<Dd> <Dl> <Dd> The pro-slavery South could point to slaveholding by the godly patriarch Abraham (Gen 12: 5; 14: 14; 24: 35--36; 26: 13--14), a practice that was later incorporated into Israelite national law (Lev 25: 44--46). It was never denounced by Jesus, who made slavery a model of discipleship (Mk 10: 44). The Apostle Paul supported slavery, counseling obedience to earthly masters (Eph 6: 5--9; Col 3: 22--25) as a duty in agreement with "the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching which accords with godliness" (1 Tim 6: 3). Because slaves were to remain in their present state unless they could win their freedom (1 Cor 7: 20--24), he sent the fugitive slave Onesimus back to his owner Philemon (Phlm 10--20). The abolitionist north had a difficult time matching the pro-slavery south passage for passage . (...) Professor Eugene Genovese, who has studied these biblical debates over slavery in minute detail, concludes that the pro-slavery faction clearly emerged victorious over the abolitionists except for one specious argument based on the so - called Curse of Ham (Gen 9: 18--27). For our purposes, it is important to realize that the South won this crucial contest with the North by using the prevailing hermeneutic, or method of interpretation, on which both sides agreed . So decisive was its triumph that the South mounted a vigorous counterattack on the abolitionists as infidels who had abandoned the plain words of Scripture for the secular ideology of the Enlightenment . </Dd> </Dl> </Dd> <Dl> <Dd> The pro-slavery South could point to slaveholding by the godly patriarch Abraham (Gen 12: 5; 14: 14; 24: 35--36; 26: 13--14), a practice that was later incorporated into Israelite national law (Lev 25: 44--46). It was never denounced by Jesus, who made slavery a model of discipleship (Mk 10: 44). The Apostle Paul supported slavery, counseling obedience to earthly masters (Eph 6: 5--9; Col 3: 22--25) as a duty in agreement with "the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching which accords with godliness" (1 Tim 6: 3). Because slaves were to remain in their present state unless they could win their freedom (1 Cor 7: 20--24), he sent the fugitive slave Onesimus back to his owner Philemon (Phlm 10--20). The abolitionist north had a difficult time matching the pro-slavery south passage for passage . (...) Professor Eugene Genovese, who has studied these biblical debates over slavery in minute detail, concludes that the pro-slavery faction clearly emerged victorious over the abolitionists except for one specious argument based on the so - called Curse of Ham (Gen 9: 18--27). For our purposes, it is important to realize that the South won this crucial contest with the North by using the prevailing hermeneutic, or method of interpretation, on which both sides agreed . So decisive was its triumph that the South mounted a vigorous counterattack on the abolitionists as infidels who had abandoned the plain words of Scripture for the secular ideology of the Enlightenment . </Dd> </Dl> <Dd> The pro-slavery South could point to slaveholding by the godly patriarch Abraham (Gen 12: 5; 14: 14; 24: 35--36; 26: 13--14), a practice that was later incorporated into Israelite national law (Lev 25: 44--46). It was never denounced by Jesus, who made slavery a model of discipleship (Mk 10: 44). The Apostle Paul supported slavery, counseling obedience to earthly masters (Eph 6: 5--9; Col 3: 22--25) as a duty in agreement with "the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching which accords with godliness" (1 Tim 6: 3). Because slaves were to remain in their present state unless they could win their freedom (1 Cor 7: 20--24), he sent the fugitive slave Onesimus back to his owner Philemon (Phlm 10--20). The abolitionist north had a difficult time matching the pro-slavery south passage for passage . (...) Professor Eugene Genovese, who has studied these biblical debates over slavery in minute detail, concludes that the pro-slavery faction clearly emerged victorious over the abolitionists except for one specious argument based on the so - called Curse of Ham (Gen 9: 18--27). For our purposes, it is important to realize that the South won this crucial contest with the North by using the prevailing hermeneutic, or method of interpretation, on which both sides agreed . So decisive was its triumph that the South mounted a vigorous counterattack on the abolitionists as infidels who had abandoned the plain words of Scripture for the secular ideology of the Enlightenment . </Dd> <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>

Which was not a cause of the civil war