“Copperhead Christianity”

Recently, I’ve been doing research to help me contextualize the life of my 3x-great-grandfather, Vasa Bozarris Jones (1823-1910), who served for a time as a circuit-riding preacher in Ohio with the United Brethren in Christ. This denomination published a newspaper called the Religious Telescope, and as I was browsing the issues from 1864, I came across an article that appears to have been republished from the New York Tribune (basically a “retweet” of the 19th century) entitled “Copperhead Christianity.”[i] The article was striking on so many levels, I thought I would share it here with some commentary.

But first, some context. Published January 6, 1864, this issue was released in the late-middle of the Civil War by a publisher based in the North. The battles of Manassas/Bull Run, Antietam, Shiloh, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga were in the rearview mirror, and the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Atlanta, the Crater, Franklin, and Appomattox were still to come. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had been issued just over a year earlier in September 1862, and African-Americans had been fighting for the Union in the US Colored Troops division for several months.

The Religious Telescope kept its readers up-to-date with the latest war news, publishing accounts of battles, the latest from Washington, D. C., letters from soldiers on the front, and reports from a captured surgeon in a POW camp. But they also tied the doctrine of their religious beliefs to the war effort, particularly with the issue of slavery. The United Brethren in Christ was a strictly abolitionist denomination, meaning they opposed slavery and wanted it to end. The 1861 edition of their doctrinal and constitutional book, known as the Discipline for short, explicitly states, “All slavery in every sense of the word, is totally prohibited, and shall in no way be tolerated in our church. Should any be found in our society who hold slaves, they can not continue as members unless they do personally manumit or set free such slaves.”[ii] So the Religious Telescope was accordingly abolitionist in sentiment.

The same could not be said for all Christian denominations, however. In fact, throughout the country, but especially in the South, there were Christians who misinterpreted specific passages of the Bible and used them to support their belief that slavery was not only not-wrong but was actually God-ordained. Sadly, my own denomination fell into this category at that time, but thankfully Vasa’s didn’t.

But just as religion was split over the war and slavery, so too was politics. During the Civil War, unlike today, the South was overwhelmingly Democratic, whereas the North was predominantly Republican. Pro-slavery, racist attitudes and the Democratic Party went hand-in-hand as the Confederacy fought not only to become independent from the United States but also to protect the institution of slavery. Democrats in the North were divided regarding their level of support for the war. One faction, that was particularly opposed to the war and wanted to negotiate with the South, was known as Peace Democrats or Copperheads, and racism, along with hatred of abolitionists, often characterized its ranks.

With those contextual notes in mind, we can now turn to the article entitled, “Copperhead Christianity.” The quoted portions will be italicized, with my comments interspersed in regular print.

“The peace ‘Democrats’ of Ohio are to have a New Gospel preached unto them by a brace of Apostles rejoicing in the names of Edson B. Olds and Virgil E. Shaw. That they may accomplish this ecclesiastical phenomenon, Olds and Shaw have addressed an epistle to Gov. Medary, begging him to summon at an early day, in conjunction with said Olds and Shaw, ‘a State Convention for devising some plan for a new Church organization, in which Democrats may enjoy the privilege of hearing pure Gospel unmixed with Abolition fanaticism.’ Medary responds that he is ‘gratified,’ and he invokes all Democratic professors and confessors, where they are in majority in any church, ‘to see to it that Magdalen Devils are expunged, and that the control of the church is placed in hands which will not disgrace the religion such churches profess.’”

Olds, a former U.S. Congressman, was a leading Peace Democrat and was serving in the Ohio House of Representatives at the time this article was written. Presumably, Shaw was a Peace Democrat as well. Governor Medary, another outspoken Copperhead, was not the governor of Ohio as one might assume, but rather was a newspaper man who had served in the Ohio House and Senate. The “governor” title referred to his previous positions as governor of the Minnesota and Kansas Territories during the 1850s.

As the article explains, Olds and Shaw wrote a letter to Medary asking him to organize a gathering to create a new denomination for Democrats who didn’t want to hear anti-slavery sentiment from the pulpit. Their statement that the “pure Gospel” had nothing to do with abolitionism is appalling to our ears today but reveals the twisted theology that many blindly accepted at the time. Medary seemed to share this theology, as he revealed his opinion of abolitionism as that which would “disgrace the religion.” He goes a step further and equates abolitionists to Magdalen Devils, apparently referencing the demons that Jesus cast out of Mary Magdalene.

The article continues, dripping with the author’s sarcasm:

“We would suggest, if our profane suggestions might be permitted, a kind of composite or eclectic faith, which shall contain elegant extracts from a variety of creeds, and embrace whatever is tenderly savage, sweetly barbarous, deliciously cruel and virtuously brutal in all religions ancient and modern.

“Fully satisfied as we are of the ability of Medary and his friends to found a religion from which both faith and works shall be rigorously excluded, while whatever things are false, whatever things are dishonest, whatever are unjust, whatever things are impure, whatever things are of evil report, shall be affectionately included—and very much we should like to hear the Rev Mr. Medary preach his first sermon!”

Here the author points out the backwardness of the Copperheads’ perspective, showing the unbiblical nature of creating a pro-slavery church by referencing Philippians 4:8, which says to think on “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable,” and replacing each adjective with its opposite. But the author is just getting started…

“For our own part, humanly speaking, we can not sufficiently commend the prudence of this movement. We have long thought it must be extremely painful for devotees of the Medary stamp—human, we suppose, they must be, for do they not wear coats and pantaloons, and eat with a fork?—very painful, indeed for them to go to church, to be told that all men are brethren, equal in the sight of God. They arrive at their conclusion [that all men are not equal] quite honestly. They reason thus: We know that we are not equal with honest men [the implication is that they know they are dishonest], but we also know that we are superior to ‘n[------].’ Therefore all men are not equal. Therefore we will have a new church, in which a sinner can worship comfortably without having his sins impudently thrown in his teeth. What is the use of possessing a religion if you can not enjoy it?”

The author joins in on the insult-throwing a bit, joking that the only thing that makes it clear that pro-slavery Peace Democrats aren’t animals is that they wear clothes and eat with a fork. He then continues his sarcastic rebuttal and provides a thread of reasoning that he supposes the Peace Democrats must follow: they must know deep-down that they are dishonest and so are not equal with honest men but they think themselves superior to people with dark skin, so of course they conclude that men are not created equal—and therefore they can’t tolerate going to a church that preaches the equality of all human beings. This line of reasoning might seem extreme to us, but how often are we guilty of wanting our comfort above sound doctrine? How often do we balk at conviction instead of humbly submitting our thoughts and opinions to the Lordship of Christ?

Having tried to make his point through sarcasm, the author turns next to a more serious approach:

“We must say that we regard this movement as a substantial surrender of the Christian argument in support of Slavery. There are many meeting-houses and many sects in Ohio, numerous forms of faith, and various shades of ecclesiastical polity—Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Unitarians, Calvinists, Universalists—and here are Governor Medary, and Edson B. Olds, and Virgil E. Shaw, who can not find a single lonesome little chapel in which slaveholding is scrupulously sustained, but are absolutely compelled to set up a private Ebenezer, a separate establishment, an altar of their own!”

The point is that the very expression of a need for a pro-slavery church shows how many churches and denominations in Ohio were standing firm on the truth and speaking out against slavery. With that serious point out of the way, the author turns back to sarcasm:

“But Medary must not be discouraged. Mohammed for a long time had only one convert, and even she was his wife; whereas Medary has two humble and devoted disciples already, viz:—Edson b. Olds and Virgial E. Shaw! Let him thank the proper heathen deity—Mercury, the god of lies, for instance—and take courage!

“These new prophets will doubtless want a new ritual for their new religion; and it would be well for them to send to Utah for a journeyman who is well skilled in such manufactures. A great deal must be done with the Epistle to Philemon. They can have it read as the First Lesson and the Second Lesson—they can have it arranged as an oratorio—they can have a sermon from each of its twenty five verses—they can make much of it, as about the only piece of Scripture which will be edifying in their pulpits.”

Implying that to be pro-slavery is outside the bounds of orthodox Christianity, the author points out that what Medary, Olds, and Shaw are wanting to do is basically start a different religion. And a new religion needs new practices, so the author suggests getting someone from Utah to help, presumably a reference to the Mormons who had begun a new religion under the self-proclaimed new prophet Joseph Smith a few decades earlier. Because a new religion obviously will not adhere to all of Scripture, the author suggests this new pro-slavery “church” will have to lean on Philemon, one of the passages of Scripture that was misinterpreted as an approval of institutionalized slavery. He continues…

“Instead of the usual benediction, the priest can bawl through a speaking trumpet: ‘Cursed be Canaan,’ while all the congregation responds:—‘Cursed be Canaan,’ the voices of Medary, Olds and Shaw being particularly sonorous.”

This refers to what was perhaps the bedrock of pro-slavery theology, a misinterpretation of the curse Noah placed on Ham’s son Canaan found in Genesis 9:25: “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers” (ESV). Because African peoples descend from Ham, people believed that this verse meant Africans were destined to be slaves to the descendants of Shem and Japheth (aka non-Africans). They conveniently ignored the fact that Ham’s descendants through Canaan were actually the Canaanites that we read about in the rest of the Pentateuch and Historical books in the Old Testament.

But this new religion would need more elements to fill its services, so the author says…

“If there be any praying, it must be for Rebel victories—if there be any fasting, it must be for Rebel defeats—if there be any preaching, it must be an exposition of the wickedness of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. Upon great occasions it would be well to offer up a black man—one caught running through Ohio from Kentucky [i.e. a runaway enslaved man] would be particularly acceptable—and upon very great occasions a woman with her little child might be burned, with a rattling concert of drums presented to the new Ohio church by the Monarch of Dahomey.”

Dahomey was a kingdom in Africa, in the region of modern-day Benin, that was well-known as a major player in the slave trade, capturing fellow Africans and selling them to Europeans. The author’s sarcasm seems to border on shocking here, but it shows the horrors of racism and morally equates support of the institution of slavery with human sacrifice and murder. The point is that all are equally abhorrent. But the horrific language, the author agrees, is a lot to take, as he concludes the article with…

“We know that these discussions can not be quite agreeable to our gentle, genial readers; but we have wished to put upon record this Ohio enterprise. One hundred years hence, such a narrative will be in danger of being regarded as utterly fabulous [i.e. unbelievable]. Should this article then meet the eyes of some antiquarian, we beg leave to assure him that a New Religion was actually set on foot in Ohio in 1863, and that the names of its apostles were Medary, Olds, and shaw [sic]!”

I don’t know about you, but that last paragraph gave me chills. I was the “some antiquarian,” the person interested in things of the past whose eyes happened to meet this article, as the author anticipated. You and I—we are the posterity the author had in mind. He wanted to write this article to record the racism and pro-slavery attitudes that were behind this attempt to create a new church. Why? Because he guessed that in the future people would have a hard time believing that such blatant racism and callousness were second-nature and applauded by so many and so that future generations would realize what had happened in the past and where we had come from as a nation.

In many ways, his prediction came true. While racism still exists in America—and around the world—many people, and often Christians in particular, have a hard time acknowledging that fact and acknowledging the extreme racism that infected some of the Church and upheld institutional slavery in America in the not-so-distant past. This author’s article makes us confront the ugliness of the self-righteousness and prejudice that ran rampant in our ancestors’ world, and in doing so makes us consider our own society and individual lives.

We would do well to see this article as a reminder that the Church can get it wrong. While there were many churches and many Christians who stayed true to the Bible, as this article also shows, there were still many, like the “Copperhead Christians,” who read God’s Word and misused it to suit their own interests and perpetuate their own sinful behavior, convincing themselves that they weren’t in fact sinning at all. If humans before us could fall into that trap, so can we, and we must remain humble as we approach Scripture, asking God to strip away any selfish misconceptions we might hold and to help us rightly interpret His Word—because “Copperhead Christianity” is not a Christianity worth having at all.

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[i] “Copperhead Christianity,” Religious Telescope (Dayton, Ohio), Jan. 6, 1864, digital image, Huntington University, https://palni.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15705coll63/id/477/rec/1 : accessed 27 January 2022.

[ii] Origin, Doctrine, Constitution, and Discipline, of the United Brethren in Christ (Dayton, Ohio: United Brethren Printing Establishment, 1861), 81, digital image, HathiTrust https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nnc1.cr60175818.