Darwin's views of the American Civil War

Charles Darwin relied upon four close friends as he developed his theory of natural selection. Charles Lyell, Joseph Hooker, and Thomas Huxley in England, and Asa Gray in America were his four stalwarts.

When the Civil War erupted in 1861, Darwin's fervent anti-slavery position brought him to disappointment in Lincoln, and conflict with his American friend Gray. A Lincoln man, Gray drew Darwin's ire for supporting the Union over immediate abolition. He lost all enthusiasm for the North when Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in those rebelling states, but not the loyal border states of Maryland, Kentucky, Delaware, and Missouri.

Writing to Gray in 1863, he declared:

Some few, and I am one, even wish to God, though at the loss of millions of lives, that the North would proclaim a crusade against slavery. In the long run, a million horrid deaths would be amply repaid in the cause of humanity...Great God how I should like to see that greatest curse on Earth, slavery, abolished.

Darwin's willingness to sacrifice millions of American lives comes across as quite shocking a century and a half later. The statement reenforces the thought that great scientists may be great in science, but no more qualified to comment on other matters -- theology, or public policy-- than the average Joe.

There are hints here of the kind of totalitarian "greater good" that sacrificed individual rights for some noble concept of the welfare of all. Those kinds of experiments end in the horrific excesses of communism and fascism that we know so well.

And it also brings to mind Sam Harris' recent comments complimenting the fascists in Europe for their approach to dealing with the rise of Islam in Europe.

February 12, 1809

Most people know that Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809. Lincoln shares that birthday with none other than Charles Darwin ! More on Darwin's views on Lincoln and the American Civil War in my next post.

The picture at the top left is of Lincoln, aged 54 in 1863. The picture at the top right is of Darwin, aged 51 in 1860, a year after the publication of Origin of Species.

Asa Gray -- Darwin's "Dove"

Asa Gray (1810-1888) was one of the three scientists Charles Darwin trusted enough to provide pre-publication comments on his famous 1859 work Origin of Species. Gray, born in Oneida County, New York, was by 1857 a professor of Botany at Harvard and an internationally recognized scientist.

Gray and Darwin had been friends from the late 1830's. A fascinating exchange of letters beginning in 1857 between the two presage the entire debate over the implications of Darwin's theory for belief in God.

Gray, a believing Christian and strong Presbyterian his whole life, though critical of Darwin's insistence on the random nature of mutations (not a surprise that Gray would lean more towards design, now is it ?) became Darwin's strongest support in America. Called Darwin's "dove" to contrast him from the aggressively atheistic Thomas Huxley (Darwin's "bulldog"), Gray debated with his Harvard colleague, Louis Agassiz, on the topic for several years subsequent to the publication of the theory.

Beginning with Gray in America and Temple in England, a long line of Christian scientists were strong proponents of Darwin, including Fisher in the 1930's, and of course Francis S. Collins today.

Thanks to David Dobbs, author of Reef Madness, for emphasizing to me the important role Asa Gray played in the acceptance of Darwin's theory.

Claiming my blog on Technorati

Technorati Profile

With this post, I am claiming my blog on Technorati.

The good news is that traffic for this blog places this blog in the top 2% of all blogs in the world.

The bad news is there are 48 million blogs, and this blog is ranked about 1 millionth !

Another reason to admire Christopher Hitchens

This from the conclusion of Christopher Hitchens' recent article in the City Journal on the threat to Western Civilization from Islam:

When I read Sam Harris’s irresponsible remark that only fascists seemed to have the right line, I murmured to myself: “Not while I’m alive, they won’t.” Nor do I wish to concede that Serbo-fascist ethnic cleansing can appear more rational in retrospect than it did at the time. The Islamist threat itself may be crude, but this is an intricate cultural and political challenge that will absorb all of our energies for the rest of our lives: we are all responsible for doing our utmost as citizens as well as for demanding more imagination from our leaders.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Christopher, have you read Chapter 6 of Letter to an Atheist already ?

The Dawkins Delusion

The spate of recent and upcoming atheist attacks on religion could provide me with a little cottage industry of Christian apologetics book ideas.

Letter to an Atheist, my response to Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation should be coming out from Harpeth River Press next month, "God willing and if the creek don't rise."


The current book The God Delusion by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, dubbed recently by the BBC as Britain's #1 intellectual, provides the opportunity for an alliterative response -- The Dawkins Delusion. What's his delusion ? That RNA arose from inanimate matter.

And of course, my all time favorite atheist, Christopher Hitchens, is soon to come out with God is not Great: The Case Against Religion.

I look forward to reading Hitchens' book. He has, over the past 20 years, provided me with hours of clever, interesting, and merciless entertainment as he lampoons the foibles of the well known and the weasely. He's one of the smartest guys on the planet, and has a wickedly devastating sense of humor.

Unlike Mr. Harris, whose work is filled with all sorts of misrepresentations (my book documents 22 factual errors in his slim little 91 page volume), my expectation is that Hitchens' book will be factually tied down. Which is why I look forward to reading it.

Watch Hitchens on any of his many C-SPAN appearances and you can't help but be fascinated by the man's erudition, biting satire, and personal self indulgence. I mention his self indulgence as an observation, not a condemnation, however, as he himself is quite unrepentant for his own love of drink.

"He's a mess !" as my grandmother used to say about some people. But he is a mess who keeps your mind challenged and entertained every step of the way.

There he sits on camera, bloodshot eyes scouring the room for the drink he so desperately needs, smoke curling up from his ever present cigarette, as he destroys yet another self important and intellectually challenged example of blow harded puffery.

Hitchens is an enormously interesting and sympathetic character. Sympathetic from a safe distance, most likely. A Brit, he lost his mother early in life, and grew up pretty much on his own with his younger brother Peter. Christopher became a Trotskyite, moved to the States, saw the light and became an interesting blend of left wing theories and neo conservative policies. Along the way, he became estranged from his brother, a believing Christian as well as a political conservative, and eventually reconciled, at least in part.

We'll see how many copies of Letter to an Atheist we can sell from the legendary trunk of the car. If it works, I'll have a decision to make on writing.

In addition to a title for the Dawkins' response, I have a terrific title for the Hitchens' response as well. Of course, there's this little matter of actually writing the response that might make the whole undertaking a little difficult.

Back to Fort Desperate, the final draft awaiting, or on to the Christian apologetics cottage industry, so kindly prepared for me by Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens ? Perhaps Darwin is right. It will be a matter of natural selection to determine which genre, for the moment, survives.

And the connection between Fort Desperate and the potential series of Christian apologetics ? There actually is a compelling theme emerging there, but I'll leave that for another day and another post.

Pasteur, Darwin, the Origin of Life, and God

Chapter 3 of Letter to an Atheist , which deals with Science and Faith, continues to both fascinate and frustrate me. The objective of the chapter is to demonstrate that the advance of science is not inconsistent with a belief in a Biblical God.

Along the way, though, the scientific method becomes almost completely intertwined with religious beliefs, personal agendas, and politics.

Is it enough, for instance, to simply demonstrate that Darwin himself, though by this time an agnostic, considered it completely possible for a committed Christian to legitimately believe and support his Theory of Evolution ? Indeed, when seven prominent Anglican theologians, including future Archbishop of Canterbury Frederick Temple, wrote Essays and Reviews in 1860, a year after the publication of Origin of the Species, Darwin was quick to embrace their support.

But soon, the most aggressive defenders of the scientific theories of Darwin also became the most aggressive promoters of agnosticism and Atheism. In Darwin's lifetime it was Thomas Huxley, known then as "Darwin's Bulldog." Today, it's Richard Dawkins, whom Discovery Magazine has dubbed "Darwin's Rottweiler".

Dawkins' best selling God Delusion makes the case for atheism using the science of Darwinian evolution.











To my lay person's mind, though, Dawkins loses his argument completely when he makes a completely unscientific assumption.

"In the beginning there was a Replicator Gene, from which all life flowed." Call it a Replicator Gene or Primordial Soup, Dawkin's invention is more alchemy and wishful thinking than it is science.

Dawkins argues for a one time only creation of animate life from an inanimate object.

Earlier in history, this was called "spontaneous generation" (see illustration of Pasteur experiment above) and was thoroughly disproved by the great scientist Louis Pasteur in 1864, the man behind The Germ Theory, rabies vaccines, and the pasteurization of wine and milk.

Somehow, because Dawkins is a genius, we are apparently supposed to allow him a pass on this fatal error.

Darwin himself offered no explanation for how that original element of life began. He felt the idea that it could have been generated by some divine being was a possibility, but he concluded he just couldn't know either way.

Into the fray on this topic jump the "Young Earth Creationists", who are thoroughly discredited in their concepts of the age of the earth by the quantum physics discoveries of Ernest Rutherford, which make radioactive dating possible. But the "Young Earth Creationists" seem so completely unhinged that they make it difficult for other alternatives to Evolution to be taken quite so seriously.

Enter concepts of Intelligent Design, which account for the strong Biblical religious beliefs as such scientific greats as Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, and Pasteur.

The universe is so complex, so marvelous, it must have been created by some higher power as part of some grand design.

Personally, I'm with Dr. Ralph Seelke, professor of Biology at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. This area of inquiry offers great promise, the hint perhaps, of some new theory that may combine elements of Darwin with ID.

But, like any scientific theory, Intelligent Design needs to be subjected to the scientific method. And that means:

1. A clear, well defined description of the theory.
2. Empirical testing of the theory

More Wilberforces in history

(Clockwise from top: Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Robins, Olivia Wilberforce)

Every time I turn around these days, I find another story about a William Wilberforce descendant. This time it's the story of Octavia Wilberforce, granddaughter of his son Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, the nemesis of Thomas Huxley.

The seventh child of seven children, Octavia refused a proper marriage, and chose instead to self-finance a medical education. Along the way she became the lesbian lover of the American playwright and novelist Elizabeth Robins. Olivia purchased a practice in Brighton, where she lived near the famous writer Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard.

Olivia became the Woolf family doctor, and on March 26, 1941, Leonard asked Dr. Wilberforce to visit Virginia, concerned about her mental health. Wilberforce advised that no action be taken. The next day, Virginia committed suicide by walking into a nearby river and drowning.

Another Wilberforce

It seems I can't escape the legacy of the Wilberforce family. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (pictured at the left) figures prominently in Chapter 3 ( Science and Faith) of Letter to an Atheist, just as his father, William Wilberforce, figured prominently in Chapter 2 (On the Bible, Christianity and slavery). Samuel faced biologist Thomas Huxley (pictured at the right) in a famous 1860 debate over Darwin's theories.

Huxley, an agnostic, championed Darwin's theories outlined in the publication of The Origin of Species in the previous year, while Wilberforce defended Biblical orthodoxy and "creationist" view of man's development. Many accounts of the debate that survive claim Huxley bested Wilberforce that evening, though I so far can only discover a clever retort made by Huxley to Wilberforce, as opposed to the scientific topics discussed.

I am searching for more information on this particular interchange, because it seems to me to be a turning point in the overall "faith orientation" of the scientific community. If anyone has any sources they can point me to on this topic, I would be very interested in hearing from you !

Sam Harris and Oscar Wilde

What do my nemesis Sam Harris and Oscar Wilde have in common ? (Oscar Wilde at right)
To find out the answer to this pressing question, you'll have to scour through Chapter 3 of Letter to an Atheist on Science and Faith.
Here's a hint:

Oscar Wilde had one of his silliest characters say something in The Importance of Being Earnest that Sam, a century later, echoes in Letter to a Christian Nation.(Sam Harris--no, that's not Ben Stiller--at right)

Landmark Booksellers Event Now April 15

The Landmark Booksellers joint signing with Christine Schaub and me has been rescheduled for Sunday, April 15 from 3 pm to 5 pm. I talked with my publication team (kudos to the man in publishing, Kevin Gwinn, Terry Myers, Nancy Reese, and Sara Hamil) and the conclusion is -- let's make Letter to an Atheist a great book, not an ok book.

The extra time will allow me to finish the book properly, round up the back jacket blurbs, and crank up the PR campaign in time for the April 15 book signing.

Many thanks to Joel Tomlin for allowing us to move the date.

Did Voltaire Kidnap Newton's Faith ?

Working on the chapter of Letter to an Atheist that addresses Sam Harris' assertion that religion always seeks to subvert scientific inquiry, I've run across a wonderful new book.

Rodney Stark, now a professor at Baylor, argues in The Glory of God that Isaac Newton (1643-1727) , along with Galileo probably the most influential originator of the Scientific Revolution, was an empiricist who believed that his scientific experiments confirmed the existence of a Biblical God.

Voltaire (1694-1778), living in exile in England from 1726 to 1729, never met Newton, but befriended his heir and niece, Catherine Conduitt. From her he learned of, and later popularized, the apocryphal story of Newton developing the theory of gravity while sitting under an apple tree. An apple falling from the tree, it was said, prompted his thinking on the matter.

Voltaire popularized and championed Newton's empirical scientific approach, but supplanted Newton's Christian faith with his own Anti-Christian Deism. And it is that intellectual legacy that began the perceived split between faith and scientific reason.

Voltaire's own committment to the discovery of truth through the application of reason, of course, is highly suspect, given his virulent anti-Semitism and clear racism towards the black race. A wealthy man through speculations on the French state lottery, Voltaire increased his wealth by investing in the infamous Compagnie des Indes, the government approved slave trading monopoly that transported over 1 million Africans to the French colonies during the 18th century.

Another example of how Sam Harris' vaunted "secular rationality" easily transforms itself into the deification of the rationalist's personal concepts.

Random musings of a writer facing his deadline

It is an odd sort of masochism, this writing hobby. Note that I use the word "hobby" rather than "business." Though I generally don't agree with all of Dave Ramsey's pronouncements, I do agree with the definitional distinctions he makes between a hobby and a business. A business makes money. A hobby takes money. So far, writing is a hobby that is about to become even "hobbier".

My friend Keith Raffel, for whom writing has progressed from a hobby to a part time business, provided a gentle nudge for another posting. It is good to see that someone is actually reading this blog, though by my page views it would appear that there are far more readers than commenters.

(picture of David Hume at right) As to the writing, I have been struggling to find the intellectual underpinnings of John Calhoun's "slavery as a a positive good" speech in 1837, and am pleased to report that I have indeed found it, and in exactly the camp I thought it would be. Remember, I am countering Sam Harris' contention that "the most committed" Christians were responsible for creating and sustaining slavery. As to the origin of the African slave trade, it is clearly to be found in the pure greed of Portuguese, Spanish, and English traders. As to its defense once established, I have found the "smoking gun", if you will. Calhoun's position was a logical extension of the "rational" and "moral objectivist" philosophy articulated by the icon of the Enlightenment in Scotland, the philosopher David Hume. For the full argument, you'll have to read Letter to an Atheist, but suffice it to say that Mr. Hume's racism was exposed in his 1740 work Treatise on Human Nature.

So the intellectual torch on this issue passes from David Hume to James Tobin to Thomas Dew to John C. Calhoun, each writer becoming progressively more exultant on the superiority of the white race to the black, with Calhoun firmly pronouncing by 1837 that social organization would best be served indefinitely into the future with white masters and black slaves.

Set two tables for dinner. At one place Hume, Tobin, Dew, and Calhoun. At the other place the politically engaged Christians who worked on both sides of the Atlantic to end slavery -- Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, John Fee, Thomas Jefferson Randolph. With whom would my nemesis Mr. Harris find commonality ?

That's right ! The defenders of slavery.

Isn't research wonderful ?

A tight timeline for Letter to an Atheist

Regular readers of this blog are aware of the mid course correction my writing has taken. Fort Desperate remains in hiatus, awaiting the final edit, while I focus furiously and exclusively on finishing Letter to an Atheist by February 10.

It will end up being about 150 pages, and the first complete draft is done. The problem with a polemic is to write with an engagingly clever and zingy style. My nemesis, Mr. Harris, has accomplished such a style, so the standard for writing style is quite high.

Readers will pleased to know that my appendix listing of 25 factual errors in Letter to a Christian Nation is complete, and quite zingy.

We've selected a book cover style, got the printer (Print-on-Demand) lined up and ready to go on receipt of the PDF files.

I'll be relying on the members of the Williamson County Public Library Writers Group for last minute editing help, but I feel pretty confident we'll make the February 10 deadline.

Book blurbs present a bit of a timing problem. I'm looking for just three good blurbs, but don't know if I'll have enough time to get the galleys out for review, with time for comments before the final publication. We might see a back jacket with no blurbs. Can you say second edition ?

Working backwards to the March 4 joint book signing with Christine Schaub at Landmark Booksellers in Franklin, I'll need to send out a couple hundred post cards around February 18th, which means they need to be ordered around the 10th. We're also looking at email blasts late February, and Christine's publicist will take the lead on press releases.

Walden Media sent the DVDs of the movie Amazing Grace and some additional materials, and Christine and I have our first "dry run" of our book signing presentation scheduled with a small group of a church on February 9.

One issue remains to be decided, and that's the name we give the book signing event. I had original considered "The Role of Christian Faith in the Abolition of Slavery", but that sounds a little too stuffily historical. And, abolition is really just an example of the role of Christian faith in the political process.

So, dear blog reader, if you have any ideas as to what we should call the book signing event, please leave a comment here with your thoughts.

Original Sin

Is God Working Through a Lesbian Canadian Muslim ?

No that question is not the punchline to a bad joke.

Irshad Manji, a Muslim woman who was born in Uganda and emigrated at the age of four to Canada with her family, has written an extraordinarily hopeful book, The Trouble with Islam. Published in 2005, the book argues that the Muslim world's fanaticism stems directly from an overly literal reading of the Koran. Manji advocates the revival of an early Muslim tradition -- the ijtihad, a process in which theological answers are determined by Muslims using other Islamic works as well as a process of dialogue and inquiry.

Her goal is to establish a worldwide network of moderate Muslims who reject the violent fanaticism of jihad.

A very encouraging start that suggests a couple of thoughts.

First, notice the eerie parallel between the difficulties caused in 19th Century America on the topic of slavery by an adherence to a rigidly literalistic interpretion of the Bible.

Second, consider the extraordinarily poor job we in the West have been doing to aggressively advocate and support the growth of the type of moderate Islam championed by Ms. Manji.

Lest I overestimate the optimism one can associate with Ms. Manji and her philosophy, consider her very "feel good liberal" suggestions made earlier this month on 3 ways to improve the world.

1. If this hellish war [in Iraq] is all about democracy, why not hold a simultaneous referendum in America and Iraq about what to do? Politicians from each country would go to the other country to make their case to the people. American politicians would have to get out of the green zone -- which the Iraq Study Group barely did -- and Iraqi politicians would have to stump in those states where the loss of U.S. soldiers has been highest.

Imagine an established democracy and an emerging democracy working together to resolve a conflict of global proportions. If nothing else comes out of this cross-cultural referendum, the people of each nation would learn something about each other. Like "Wow, they're just as confused as we are." Empathy can only be a good thing.

2. Which brings me to another nagging problem -- American power. I'm not one of those resentful Canadians who screams that the United States lies at the root of all evil. (Sorry to disappoint.) But as a global citizen who's affected by Washington's decisions, I have the right to propose this idea: The American constitution should be amended so that any president who declares war must commit a family member to the front lines.

Consider the pressure this would put on the president at the next family gathering, when the relatives interrogate him or her about why their own flesh and blood is on the firing line. The price of launching a premature war is that you could become an outcast in your household. That's sure to make the commander- in-chief think twice (or, in the case of pure ideologues, think once).

3. None of this is to let Europe off the hook. The European Union can be an honest broker between the U.S. and Iran to defuse the nuclear issue. The key is to engage Iraq's top Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Here's the idea: Europeans should quietly lobby al-Sistani to issue a fatwa (legal opinion) against Iran's efforts to go nuclear.

All three of these suggestions are relatively naive non-starters, but, on balance, I can do nothing but cheer Ms. Manji on in her efforts to create a worldwide network of moderate Muslims.

Transforming a "necessary evil" to a "positive good"

Digging more deeply into research on the origins of the "slavery as a positive good" argument first articulated on the national scene by John Calhoun in a speech to the United States Senate in 1837, I'm finding a fascinating story. (photo of Calhoun on the right)

Calhoun was a moral objectivist, United States Senator, and plantation owner from South Carolina, and though the most well known and first national politician to set forward the thesis, he was not the first.

Sam Harris would have us believe that the argument originated with Southern clergymen, who were simply reading the Bible as it is written.

But the originator of the argument was not a Christian clergyman, but another moral objectivist, Thomas R. Dew (1802-1846), a political economist and President of William and Mary College who published in 1832 a glowing utilitarian defense of slavery in his Review of Debates in the Virginia Legislature.

The first Christian clergyman to advance the argument was James Smylie of Mississippi, who published his Response to the Chillicothe Congregation in 1836. As historian Lawrence Tise pointed out, Smylie, along with the other early clergymen who advanced the "slavery as a positive good argument" were all slaveholders themselves. Smylie owned 53 slaves, and was the third largest slaveholder in Amite County, Mississippi.

The abolitionist Gerrit Smith responded to Smylie with his own defense of the abolitionist position in 1837. Smith lived in Peterboro, New York, a small village in central New York, near Munnsville, another small village in which I lived as a young boy. I remember learning of Smith at the time, reading a few road side signs about him , and being disappointed that his role was that of an intellectual and not a general. Now, I wish I had learned more about him !

The curious case of James Henley Thornwell

James Henley Thornwell (1812-1862) was a Presbyterian clergyman from South Carolina who was one of the most articulate defenders of the "Bible sanctions slavery" argument during the three decades preceeding the American Civil War. Unlike John C.Calhoun, who argued that "slavery is a positive good" purely on grounds of social utility (and without a single reference to the Bible), Thornwell advanced a more subtle argument.

While "man-stealing" and the African slave trade were prohibited by the Bible, the institution of slavery itself, he argued, was not prohibited. Christian masters, however, had certain obligations which they must fulfill towards their slaves. Slaves owed their labor to their masters, but nothing more. Thornwell promoted literacy, knowledge of the Bible, establishment of the institution of marriage within slavery, and respect for the slave family.

First heard on the public stage in the 1840's, Thornwell had, by 1860, significantly modified his views. Though pointing to a long list of Bible passages he claimed supported slavery, Thornwell acknoweldged that the institution itself was clearly not within the spirit of the Gospel. Discouraged that masters would be able to consistently fulfill their Christian duties towards slaves, and mindful of the likelihood of terrible war about to break out around the topic, Thornwell was about to unveil his own proposal for the gradual emancipation of all slaves when his fellow South Carolinians fired on Fort Sumter.

Once the issue was joined, however, Thornwell threw his lot in completely with the Confederacy.

History is filled with "what ifs" and "if onlys". The student of history today can only wonder how events would have unfolded had Thornwell come to his epiphany as little as a year before 1860.

Mike Cope reviews Letter to a Christian Nation

Mike Cope, the wonderful preacher at Highland Church of Christ in Abilene, Texas, offers a surprisingly gentle review of Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation.

When [Sam Harris] says that “atheism is not a philosophy . . . it is simply an admission of the obvious,” I think he’s self-deceived. Isn’t that like an overly-confident declaration of being opposed to over-confidence? And when he’s utterly amazed that “80 percent of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God,” perhaps he should ask if there is more going on in this world than a scientist can test and a rationalist can figure out.

Why does faith flourish in pediatric oncology wings of hospitals? (It’s the question that led Dr. Diane Komp, a pediatric oncologist, back to faith.)

But having said that, I think Harris has done us a favor by writing honestly and clearly about what faith looks like from his perspective. He has pointed out some things that we must face if we’re going to have a voice in this world. I’d love to be in a study group with a bunch of university students working through this. I trust that our faith is not too fragile to face such arguments with compassion and truth.

For his complete blog posting on the topic, check out his blog at Preacher Mike.

I am surprised that Mike attributes honesty to Harris' argument. I've already documented 25 instances of intellectual dishonesty in Harris' slim 91 page volume (starting off with completely misrepresenting a Gallup Poll on creationism and evolution, continuing to knowingly misquoting Christian evangelicals, and ending up with falsely portraying study data that he should know is flawed).

I don't disagree with Mike that we should be ready to take atheism's best shot at our Christian beliefs, but if Harris' argument is the best shot that philosophy can offer, none of us need worry that any clear and honest thinker will have his faith shaken !

Joint Book Signing March 4 at Landmark Booksellers

Christine Schaub, author of The Longing Season, and I will hold a joint book signing at Landmark Booksellers in Franklin, Tennessee on Sunday, March 4 from 3 pm to 5 pm. The event will include our joint presentation on The Role of Christian Faith in the Abolition of Slavery, as well as selected film clips from the soon to be released movie Amazing Grace.

I will be signing copies of my first book, Letter to an Atheist, scheduled for publication by Harpeth River Press on February 23, 2007, the same day Amazing Grace the movie premieres.

I devote an entire chapter of my book to debunking the false claim that Christian Faith, acting in complete concert with the Bible, created and sustained slavery in America. Contrary to the argument made by Sam Harris in Letter to a Christian Nation, a two fold failure of the Evangelical Christian movement in America contributed to the Civil War as the ultimate arbiter of the slavery question.

First, both traditional and Evangelical Christians in the South were inordinately influenced by the "slavery is a positive good" argument developed by moral objectivists such as John Calhoun, William Yancey, and Edmund Ruffin, and constructed contrived arguments from Old Testament passages to falsely claim that the Bible not only tolerated slavery, but in fact sanctioned it.

Second, Evangelical Christians who knew that the golden rule -- "love thy neighbor as thyself" -- could only mean that the Bible and Jesus Christ condemned slavery -- Methodists who followed John Wesley and Stone-Campbell movement revivalists -- either kept quiet in their Southern homes, moved North, or like John Fee of Kentucky, suffered terrible ostracism and persecution from their neighbors.

Where Evangelical Christians in Britain waged a successful political fight to end slavery, Evangelical Christians in America either failed to wage that fight effectively, or were co-opted in their theology by moral objectivists.

Ms. Schaub and I have put together quite an interesting presentation, that should run about an hour or so, and we welcome the opportunity to speak to your small group prior to the book signing for a practice trial run. If you would like to "book" this preview presentation, please email me at mike@michaelpatrickleahy.com.