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Challenges on the Emmaus Road: Episcopal Bishops Confront Slavery, Civil War, and Emancipation by T. Felder Dorn (review)

“Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road” (Luke 24:32)—T. Felder Dorn’s title comes from the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke, which contains parallels to the struggle between Episcopalian theology and the antebellum attitudes of bishops toward slavery, the Civil War, and emancipation. Indeed, Episcopal bishops’ mind-sets bear resemblance to Cleopas’s startled reaction to Jesus’ teachings, therefore substantiating the rebuke, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken” (Luke 24:25). Historians of southern religion are well aware that the institution of slavery divided Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians in the mid-nineteenth century. Many are cognizant of the roles that Episcopalians like Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Leonidas Polk played during the Civil War and Reconstruction. However, little is known about the national divisions within the Episcopalian leadership over slavery, antebellum questions about race, and southern bishops’ establishment of the Protestant Episcopal Freedmen’s Commission in 1865. T. Felder Dorn’s welcome monograph helps fill in some of the narrative gaps about antebellum Episcopalians and broadens the historiography of southern religion on questions of race, sectionalism, and reunification among Episcopalians. Dorn’s seven-part monograph begins with a brief sketch of the Episcopal Church in America in the years leading up to 1860 and a short summary of the institution of slavery. Notes appear at the end of each chapter, making it easier for readers to scan Dorn’s sources, which are copious and expansive. Dorn relies heavily on state-level diocesan papers and the personal papers of Episcopal bishops. The first section examines Carolina Episcopalians like Stephen Elliott and Thomas Atkinson, as well as William Meade and William Rollinson Whittingham, among others from Virginia and Maryland. These biographical sketches reveal that Episcopalians viewed slavery as “an opportunity but also an obligation to save souls” (p. 71). Abolitionist sentiment among Episcopalians was virtually nonexistent. Dorn found members of the denomination consistent with other antebellum Protestants who believed slavery was sanctioned by scripture. Parts 3 and 4 explain how Episcopal bishops confronted secession and addressed church division, ultimately choosing “a separate church for a separate nation” (p. 109). Dorn then describes the war careers of such Episcopal Confederates as Georgia’s Stephen Elliott and Alabama’s Richard Hooker Wilmer. Some of these men were eager combatants in the Civil War, while others “felt a special obligation to Confederate soldiers” and “devoted efforts and funds to securing and distributing tracts” (p. 220). Parts 5, 6, and 7 investigate northern bishops’ responses to slavery, the Civil War, secession, and the aftermath of Episcopal reunification. Most northern bishops supported slavery until the Emancipation Proclamation, but saw secession as “‘rebellion, privy conspiracy, and sedition’” (p. 432). Bishops from both the North and the South eventually voted for church unity in 1866.