Editing Reconstruction era (section)

===Religion===
[[File:Eastman Johnson, The Lord is My Shepherd.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Eastman Johnson]]'s 1863 painting ''[[The Lord Is My Shepherd (Eastman Johnson)|The Lord is My Shepherd]]'', of a man reading the Bible]]
Freedmen were very active in forming their own churches, mostly Baptist or Methodist, and giving their ministers both moral and political leadership roles. In a process of self-segregation, practically all Blacks left White churches so that few racially integrated congregations remained (apart from some Catholic churches in Louisiana). They started many new Black Baptist churches and soon, new Black state associations.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

Four main groups competed with each other across the South to form new Methodist churches composed of freedmen. They were the [[African Methodist Episcopal Church]]; the [[African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church]], both independent Black denominations founded in Philadelphia and New York, respectively; the [[Christian Methodist Episcopal Church|Colored Methodist Episcopal Church]] (which was sponsored by the White [[Methodist Episcopal Church, South]]) and the well-funded [[Methodist Episcopal Church]] (predominantly White Methodists of the North). The [[History of Methodism in the United States#Civil War and Reconstruction|Methodist Church]] had split before the war due to disagreements about slavery.{{sfnp|Stowell|1998|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=jQphbo640wAC&pg=PA84 83–84]}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Walker |first=Clarence Earl |title=A Rock in a Weary Land: The African Methodist Episcopal Church During the Civil War and Reconstruction |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=1982 |isbn=9780807108833 |location=Baton Rouge}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}} By 1871, the Northern Methodists had 88,000 Black members in the South, and had opened numerous schools for them.{{sfnp|Sweet|1914|p=157}}

Blacks in the South made up a core element of the Republican Party. Their ministers had powerful political roles that were distinctive since they did not depend on White support, in contrast to teachers, politicians, businessmen, and tenant farmers.<ref>{{cite book |last=Grant |first=Donald Lee |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zpmjRm4cdswC&pg=PA264 |title=The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=1993 |isbn=978-0-8203-2329-9 |page=264}}</ref> Acting on the principle as stated by [[Charles H. Pearce]], an AME minister in Florida: "A man in this state cannot do his whole duty as a minister except he looks out for the political interests of his people." More than 100 Black ministers were elected to state legislatures during Reconstruction, as well as several to Congress and one, [[Hiram Rhodes Revels]], to the U.S. Senate.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=93}}

In a highly controversial action during the war, the [[Methodist Episcopal Church|Northern Methodists]] used the Army to seize control of Methodist churches in large cities, over the vehement protests of the [[Methodist Episcopal Church, South|Southern Methodists]]. Historian Ralph Morrow reports:{{sfnp|Morrow|1954|p=202}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Morrow |first=Ralph Ernest |title=Northern Methodism and Reconstruction |publisher=Michigan State University Press |year=1956 |location=East Lansing |oclc=301551}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}}{{sfnp|Stowell|1998|pp=30–31}}
{{blockquote|1=A War Department order of November 1863, applicable to the Southwestern states of the Confederacy, authorized the Northern Methodists to occupy "all houses of worship belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Church South in which a loyal minister, appointed by a loyal bishop of said church, does not officiate."}}

Across the North, several denominations—especially the Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians, as well as the Quakers—strongly supported Radical policies. The focus on social problems paved the way for the [[Social Gospel]] movement. [[Matthew Simpson]], a Methodist bishop, played a leading role in mobilizing the Northern Methodists for the cause. Biographer Robert D. Clark called him the "High Priest of the Radical Republicans".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Clark |first=Robert D. |title=The Life of Matthew Simpson |publisher=Macmillan |year=1956 |location=New York |pages=245–267 |oclc=852504}}</ref> The Methodist Ministers Association of Boston, meeting two weeks after Lincoln's assassination, called for a hard line against the Confederate leadership:<ref>{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/sourcebookofamer00norw |title=Sourcebook of American Methodism |date=1982 |publisher=Abingdon |isbn=9780687391400 |editor-last=Norwood |editor-first=Fredrick A. |location=Nashville |page=323 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref>{{sfnp|Sweet|1914|p=161}}
{{blockquote|1=Resolved, that no terms should be made with traitors, no compromise with rebels.... That we hold the national authority bound by the most solemn obligation to God and man to bring all the civil and military leaders of the rebellion to trial by due course of law, and when they are clearly convicted, to execute them.}}

The denominations all sent missionaries, teachers and activists to the South to help the freedmen. Only the Methodists made many converts, however.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Howard |first=Victor B. |url=https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1139&context=upk_united_states_history |title=Religion and the Radical Republican Movement, 1860–1870 |date=1990 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=9780813117027 |location=Lexington |pages=212–213 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200709085935/https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1139&context=upk_united_states_history |archive-date=July 9, 2020 |url-status=dead |via=University of Kentucky |access-date=February 1, 2024 }}</ref> Activists sponsored by the Northern Methodist Church played a major role in the Freedmen's Bureau, notably in such key educational roles as the bureau's state superintendent or assistant superintendent of education for Virginia, Florida, Alabama, and South Carolina.{{sfnp|Morrow|1954|p=205}}

Many Americans interpreted great events in religious terms. Historian Wilson Fallin Jr. contrasts the interpretation of the Civil War and Reconstruction in White versus Black Baptist sermons in Alabama. White Baptists expressed the view that:<ref name="Fallin" />
{{blockquote|1=God had chastised them and given them a special mission—to maintain orthodoxy, strict biblicism, personal piety, and traditional race relations. Slavery, they insisted, had not been sinful. Rather, emancipation was a historical tragedy and the end of Reconstruction was a clear sign of God's favor.}}

In sharp contrast, Black Baptists interpreted the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction as:<ref name="Fallin">{{cite book |last=Fallin |first=Wilson Jr. |url=https://archive.org/details/upliftingpeoplet0000fall/page/n19/mode/2up |title=Uplifting the People: Three Centuries of Black Baptists in Alabama |date=2007 |publisher=University of Alabama Press |isbn=9780817380304 |series=Religion and American culture |location=Tuscaloosa |pages=52–53 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=God's gift of freedom. They appreciated opportunities to exercise their independence, to worship in their own way, to affirm their worth and dignity, and to proclaim the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Most of all, they could form their own churches, associations, and conventions. These institutions offered self-help and racial uplift, and provided places where the gospel of liberation could be proclaimed. As a result, black preachers continued to insist that God would protect and help them; God would be their rock in a stormy land.}}