When news of the attack on Fort Sumter reached the nation’s capital on Sunday, April 14, 1861, the city’s residents were already on their way to church services. At E Street, Washington’s most prominent Baptist church, a mixture of Southerners and Northerners gathered for worship. But after the pastor Joseph Spencer Kennard invoked divine blessing in support of the Federal government in his pastoral prayer, omitting any mention of Jefferson Davis and the newly established Confederate States of America, the Southerners rose in unison, and, after a strained moment of silence, walked out.
From the first firing of Confederate guns on Fort Sumter to Robert E. Lee’s surrender at the Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, pastors across the country faced a choice unlike any before in American history: whom would they pray for? First Timothy 2:2 urged supplications for “kings and all who are in high positions.” Accordingly, prayers for the president of the United States had been a longstanding fixture in pastoral prayers across denominations.
During the American Civil War, pastors across the country faced a choice unlike any before in American history: whom would they pray for?
But American pastors also had a longstanding practice of avoiding political entanglements in the pulpit. In 1823, the Columbian Star in Washington compared a pastor endorsing a political candidate from the pulpit with “prostituting the influence of his office.” The famous Baptist preacher, John Leland, who had a known penchant for politics, earned frequent criticisms from friends who felt his “almost mad devotion to politics” interfered “with his usefulness as a minister.”
Yet as denominations fractured and war approached, neutrality seemed increasingly unfeasible. Particularly in border states with divided loyalties, pastors had to choose whether to pray for Lincoln or Jefferson Davis or neither or both. And no matter what they did, some in their congregation would be offended.
Examples from Both Sides
In his 1864 book, The Church and the Rebellion, Robert L. Stanton, a professor of theology in Danville, Kentucky, exhaustively documents the varying responses of clergy during the war. He notes how among many Episcopalian churches the “customary prayer for the President of the United States” was simply omitted. Many ministers, he writes, “succumbed to the demand of their parishioners that prayers should not be offered for the President.”
In other cases, where such prayers were offered, pastors faced “open manifestations of disapprobation,” sometimes by “worshippers leaving the house during that part of the service.” The precise difficulty, as Stanton recognizes, was that there was “no neutrality, regarding this contest. . . . He is either for the Government in this struggle, or against it.”
Meanwhile, in the District of Columbia, churches remained divided by prayer. Dr. John H. Bocock, pastor of the Old School Bridge Street Presbyterian Church in Georgetown, allegedly “could not or would not pray for the President” due to Bocock’s sympathies with “secessia,” eventually leaving the district for the South. Likewise across the Potomac in Alexandria, pastor Charles C. Bitting of the Baptist Church refused to pray for Lincoln, finally leading the military governor to confiscate the church building and convert it into a hospital. The same fate befell St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia, after its pastor, K. J. Stewart, similarly “refused to pray for the President of the United States.” Given the opposition to praying for Lincoln in Washington, one can understand why Parson Brownlow, a Methodist minister and future Tennessee Governor, in a lecture at Ford’s Theater in June 1862, excoriated the ministers who refused to pray for the President “for fear of offending one of their congregation.”
3 Lessons for Today
Today, pastors sometimes face trouble for their pastoral prayers. Despite Paul giving this express instruction so “we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” (1 Tim. 2:2, KJV), pastoral prayers often feel perilous. Whether through commission or omission, navigating contemporary events and the varying consciences of their congregants can prove a minefield for even the most adept supplicator. What lessons can we learn from pastors during the Civil War for how we can lead churches through tumultuous times?
1. Realize you can never please everyone.
During the Civil War, pastors quickly learned the futility of trying to please everyone. Seeking the approval of man is an instinctive but fatal pursuit for a pastor. Not only is it practically impossible, but it’s also pastorally undesirable. As Paul concludes, “If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10).
Seeking the approval of man is an instinctive but fatal pursuit for a pastor. Not only is it practically impossible, but it’s also pastorally undesirable.
Instead, to paraphrase Thomas Watson, do not pray so much to please as to profit. One of the goals of a pastoral prayer of petition is to model for your people how to depend on God in prayer, both in what you pray for and in how you pray for it. You’re teaching them God’s law and its application to current events. What does it look like for God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven? That’s what your pastoral prayer is doing: modeling the application of Scripture to contemporary events.
2. Recognize that neutrality is never the goal.
While we can pray general prayers that apply to all times and places (“Lord, we ask your blessing on the rulers and those in authority”), there are also circumstances that warrant moral clarity and directness. In Psalm 94, for instance, the psalmist asks the “God of vengeance” to “shine forth” against “wicked rulers” who “frame injustice by statute.” At the very least, the examples of pastors during the Civil War show that universal political neutrality is neither practically feasible nor pastorally desirable.
3. Give thanks always.
As churches sought to remain united around the gospel and avoid “preaching politics,” the Civil War created unprecedented challenges. As much as we complain of needless division in our day, we’d do well to put our trials in perspective. Churches aren’t as divided today as they were during the Civil War. And as we pray for those in authority, we shouldn’t forget that alongside “supplications, prayers, [and] intercessions,” Paul also urged that “thanksgivings” be made “for kings and all who are in high positions” (1 Tim. 2:1–2), not least because of the degree of peace that we do enjoy today.
Pastoral prayers can be perilous for pastors. But what greater privilege is there than to lead God’s people in magnifying God’s sufficiency by asking of him? The most important allegiance you display, brother-pastor, when you step into the pulpit on Sunday, is not to this party or to that president, but to King Jesus—who is “the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords” (1 Tim. 6:15). Pray to please him and to profit your people.
The Gospel Coalition