe they do want him gone. Maybe this is the right thing.

I’ll never pretend to be politically and socially aware again.

April 9, 2003
In the mornings, we watch WAR on television. My friend thinks if we were at war all the time, there would be WarTV because people wouldn’t want to watch it on every channel. We can turn the war on and off. The TV is dark and we sit on the porch because it’s a sunny day. We watch the cat watch the birds.

They took down a statue of him and the Iraqis rode the head through the street. Wonder briefly if it was a good idea, maybe the war is good. But Rumsfeld apologizes to the relatives of an Afgani family, accidentally killed yesterday. We don’t know where Saddam is. Or Osama. And we change the channel and watch Regis and Kelly.

April 21, 2003
On the plane to England, but still on the ground.

The WAR might be over. Dunno. The Regime is over anyway. Strange how I thought I’d experience war in a foreign country, but it starts just after I leave and is over before I return. Not that the military action is over… I wish I knew more about things, but I never know if what’s being said is true. And I don’t know what I mean by truth.