Political Theology and the Nineteenth Century

Regarded by his contemporaries as one of the most prolific theological minds of his time, Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898) was an unrepentant defender of chattel slavery and white supremacy, and a leading theological contributor to Lost Cause revisionism after the Civil War. A Reformed systematic theologian and a slaveholder, Dabney fought for the Confederacy, serving as the chief of staff and biographer for Stonewall Jackson. This paper documents Dabney’s nineteenth-century career as a Reformed theologian in the public square and argues that political theology in the United States has not yet reckoned sufficiently with Dabney’s legacy. The problems that Dabney’s political theology embodied have instead been swept under the rug—or hidden in the attic—of political theology as an embarrassing secret. In a time when rising neo-Confederate movements are self-consciously and overtly returning to Dabney as an intellectual and theological source, there is renewed urgency to confront Dabney’s legacy.