When the Bible becomes a weapon -- USA TODAY, February 28, 2011

The Bible is too often invoked in today's political battles, just as it was employed during the Civil War, which erupted 150 years ago.

While previous anniversaries of this conflict rekindled old Yankee-Rebel debates about who had better soldiers and greater generals, times have changed and this anniversary is likely to be different. It offers a chance to re-examine crucial events and beliefs from new angles. As a minister, I am fascinated to reflect on how the Bible was used — and misused — to fuel the Civil War.

It makes me wonder whether we are making many of the same mistakes today, with issues such as gay marriage, the environmental movement or even the death penalty. Are we allowing a literal reading of the Bible — which understands homosexual activity to be an abomination, encourages humans to subdue the earth and says man should not kill — to push religious discussions in one's favored direction?

In January, megachurch pastor Joel Osteen told CNN's Piers Morgan that homosexuality is wrong because "the Scripture shows that it's a sin." Osteen isn't the first, nor will he be the last, to make this observation, of course.

And then there's our tutelage of God's earth. Conservative Christians have long interpreted Genesis 1 as divine permission to use nature — not necessarily protect it — and evangelical radio minister John MacArthur has written that the environmental movement is wrong to try to preserve the planet forever because "the Lord is going to destroy it."

God said so

In the 1860s, Southern preachers defending slavery also took the Bible literally. They asked who could question the Word of God when it said, "slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling" (Ephesians 6:5), or "tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect" (Titus 2:9). Christians who wanted to preserve slavery had the words of the Bible to back them up.

The preachers of the North had to be more creative, but they, too, argued God was on their side. Some emphasized that the Union had to be preserved so that the advance of liberty around the world would not be slowed or even stopped. One Boston preacher, Gilbert Haven, sermonized, "If America is lost, the world is lost."

Historian James Howell Moorhead of Princeton Theological Seminary points out that other ministers drew on the Book of Revelation and suggested that a Northern victory might prepare the way for the Kingdom of God on earth. Still others preached that God would not allow the North to win until it ended slavery. The Battle Hymn of the Republic poetically summed up such Union beliefs:

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me: As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on.

Theological shots were being fired, from both the South and the North.

They were bringing the words of George Washington to life, a warning written 70 years earlier, "Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause." But then another president, Abraham Lincoln, offered the most constructive perspective on religious warfare. "My concern is not whether God is on our side," he said. "My greatest concern is to be on God's side."

That's the question that we are left with today, in the middle of our contemporary civil wars: Are we on God's side? We will not be able to answer this question by assuming that the Bible is going to give us clear guidance on every moral and political issue. The Civil War shows us that the words of the Bible have been used to defend what history later determined was indefensible.

Peter Wood, emeritus professor of American history at Duke University, suggests that in revisiting the Civil War, we need to remember not only the preaching of white ministers from the North and the South, but also the perspective of African Americans, so absent during the Centennial. "In Frederick Douglass' world," says Wood, "devout black believers — and numerous white abolitionist allies, violent and non-violent — were quick to see slavery as a sin and a defilement of New Testament values that had to be rooted out."

New biblical perspectives are needed today, including those of gays and greens, as we discuss contentious issues. Yes, it is true that the Old Testament says, "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination" (Leviticus 18:22), just as it says that God killed Onan because he "spilled his semen on the ground" (Genesis 38:9). In both these cases, relationships that did not produce children were condemned, because the Israelites were under orders to "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28).

But perhaps reproduction is no longer the goal of every person and every marriage. Many couples choose not to have children, or marry late in life when they are unable to produce children. The New Testament values of faithfulness, love, sacrifice and promise-based commitment can be practiced by heterosexual couples without children — and by same-sex couples as well. Discussions of gay marriage can focus as much on scriptural equality as on the ability to reproduce.

How we treat the earth

With regard to the environment, we no longer live in a biblical world in which humans needed to subdue the earth in order to survive in it. Instead, we threaten the health of our planet with our destructive patterns of consumption, so the time has come to reclaim the biblical value of stewardship — being good caretakers of the earth, as Adam was instructed to be when God put him in the garden of Eden "to till it and keep it" (Genesis 2:15). We have mastered the technology of tilling the earth — the challenge of the future will be to keep it.

Liberals also use Scripture for their purposes, citing commandments such as "thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13) whenever a war breaks out or the death penalty is being debated. But the commandment is actually a prohibition against murder, arising out of blood feuds and vengeance killings between ancient clans and families. A literal reading of this verse does not give us the moral and political guidance we need today.

So the question of Lincoln remains, "Are we on God's side?" An answer based only on biblical quotations may put us on the side of Southern theologians who supported slavery and lost their way. But creative theological conversation, grounded in scriptural values such as equality and stewardship of the earth, can put us on the right side of both history and religious faith.

Henry G. Brinton, pastor of Fairfax Presbyterian Church in Virginia, is author of Balancing Acts: Obligation, Liberation, and Contemporary Christian Conflicts, and a contributor to the preaching journal Homiletics, where some of this historical material first appeared.