Neo-Confederates and the Revival of ‘Theological War’ for the ‘Christian Nation’
Sarah Posner on the political rise of Christian Reconstructionism, and its ties to the neo-Confederate movement that advocates secession and whitewashes slavery.
After my piece on Michele Bachmann’s Christian (Reconstructionist) legal education was published, I received a note from Edward Sebesta, co-editor of two books on neo-confederates, Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction (Univ. of Texas Press, 2008), and The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The “Great Truth” About the “Lost Cause” (Univ. Press of Mississippi 2010). He passed along one of his own essays, “The US Civil War as a Theological War: Confederate Christian Nationalism and the League of the South,” co-written with Euan Hague and published in the Canadian Review of American Studies, an eye-opening and extremely useful look at the ties between Christian Reconstructionists and the League of the South.
As I discuss in my Bachmann piece, the Christian Reconstructionists behind the Institute on the Constitution as well as the framework for teaching “biblical law” at Christian law schools like the one Bachmann attended at Oral Roberts University, have ties to the neo-confederate group League of the South. At Salon, Justin Elliott has a story, also based in part on Sebesta’s research, about the ties between Rick Perry, who has advocated for secession, and the LOS (which endorsed his 1998 run for lieutenant governor) and the neo-confederate group Sons of Confederate Veterans (of which he was a member).
For the ties between the neo-confederates and the Christian Reconstructionists, Sebesta and Hague’s essay is illuminating, and (without doing so explicitly) explains a great deal about how the “Christian nation” mythology promoted by David Barton and others has become enmeshed with a whitewashing of the history of slavery in the United States.