Book Description

Stuart Robinson was a prominent Presbyterian newspaper editor who took upon himself the dangerous task of distinguishing between the spiritual world and within a border state "city of conflict" during the Civil War. Presently, historians tend to depict religion during the American Civil War as domesticated under sectional nationalism -- where theologizing was directed at justifying the war in order to forge either a northern or southern Zion. Graham argues that such one-sided depictions do not sufficiently account for either the existence of a border state phenomenon during the civil war or the kind of theologizing that was being propagated from out of the border states against the domestication of religion to sectional politics. In A Kingdom Not of This World: Stuart Robinson's Struggle to Distinguish the Sacred from the Secular During the Civil War Preston D. Graham, Jr. presents a case study of a rather sizeable movement among border state Presbyterians, with special attention given to their most celebrated and influential leader, the Dr. Rev. Stuart Robinson of Louisville, Kentucky. Given the significance of Robinson's theologizing relative to the American doctrine of the separation of church and state, several primary resources are included in a reader portion of the appendix.