More recently, my denomination has voted, but the animosities continue.īecause faith was, and is, so central to peoples’ lives, and because people had different perspectives and life situations, and because those differences shaped their theology, this led to continuing division then and does so now. The fighting ended, but the divisions remained. Leading up to and through the Civil War, and even after it, the different sides looked to their faith to substantiate what they wanted to believe and to understand what was happening. But nothing is harder than seeing the ridiculous biases that we accept ourselves.” “Nothing is easier than seeing the ridiculous biases of the past or the ridiculous biases that other people hold. Burger and Michael Starbird offer the following observation: In their book “Five Elements of Effective Thinking,” Edward B. And, as was the case with our forebears, we are all certain about the correctness of our positions. The differing ways of dealing with Holy Writ are eerily similar with one side focusing on specific texts while the other drawing general inferences from scripture taken as a whole. Of course there are other issues, but we do tend to focus on that which is closest to us. The subjects of the struggle are different and varied, but I see them most acutely within my own denomination. What surprised me is that some of the same arguments about the use of scripture that took place then are being utilized today some 180 years later. I ordered Noll’s book because I wanted to better understand the nation and state of religion at that period in history. In particular, those who saw the scripture as a sanction for slavery were more insistent on pointing to the passages that seemed so transparently to support their position and more confident in decrying the wanton disregard so willfully to dismiss Biblical truths.” “The general result was that by the 1840s American debates over the Bible and slavery had assumed a new gravity. Noll writing in his book “The Civil War As A Theological Crisis” (an important book on any number of levels) offers the following description: More and more people used their understanding of scripture to buttress their political arguments, and almost everyone claimed that God was on their side. It was a hard time with an impending Civil War just twenty years away and competing ideas concerning the practice of slavery dividing the nation and the nation’s churches. In 1840 First United Methodist Church of Austin, the last congregation that I served, began worshiping. One of those “Berra-isms” presently comes to mind as indicated by the title of today’s mental meanderings, that being, “It’s deja vu all over again.” Yogi Berra, Hall of Fame catcher for the New York Yankees, is remembered almost as much for what he said and how he said it as for his prowess as a ball player.

Deja vu all over again yogi berra