Session 3: Religious Liberty & Reconstruction
In the Reconstruction era, Black Americans were entitled to Constitutional rights—including religious liberty rights—for the first time. In this session, learn how religious discourse influenced debates over the rights of freedpeople, what African Americans did with the new right to religious freedom, and how the legacy of religious institution-building in the Reconstruction era continues to have an impact today.
About the speakers
Nicole Myers Turner is Assistant Professor of Religion at Princeton University. She is a specialist in African American religion, politics, and gender in the nineteenth century and she mobilizes Africana Studies and Black Digital Humanities methods in her work. She is the author of Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia (UNC Press, 2020). In addition to being published as a paperback, Soul Liberty also appears as an open-access, enhanced e-book by Fulcrum Press and features interactive images and maps. Soul Liberty has been widely reviewed and was a finalist for the 2021 Library of Virginia Literary Nonfiction Award. Turner earned her PhD and MA degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, her MDiv from Union Theological Seminary (New York), and her BA from Haverford College.
Edward J. Blum is a professor in the History Department at San Diego State University. He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky. He is the author and co-author of several books on United States history, including War is All Hell: The Nature of Evil and the Civil War (2021), Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (2005; reissued 2015), W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet (2007), and The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (2012). Blum is the winner of numerous awards including the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship, the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities, and the John T. Hubbell Prize for best article published in Civil War History in 2015.
Key Takeaways
The Fifteenth Amendment, (Thomas Kelly, 1870), Library of Congress.
Religious ideas were used to argue both in favor of and in opposition to granting African Americans civil rights in the Reconstruction era. While Black and white supporters of civil rights argued for granting these rights in accordance with the “Golden Rule,” white supremacist policymakers and judges continued to rely on theological arguments to support racist “Black Codes.” Similarly, claims about African Americans’ supposedly “innate” religiosity were leveraged both in favor of and against their right to full citizenship.
Black communities in the Reconstruction era lived out their religious liberty by creating a host of new religious institutions, including churches, denominations, schools, and committees. Freedpeople intentionally and publicly demonstrated their readiness for civic participation by modeling religious activities on political processes: for example, drafting church constitutions, organizing religious conventions, and implementing church court systems.
Not everyone benefited equally from the religious liberty and other political gains of the Reconstruction era. Women, for example, were not permitted to hold office either within most Black religious institutions or, of course, in government. In church court proceedings, unmarried pregnant women were punished more harshly for breaking rules around extramarital sex, and were frequently not permitted to testify or to name their male partner.
Reflection Questions
Christian language and ideas were pervasive in Reconstruction-era debates over who was entitled to rights and citizenship. How do you see theological arguments being wielded in political debates around rights today?
Religious freedom was impacted in the Reconstruction era not only through direct legal restrictions–such as Black Codes that limited religious gatherings–but also through indirect or non-state actions such as church property disputes and pervasive violence against Black churches and religious leaders. Both through history and today, how can acts that do not expressly limit religious practice nevertheless hinder religious liberty?
What is the ongoing impact of Black religious institutions created during Reconstruction?
Freedmen’s School (John D. Heywood, ca. 1868), Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Further Reading
Nicole Myers Turner, Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia (2020)
Edward J. Blum, Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (2005)
Edward J. Blum & W. Scott Poole (ed.), Vale of Tears: New Essays on Religion and Reconstruction (2005)
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