Greetings and welcome,
This is a PowerPoint, which I converted to video, that I made last March, for a course titled, HIUS 530 AMERICAN CHRISTIAN HERITAGE, at Liberty University. The topic was my choice.
I believe there is a parallel between the Economics of Slavery, Calvin’s canon of predestination, the birth of both the Southern Baptist Convention and the Confederacy.
This presentation demonstrates how the economics of slavery and the Baptist’s belief in John Calvin’s predestination was one on the factors that eventually divided the Baptist church, thus creating the Southern Baptist Convention, which in turn provided Southern religious leaders the confidence to leave the Union and supplied the vision of victory to Confederacy.
Furthermore, this presentation will explain how the First Industrial Revolution (1760-1840), and its economic boom to the South’s cotton industry, created a collision between liberal Baptists; with their belief in revivalism, and the “Hard Shell” traditional predestination believing Baptists.
Out of these religious revivals, (First and Second Great Awakening, (1730-1740’s,1790-1840s), came a new doctrine, one which professed that salvation is earned by a person’s actions, not preordained. This new thinking directly challenged the predestination belief that blacks were preordained by God for slavery. For the South, whose economy was completely dependent on slavery, this new anti-predestination doctrine created a quagmire, between faith and slavery.
As with most of my presentation I need practice, this is new territory for me.
Kev
Featured Image – Illustration is of a Roller Cotton Gin -Pre-Whitney Spike Gin. Harper’s weekly, 18 Dec. 1869, p. 81