The Civil War as a Theological Crisis

Mark Noll's The Civil War as a Theological Crisis is a scholarly study, published by the University of North Carolina Press, of how American Protestant theology, and specifically its widely shared method of biblical interpretation, proved unable to resolve the era's central moral question of slavery and thereby helped push the country toward war. Noll is a recognized historian of American religion, and the book's authority rests on close reading of period sermons, theological tracts and denominational debates from both North and South. Its particular contribution is treating the theological deadlock itself, not only the political one, as a real cause of the crisis. Its limit is period focus, the years immediately surrounding the war, so a claim about earlier or later American religious history needs a source covering that different period.