PRONE TO FALLING

This Just in, Religious Fanatics Are Fanatical: An excerpt from theologian Steven Wilkins’ controversial biography of Robert E. Lee describes the sanctifying effects of Christianity on enslaved Blacks in the antebellum South—who were after all, in his view, lucky to have escaped Africa in the first place. “Africa, like any other Pagan country, was permeated by the cruelty and barbarism typical of unbelieving cultures,” he writes. He then continues: 

Slavery, as it operated in the pervasively Christian society which was the old South, was not an adversarial relationship founded upon racial animosity. In fact, it bred on the whole, not contempt, but, over time, mutual respect. This produced a mutual esteem of the sort that always results when men give themselves to a common cause. The credit for this startling reality must go to the Christian faith… . The unity and companionship that existed between the races in the South prior to the war was the fruit of a common faith.

The biography was listed for several years under Michele Bachmann’s “Must Read” book list on her official site. In the book, Wilkins later declares that for these slaves—who for several generations apparently lacked “the sanctifying effects of Christianity” while living in a system that valued their worth at three-fifths of a white person—”abolition was not the best answer.”

Read more about Bachmann’s literary influences in this week’s New Yorker.