"Pulpits of the Lost Cause compares the faith and politics of former Confederate chaplains during the Reconstruction period, and argues for some counterintuitive understandings of their beliefs and practices in the post-war period. Stephen L. Longenecker demonstrates that while some former chaplains vigorously defended the Lost Cause and were predictably conservative in the pulpit, embracing orthodoxy and resisting religious innovation, others were unexpectedly progressive and advocated on behalf of evolution, theological liberalism, and modern Biblical criticism. As proponents of the Lost Cause, they extolled the past, to be sure, but as religious progressives they looked to the future. They were compartmentalizers. The study thus finds unanticipated versatility in the Lost Cause movement. Rather than conforming to a single, simple explanation, the Lost Cause was a complicated popular movement that meant different things to different people. It was a house with many rooms, with numerous contradictory viewpoints. For almost all white Southerners, the Lost Cause myth provided psychic healing for the catastrophic defeat of the Civil War, and Christianity was deeply intertwined with it. From grave decorations to re-interments to Sunday sermons, the Lost Cause became something of a religion in its own right. Theology bent in the service of the movement, and artifacts from the war, such as gray jackets, became sacred relics. For others, however, the Old South was not the best of times; the New South was, and the ideological diversity of former Confederate chaplains is highly informative in that regard. While most remained loyal to the Lost Cause, some accepted progressive thought in theology, politics, and even race. One former chaplain became a Harvard skeptic. Another wrote innovative, liberal theology read by European scholars. Yet another espoused racial equality, at least in theory if not full practice. Most, Longenecker argues, were compartmentalizers. They were conservative on Decoration Day and liberal on Sunday. Wearing Confederate gray, some considered the past as a golden age of superior wisdom and truth, but in clerical black they assumed that the best was yet to come, that the future was superior to the past. Former Confederate chaplains also led complicated and sometimes vexed post-war lives. One former chaplain hob-nobbed with a former U.S. president and another with a future president. One was a temperance man who died an alcoholic; he took medicinal alcohol. One had a parish on the northern tip of Manhattan Island and later a fashionable congregation just blocks from the White House. One became the victim of America's first great heresy trial, and among his accusers was his mentor, another former chaplain. The core of the book probes the careers of ten former chaplains. Longnecker chose his subjects based on the availability of the written records each left behind, and omitted others because of either redundancy or a paucity of documentation. J. William Jones, for example, who served as Lee's chief of chaplains and who became prominent in the Lost Cause, is not a major figure in this study because his religious beliefs do not survive. The major sources for this study are manuscripts and published sermons supplemented by newspapers, diaries, memoirs, denominational periodicals, letters, and books published by former chaplains. Unfortunately, the sources skew this study toward prominent former chaplains who were published or preserved in manuscript while the thoughts of those who never became a professor, bishop, or influential pastor have generally been lost"-- Provided by publisher.

"A comparison of the faith and politics of former Confederate chaplains with intriguing insights about the evolution of their postwar beliefs and the Lost Cause Pulpits of the Lost Cause: The Faith and Politics of Former Confederate Chaplains during Reconstruction is the first in-depth study of former chaplains that juxtaposes their religion and politics, thereby revealing important insights about the Lost Cause movement. Steve Longenecker demonstrates that while some former chaplains vigorously defended the Lost Cause and were predictably conservative in the pulpit, embracing orthodoxy and resisting religious innovation, others were unexpectedly progressive and advocated on behalf of evolution, theological liberalism, and modern biblical criticism. Former Confederate chaplains embodied both the distinctive white, Southern, regional identity and the variation within it. Most were theologically conservative and Lost Cause racists. But as with the larger South, variation abounded. The Lost Cause, which Longenecker interprets as a broad popular movement with numerous versions, meant different things to different chaplains. It ranged from diehard-ism to tempered sectional forgiveness to full reconciliation to a harmless once-a-year Decoration Day ritual. This volume probes the careers of ten former chaplains, including their childhoods, wartime experiences, Lost Cause personas, and theologies, making use of manuscripts and published sermons as well as newspapers, diaries, memoirs, denominational periodicals, letters, and the books they themselves produced. In theology, many former chaplains were predictably conservative, while others were unexpectedly broad-minded and advocated evolution, theological liberalism, and modern Biblical criticism. One former chaplain became a social-climbing Harvard progressive. Another wrote innovative, liberal theology read by European scholars. Yet another espoused racial equality, at least in theory if not full practice. Additionally, former chaplains often exhibited the fundamental human trait of compartmentalization, most notably by extolling the past as they celebrated the Lost Cause while simultaneously looking to the future as religious progressives or New South boosters. The stereotypical preacher of the Lost Cause-a gray-clad Bible thumper-existed sufficiently to create the image but hardly enough to be universally accurate. "-- Provided by publisher.