Bishop Lee's Address to Convention, 1861
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“Our Church, both in her pulpits and in her legislative bodies, has exercised great caution in regard to the exciting question which for years has agitated the nation and which lies at the foundation. of our present difficulties.—This caution has by no means arisen from a general and entire concurrence in the Southern view of slavery; but chiefly from the fact that our Southern brethren have ever manifested an extreme sensitiveness on the subJect, and from the consideration that for many years the question in this country has been intimately connected with party spirit and political movements. It has been impossible to treat it as a mere moral or religious question; and so we have seldom brought it into our sermons, and we have carefully avoided it in our Conventions…Differences of opinion have undoubtedly always existed amongst us upon the subject in question; but it has been so surrounded by difficulties, that, as a Church, we have not attempted to decide authoritatively concerning it. And even under the existing circumstances, a discussion of this subject, in its various phases and bearings, is not probably called for, in our pulpits and Conventions, by any practical benefit that would be likely to result from such a course. Our duty as Christian citizens, in the present exigency, seems to me to be wholly independent of this particular and very difficult question; although it can hardly be doubted that the contest now going on will do much towards modifying and deciding the general sentiment of the people in regard to the exciting cause of so unhappy a controversy. My own associations and habits of life have given me no capacity for viewing this question in the light in which it is viewed by our Southern brethren generally. All my sympathies and convictions are of a Northern tone and character. But at the same time I have concurred in the general opinion of our Church that this subject should not be allowed to divide us as it has divided some of the religious bodies in our land.” —Bishop Henry W. Lee. 1st Bishop of Iowa, Bishop’s Address to Convention, May 29-30, 1861