We confess

Four generations ago, the white church in the Deep South launched the Confederacy with prayer and fasting. Faithful Christians cried out to God, certain their cause was righteous; their war, holy. As the Civil War progressed, Southerners were bombarded with distressing political news, distressing economic news and tragic news from the battlefields. They prayed and fasted with increasing frequency and fervency. Prostrate before God, they confessed the sins of the Yankees - and such things in their own lives as drinking, swearing and card-playing.

In the end, with the South in ruins and the death toll on both sides numbering well into the hundreds of thousands, the church collectively still did not see or uproot the tangle of strongholds that held them. Utterly desolate, they cried,

"Why have we fasted ... and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves and you have not noticed?" (Isa. 58:3)

Today, US Christians in record numbers are crying out to God on behalf of our nation. Bombarded with distressing political news, distressing economic news and distressing world news, we're praying with increasing frequency and fervency. We've even fasted! Indeed, every time we turn around, someone is calling us to fast and pray for our nation. Already, we too have begun to ask the Lord:

In Isaiah 58, God answered those questions. He said he had not responded because his people were fasting for the wrong reasons and in the wrong way. They had not entered into the fast HE had chosen.

Today, our Lord who loves us deeply is giving the same answer. Collectively, we've often fasted over their sins - confessing the wrongs of people with whom we do not identify or associate, people we consider unrighteous and may even count "the enemy." Repeatedly, we've tried to address the corporate sins of the nation without first addressing the corporate sins of the church.

Further, we've prayed to "take back our culture." We're quite sure that if Christians who think like us can get into places of influence in all realms of our society, everything will change for good.

For a century after the Civil War, Christians in the South held the places of influence in pretty much every area of culture. They even called the region, "Our Southern Zion."

Certainly, a significant percentage of the population went to church. Many openly acknowledged Jesus as their Savior. More than a few sought to live truly godly lives. But corporately, did the church in the South in 1890 and 1920 and 1960 look like Jesus? Did their land look like God's kingdom on earth? Did their influence produce ... widespread awakening? A region characterized by justice, mercy and genuine godliness? Churches filled with God's life and power? Communities known for selfless love?

When we try to "take the land" without first dealing with our corporate sins, we simply transpose our sins into new settings. If we would cooperate with God in changing cultures and nations, we must first cooperate with him in removing the oppressive yokes from around our own necks.

Revelation from the past
In the mid-1700s, the colonies experienced a massive God-sent revival: the Great Awakening. From the 1790s to the 1830s, the new nation experienced an equally powerful Second Great Awakening. The Second Awakening started in New England. In 1801, it hit Kentucky. At the very time pioneers were thronging across the Appalachian Mountains and settling lands that would become the Southern states, awakening swept like wildfire across those lands. The three major denominations - Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian - participated together in lively revival meetings filled with visible manifestations of the Holy Spirit and producing radically changed lives. In particular, the Methodist and Baptist denominations - the "holy rollers" of the day - grew exponentially. Spiritual awakening lasted nearly 40 years!

So what ultimately snuffed that Awakening - and has aborted or sabotaged every revival in the US since?

Part of the church moved away from the bedrock truths of the faith and began to embrace an "anything goes" message. In so doing, that segment of the church corporately quenched and grieved the Spirit. That movement grew out of New England.

Part of the church held fast to Jesus and to salvation through his blood alone. This movement grew out of the South, where the church prided itself on its dedication to Christ, its faithfulness to Scripture, its love for missions and its label, "The Bible Belt."

From a Christian perspective, we see the profound implications of abandoning the essentials of the faith. We see the necessity of clinging to Christ alone and following him fully. However, we have not seen the profound implications of wedding cultural biases to the bedrock beliefs of the faith. We have not seen where the church that clung to Jesus missed him.

"Yes, yes" and "No, no"
In the first three decades of the 1800s, the awakened white Southern church culture said a resounding "yes, yes" to Christ on matters of personal salvation. But by the 1830s, this same church culture - speaking in a concerted, persistent and increasingly resolute voice - said "no, no" to Christ on other issues, issues that reflected their cultural bias. In essence, they said yes to awakening - and no to reformation. In the words of 1 Kings 18:21, they halted between two opinions.

Strong historical evidence shows that Christians across the South heard the voice of the Spirit on key issues and struggled deeply and at length with the conviction he brought - yet regarding the treatment of whole groups of people, the church ultimately chose to follow the culture, rather than to obey the Spirit of God.

The Indian problem. Awakened by the Spirit, white settlers across the South recognized as wrong the mistreatment of native peoples. Responding to their culture, the settlers petitioned the US government for Indian removal from lands they wanted to own. Actively or passively, the settlers abetted the evils leading to and fostered by the Indian Removal Act of 1830 - including theft of property, breaking all covenants made with Native American tribes, murder and wrongful death.

The slave problem. Awakened by the Spirit, Southerners recognized slavery as "an evil, the curse of which is felt and acknowledged by every enlightened man in the Slave-holding States."* Responding to their culture, Southern Christians ultimately reversed their stand, declared that slavery was God's plan and insisted that anyone who taught otherwise was both contradicting Scripture and anti-Christian.

The woman problem. Awakened by the Spirit, the Southern church began to recognize women as partners in ministry: "Advocates of the Awakening encouraged women to take an active part in the work of God. Some new groups ... allowed women to lead as well as to support."** Responding to their culture, the Christians of the South adopted a beguiling code of "chivalry" drawn from the ancient Greeks and from fictional accounts of the Dark Ages. They promoted as biblical a view of women heavily influenced by Arthurian romance novels and pagan Greek thinking.

Without seeing what they were doing, this segment of the church normalized the cohabitation of what God adores and what he abhors. While lifting high the name of Christ, the church grieved and quenched the Spirit. While preaching the gospel, the church opened itself to be taken captive by the sin strongholds of the region.

Indeed, the churches of the Bible Belt became so committed to slavery and all the mindsets linked with it that all three main denominations split from their Northern brethren over that issue. Fifteen years before the Southern states seceded from the Union, the Methodists and Baptists of the South left their national denominational organizations and formed regional ones. Because the church had tried the strategy first - and seemingly so successfully - the ministers were among the loudest voices calling for secession in 1860. Thus, the two denominations that had led in embracing the Spirit during the Second Great Awakening led the way into secession only a decade after awakening ended.

Sticks and bones
So has the church in the South done everything wrong? No, it has not. What our Southern church culture has done, collectively, generationally, is to insist we've done everything right.

Meanwhile, as already stated, the Northern church culture took a different wrong turn as the Second Great Awakening waned. I'm not the one to identify and confess those sins. God is raising strong voices from that region to repent for the strongholds there.

In revealing the past, our Lord is not identifying any one region as more sinful than others, but rather he is seeking to rescue his Bride from all the ways we've compromised covenant with one another and with him. He is not fostering division, but rather establishing true unity. He is not beating us down, but rather raising us up.

He is inviting us to join him, as Ezekiel joined him, in the two stunning miracles Ezekiel 37 describes. In Ezekiel's day, Israel had divided, north from south. God declared that he would do the impossible: make the two sticks into one.

"This is what the Almighty LORD says: ... I will form them into one nation in the land.... One king will rule all of them. They will no longer be two nations or be divided into two kingdoms. They will no longer dishonor themselves with their idols, with their detestable things, or with their rebellious acts. I will forgive them for all the times they turned away from me and sinned. I will cleanse them so that they will be my people, and I will be their God" (Ezek. 37:22-23 God's Word).

In Ezekiel's day, the people God had destined for wholeness and holiness were fractured and defeated. The breath of God in them had been snuffed. Ezekiel saw them lying, like dry bones littered across a major battlefield. When God asked him, "Can these bones live?" Ezekiel answered, "Sovereign LORD, you alone know" (Ezek. 37:3).

The Lord exposed all those dry bones, not to bury them, but to raise up an army from them. God told Ezekiel, "Speak to the bones": Call for fragmented people, who don't appear to have one bit of life left, to come together and become whole. When that miracle happened, God told Ezekiel, "Speak to the breath": Call for the Spirit to enter and mobilize the bodies the dry bones formed.

Remember: the sticks and the bones were God's people. Ezekiel cooperated with God to see his people Israel restored. We cooperate with God to see his church awakened and re-formed. During this 11:11 Campaign, the Lord is carrying teams from North, West and South to sites of massive Civil War battles and massive outpourings of his Spirit - valleys now literally and spiritually filled with dry bones. We go there, not to bury the bones, but to cooperate with God in raising from them an army, filled with his Breath. As we converge on Gettysburg and Washington, DC, we'll confess, not the sins of others, but our own.

With us, will you say "Yes!" to the cry of Acts 3:19-20 and its accompanying promise? "Now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away. Then times of refreshment will come from the presence of the Lord, and he will again send you Jesus, your appointed Messiah" (NLT).

A different kind of fasting
As a critical component of this repentance, the Lord is calling us to a different kind of fasting than we've known. A fast requires us to deny ourselves and humble ourselves. In Isaiah 58, those who fasted abstained from food, but continued to treat one another terribly. God rejected that kind of fasting then, and he rejects it now.

He is calling his people across this land to deny ourselves and humble ourselves in a way we have not done since the Second Great Awakening. To fast in the way HE has chosen - to come together into that place of readiness to be filled with his breath - we listen to his voice and treat others the way his Spirit says to treat them, regardless the cost.

"Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, 'Here I am.'"
(Isa. 58:6-9 ESV)

Adapted from chapter 4 of the upcoming book, We Confess! The Civil War, the South and the Church, by Deborah Brunt.