CHURCH:
CONFLICT

Chestnut Street Church belonged to the Presbyterian Church North, which, a traveler from another planet might be shocked to learn, means this: that years after the Civil War had been lost and won, and Grant had clicked his heels and handed back to Lee his officer’s sword as a generous gesture toward a gallant but defeated foe … after Lincoln had gone down in blood to the immense sorrow of a whole united people; after the gray-clad soldiers had put down their guns and gone back to raising sweet potatoes on the river bottoms of Georgia and Tennessee; after the senators from down south were back in Washington holding forth on the glory of southern manhood and the virtues of southern fried chicken, and getting applause from the galleries, and the country was getting back to normal again, the churches were still fighting the Civil War. The world fights and forgets; God’s people fight and remember.

Wingspread; A.B. Simpson: A Study in Spiritual Altitude, 45.