Pulpits of the Lost Cause: The Faith and Politics of Former Confederate Chaplains during Reconstruction by Steve Longenecker (review)

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• Pulpits of the Lost Cause: The Faith and Politics of Former Confederate Chaplains during Reconstruction by Steve Longenecker
• Brendan J. J. Payne

Pulpits of the Lost Cause: The Faith and Politics of Former Confederate Chaplains during Reconstruction. By Steve Longenecker. Religion and American Culture. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2023. Pp. xiv, 257. $54.95, ISBN 978-0-8173-2149-9.)

Steve Longenecker, professor of history emeritus at Bridgewater College and author of various other books on religion in the Civil War era, has produced yet another excellent addition to the field. Pulpits of the Lost Cause: The Faith and Politics of Former Confederate Chaplains during Reconstruction takes a deep dive into ten white former Confederate chaplains, the deepest such study to date. Longenecker somewhat affirms yet complicates Charles Reagan Wilson’s assertion that former Confederate chaplains were “the ‘main celebrants’ of the Lost Cause” (p. 2). The text also recasts the Lost Cause as a remarkably malleable ideology open to varied interpretations.

More generally, the book strikes a nuanced balance in the old debate between scholars stressing the South’s homogeneity or heterogeneity. Longenecker’s book affirms a well-known aspect of human nature, that people can hold strongly to contradictory beliefs and compartmentalize different parts of their lives. Refreshingly, Longenecker explicitly notes that his subjects’ lives were varied and fascinating, multilayered and multifaceted—an implicit reminder that history is best at its most human.

Longenecker not only sheds light on an underexamined part of the scholarly conversation on Lost Cause religion but also tells the story in a manner both neatly organized and pleasantly flowing. The introduction displays the casual mastery of topic and writing of a senior scholar, covering in a few pages the origins and development of the Lost Cause as well as the book’s major points and structure. Chapter 1 covers the general experience of Confederate chaplains during the Civil War, while the subsequent chapters trace the careers of his case studies. Some, like Moses Drury Hoge, George Gilman Smith, and John L. Girardeau were conventionally conservative Lost Cause preachers who best fit Charles Reagan Wilson’s description. Others, such as Lachlan C. Vass and Randolph H. McKim, were compartmentalizers, sometimes promoting the Lost Cause and at other times focusing on their congregations. Atticus G. Haygood, who promoted the New South, was an outlier for his limited promotion of racial [End Page 442] equality. William Porcher DuBose read liberal theology, while bishop Charles T. Quintard was a theologically conservative institution-builder, yet both shared moderate stances on the Lost Cause and a connection to the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. Meanwhile, at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the theologically conservative John A. Broadus was close friends with his fellow former Confederate chaplain Crawford H. Toy until the latter turned to theological modernism, prompting Broadus to join a successful attempt to have Toy fired. The conclusion notes that, taken together, these stories show how former Confederate chaplains articulated a diverse range of perspectives on the New South, theology, and the promotion of the Lost Cause. At the same time, racism (partially excepting Haygood) and general support for the Lost Cause knit together former Confederate chaplains.

The study is remarkable for its clarity. One particularly beneficial aspect of the text is Longenecker’s habit of immediately and concisely defining significant terms in parenthetical asides in the main text. He defines conservative on page two, civil religion on page four, and theological modernism on page five, and then provides a succinct explanation and then demolition of major Lost Cause arguments on pages six to eleven. While some history books exasperate nonspecialists by underexplaining jargon, Longenecker’s text reads clear as crystal. His prose is consistently pleasant to read and occasionally sparkles. At just over two hundred pages of main text, the book is also just the right length, and occasional pictures make a nice touch. While the book could benefit from more inclusion of women’s and nonwhite voices, the author’s focus on former Confederate chaplains seems to justify this limitation.

I heartily recommend Pulpits of the Lost Cause to readers of all levels, from undergraduate students in courses on the Civil War...