Thursday, November 14, 2024

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

It is the 14th of November 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

From Spain in the 600s yesterday, today we zoom forward to the United States of America on the eve of the Civil War.

This reminds me that 1) we will need a weekend edition on the Church and the American Civil War and 2) a fantastic small book by the preeminent church historian Mark Noll called “The Civil War as Theological Crisis”- even the title is a reminder of the place of the church and self-professed Christians during this national tragedy.

If we place ourselves sometime around the mid-1850s, we have seen the decline of both the so-called “era of Good Feelings” in politics and the last embers of the Second Great Awakening dying out.

Divisions amongst American Christians were not only over the question of slavery but of Biblical interpretation and the crucial question of the role of the church and Christians in the country still shy of its first centennial.

But amidst the coming stories of horror and sorrow comes a remarkable story of a short-lived Christian service organization that raised over 6 million dollars (in their currency!) for the physical and spiritual needs of the wounded, Union, and Confederate.

At the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, there was no Red Cross, and the U.S. Chaplaincy was miniscule. One organization, the United States Sanitary Commission, was formed to mirror a similar British relief organization from the Crimean War.

But for some, that group's “secular-only” aims mirrored too much the growing British antipathy to evangelical reform movements. It was in the aftermath of the devastating Battle of Bull Run that American evangelicals would band together to discuss the creation of an organization that emphasized the spiritual needs of soldiers alongside their physical health.  

Called “the Battle of Manassas” in the South, the events in July of 1861, almost 1,000 Americans perished on the Virginia battlefield in a single day. There were thousands of casualties, and the illusion of a quick war was shattered.

In New York that November, the YMCA called a convention to discuss how they could help with the wounded and dead- and it was on this, the 14th of November in 1861, that 36 delegates established the United States Christian Commission. A counterpart to the sanitary commission, they would differ not only in their stance on comforting souls but also on women serving. The Sanitary Commission did not believe women were suited to the work, while this new USCC embraced them.

One member, Annie Wittmeyer, began opening Christian Commission Diet Kitchens that believed patients could be nursed to health with the help of a better diet. USCC President and Presbyterian Elder George Stuart particularly praised: “steam-powered machines [that] could apparently prepare coffee for 1200 men an hour, and could travel at a heady eight miles an hour, trundling up and down the rows of tents and stretchers”.

But along with the physical needs and diets of the soldiers, they set up chapels where soldiers were garrisoned and led services. Evangelists went from camp to camp- across enemy lines- to hold services. One such evangelist was a young Dwight Moody; as a Quaker, he was granted exemption as a soldier but served in this way.

Volunteers served two or six-week terms depending on their availability and the commission's needs. They handed out over a million Bibles and hymn books. They consoled the dying and assisted or wrote letters to the families of those dying or deceased.

President Lincoln wrote to the Commission, “Your Christian and benevolent undertaking for the benefit of the soldiers is too obviously praiseworthy to admit any difference of opinion.” 

And the benevolent undertaking was more than spiritual. A good bit has been documented on the service the Commission did at Gettysburg in 63, the deadliest battle of the Civil War. Later, an Army surgeon wrote  in 1864 of the crucial role the volunteers played in the effort, writing, “If the Christian Commission fails to do the work it contemplates, it will be left undone.”

With the end of the War, the commission voted to disband, but it would become a model for civil volunteers and faith-based organizations in wartime, unfortunately too necessary in the century to come. Today, we remember the remarkable United States Christian Commission on the anniversary of its founding on this day in 1861.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary and a benediction from 1 Timothy 6:

Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14 to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which God will bring about in his own time—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen. 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 14th of November 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who has a vision of a “steam-powered machine [that] could apparently prepare coffee for 1200 men an hour and could travel at a heady eight miles an hour” Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who realized he uses “remarkable” far too often… I’m quitting it for the foreseeable future. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.