<P> Protestant churches in the U.S., unable to agree on what God's Word said about slavery, ended up with schisms between Northern and Southern branches: the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844, the Baptists in 1845, and the Presbyterian Church in 1857 . These splits presaged the subsequent split in the nation: "The churches played a major role in the dividing of the nation, and it is probably true that it was the splits in the churches which made a final split of the national inevitable ." The conflict over how to interpret the Bible was central: </P> <Dl> <Dd> <Dl> <Dd> The theological crisis occasioned by reasoning like (conservative Presbyterian theologian James H .) Thornwell's was acute . Many Northern Bible - readers and not a few in the South felt that slavery was evil . They somehow knew the Bible supported them in that feeling . Yet when it came to using the Bible as it had been used with such success to evangelize and civilize the United States, the sacred page was snatched out of their hands . Trust in the Bible and reliance upon a Reformed, literal hermeneutic had created a crisis that only bullets, not arguments, could resolve . </Dd> </Dl> </Dd> </Dl> <Dd> <Dl> <Dd> The theological crisis occasioned by reasoning like (conservative Presbyterian theologian James H .) Thornwell's was acute . Many Northern Bible - readers and not a few in the South felt that slavery was evil . They somehow knew the Bible supported them in that feeling . Yet when it came to using the Bible as it had been used with such success to evangelize and civilize the United States, the sacred page was snatched out of their hands . Trust in the Bible and reliance upon a Reformed, literal hermeneutic had created a crisis that only bullets, not arguments, could resolve . </Dd> </Dl> </Dd> <Dl> <Dd> The theological crisis occasioned by reasoning like (conservative Presbyterian theologian James H .) Thornwell's was acute . Many Northern Bible - readers and not a few in the South felt that slavery was evil . They somehow knew the Bible supported them in that feeling . Yet when it came to using the Bible as it had been used with such success to evangelize and civilize the United States, the sacred page was snatched out of their hands . Trust in the Bible and reliance upon a Reformed, literal hermeneutic had created a crisis that only bullets, not arguments, could resolve . </Dd> </Dl>

What started the civil war in the us