The Christian Family: Children, Fatherhood, and Generational Faithfulness: The World And Times Of Jesse James

Community in the Old South & in the Confederacy

Transcript: AI Transcript

Professor: John Weaver

Subject: Family Government

Genre: Sermon

Dictation Name:

Date: 2023-08-01

Synopsis: John Weaver argues that true community requires commonality—shared faith, heritage, and culture—and that the Old South possessed four foundational elements now largely lost: biblical hope, honor, heritage, and hospitality. He contends that the War Between the States was fundamentally theological, with the North having apostatized into rationalism while the South held to Scripture. Without a return to God’s law and these communal virtues, society remains fractured and cannot be rebuilt.

[John Weaver] Thank you. All right. So we're talking about communities in the South and in the old Confederacy as well. So many people have not understood that communities does involve a common cultural heritage and, of course, a faith as well. But my Christian friend who sent me this little quote, I hit it on the head. Here's what he said. He thinks. that the next quote unquote civil war, not using the word civil in that sense of the word, but the next war that's going to actually take place in this country is going to take place for these reasons.

[John Weaver] Listen carefully what he said. We all understand the concept of nation in the geopolitical sense. Biblically, however, nations, nation or ethnos, is not an amalgamated conglomeration of people from different linguistic, cultural, political, or religious persuasions. It is a particular people group akin to a large extended family. Thus, conventions, customs, ethics, values, laws, and its applications, suitable, desirous, and effective in one, that is, one group, are odious and repugnant to the other. It should be noted, however, that ethnicity ought not to be an essential factor, but integration and a degree of conformity is essential to any immigration policy.

[John Weaver] Further, while aliens and sojourners could be a blessing to a godly theonomic society, they are a curse to a rebellious antinomian society. Multiculturalism, diversity, undiblical ideologies, deficient concepts of history and heritage do not and cannot promote community. Think of the word community. Com is a preposition which means with, and the rest of the word is unity. So community means basically that there is a people, there is a group that is one, that they are unified and they have a commonality. In fact, the word community is from the Latin word communitas, which refers to that which is held in common. So let me put it to you like this, where there is no commonality, there is no community. One reason that you can have people that live next door to you or down the street from you or down the road from you, and you don't even know their names, you don't even know who they are, is the fact that you have absolutely nothing in common.

[John Weaver] Why in the world are you going to visit with someone when you're totally opposites? And there's no commonality there. And consequently, you know, you cannot have community. You've heard that old adage, birds of a feather flock together. Well, that's certainly true with people as well. If you and I are going to have a Christian community, that is, we have to have people who think alike. That does not mean that we're going to agree on every little detail in every specific area. But it does mean that we have to come together with some basic commonalities as well.

[John Weaver] So our communities basically need to be resurrection. Now, you have to understand this resurrection is always on God's terms. It's no man's terms. If our communities are going to be resurrected, they're going to be resurrected based upon the word of God. Here's a question that I like to ask people. If our society disintegrated today, totally, completely, economic, social, everything's just went south. Everything's totally gone. And you have the opportunity to rebuild society tomorrow from the bottom up. Here's my question. Whose law would you use to rebuild society?

[John Weaver] Now, if you tell me, well, brother, we were what I would do, I would take the best that man can offer and I would rebuild on that. In that case, you might as well let it stay down because it's going to curse from the beginning. You remember in the book of Joshua, chapter six, when they destroyed Jericho, Joshua said, Cursed be the man before the Lord that rises up and buildeth this city of Jericho.

[John Weaver] He shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates thereof. And if you will read in 1 Kings chapter 16 and verse 34, it was Hael the Bethlehemite, who actually rebuilt Jericho. And he did indeed lay the foundation, the Bible says, in a bar of his first son. That is, he sacrificed his first son and he set up the gate in Segal, his second son. In other words, he murdered his own sons, offered them in sacrifice for setting up Jericho. In other words, the point I'm trying to make, if we do not build according to God's law, it is basically a waste of time because it's going to fail. It's going to be cursed.

[John Weaver] In order to have a community, you've got to remember you have to have individuals and then you have to have families. Every community is made up of individuals. Every community is made up of families. Our communities are never, ever going to be any better than our individuals and our families as well. So if you have an unresurrected community, the truth of the matter is you're not going to have a good community whatsoever. You cannot have a spiritual community with unspiritual people. You cannot have a godly community with ungodly people. You cannot have a community with people fussing and fighting and feuding all of the time. Because the truth of the matter is, you're just going to have war left and right.

[John Weaver] Robert Winthrop, who happened to be a congressman and a former Speaker of the House, who died in 1894, He was speaking before the Massachusetts Bible Society, and here is what he said. Listen carefully. All societies of men must be governed in some way or the other. The less they may have of astringent self-government, the more they must rely on individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them, either by the word of God or the strong arm of man, either by the Bible or the bayonet.

[John Weaver] So what he's saying is this, if society is not going to do right, there's got to be always someone who will make them do that which is right. So if we do not want the strong arm of man forcing us, That means that we as individuals and families must rely upon the power of God within us and his word and his truth. So it's easy for someone who is right and holy and godly to live with other people who are right, holy and godly. I don't have any conflicts with God's people. I don't have any conflicts with Presbyterians.

[John Weaver] I preach in Presbyterian churches all the time, although I'm a Baptist. In fact, I had a Presbyterian Pastor who's a dear friend of mine down to the last class, and he was shooting very, very well. And so I went up, I put my hand on his shoulder and I said, you know, for a half baptized brother, you're really shooting well. Of course, he laughed at me. You know, I was joking with him. But that's the point.

[John Weaver] I have no problem with him and he has no problem with me. I preach every year. in a Presbyterian church down in Alabama and right straight across the street is a big Baptist church. And the pastor always puts on the billboard outside. Come here, Baptist Pastor John Weaver. No Baptist ever come, but I'm just going to point out the fact, you know, people who love each other and love the Lord, you're not going to have any problem.

[John Weaver] It doesn't matter if you disagree on something. You're just still not going to have any problem. Think about the Old South. Think about the Confederacy. Think about the glue that held those people together. At the same time, think about why we are falling apart today. I'm going to give you four things, hopefully very quickly. Four major concepts that the old South had that we do not have today, basically speaking.

[John Weaver] First, there was Southern hope. Southern hope is nothing less than what you and I would call biblical hope. You have to remember that the South was settled basically by Scots-Irish. I mean, here were people who came with a love for the Word of God. Even General Nathan Bedford Forrest's mother, Mary, she was a Presbyterian. She loved the Word of God. She left him a Bible that had been really underlined and marked up by her. I mean, she was a woman of the Word. And General Forrest, of course, understood his mother. And of course, she gave him that Bible as well.

[John Weaver] So you have to understand that there was a theological aspect in the war of northern aggression. I might get to talk about that a little bit later. The North basically had apostatized. They had gone into Unitarianism. They had gone into Rationalism. They had gone into Transcendentalism. And the South basically stayed with the Word of God. You remember James Henley Thornwell, he was a Presbyterian who died in 1862. He was the one that also pointed out that there was indeed a theological concept in this war.

[John Weaver] And he said those on the other side were red republicans and heathen and these on the southern side were of course for religion and political order and this kind of thing. So by and large the South was unashamedly Christian. They believe the Bible to be the divinely inspired Word of God. And when the North made fun of us and called us the Bible Belt, that was not a compliment.

[John Weaver] That was meant to be a slam because they were so far above us in their thinking, in their rationalism. They set their minds above the Word of God. And the Bible Belt was considered a slam. It was not considered a compliment whatsoever. No, the truth of the matter is the Bible was first and foremost in the South.

[John Weaver] Now, there were people in the North who were Christians, I understand that, and there were people in the North who were what they used to call Copperheads. They were very Southern in their sympathies. When I say that the South was predominantly Christian, that does not mean that everyone in the South was a Christian. Neither does it mean that there were no Christians in the North, but it does mean that generally speaking, the North had apostatized and left the word of God.

[John Weaver] I want you to listen to the testimony of Robert E. Lee. He said this. The Bible is the book of books, a book which supplies the place of all others and cannot be replaced. Later, he said this. There are many things in that old book that I may never be able to explain, but I accept them as the infallible Word of God and receive its teaching as inspired by the Holy Ghost. I prefer the Bible to any other book.

[John Weaver] There is enough in that to satisfy the most ardent thirst for knowledge, to open the way to true wisdom, and to teach the only road to salvation and eternal happiness. It is not above human comprehension and is sufficient to satisfy all desires. So likely the South believe the Bible was indeed the word of God. What many pastors have not understood and many people have not understood that there was indeed a theological aspect to that war.

[John Weaver] You cannot have a change in culture without a change in theology. Let me say this another way. A change in culture is always preceded by a change in theology. You want to know why our culture has changed in this country? Because our theology has changed. Stop and think of all the grain and all the revenue, everything that we've sent, just say for India. Don't worry about China. Don't think about Iraq and Iran. Just think about India. Think of all the food and all the grain that we have sent to India for years and years and years and years and years. And it's all wasted. Now, some get to eat of it, but do you realize if they had a pile of grain as high as this building, the cows could walk in and eat whatever they wanted to eat, defecate wherever they wanted to defecate, because cows are worshipped in India.

[John Weaver] I have seen, I have it on video, I've seen pictures of Indian women offering bowls of milk to big wharf rats and then bowing down and worshipping the wharf rats. Listen, you're not going to change that culture unless you change the theology. Do you understand that? We used to send missionaries to foreign countries. Now we send soldiers. Because now we're trying to force the change instead of allowing it to be a biblical change. The only point I'm trying to say is you're not going to ever force religion down somebody's throat and you're not going to change their culture until you change their theology.

[John Weaver] Now, when the South did not voluntarily relinquish the word of God and when the South did not bow to the rationalism and transcendentalism of the North, there was war. And the war basically was to force the Northern way of thinking upon us when it did not work. And the South lost, then there was Reconstruction, and Reconstruction was nothing more than a military move to force us into submitting to the thinking of the North.

[John Weaver] That's exactly what it was. By the way, political correctness is still the same thing as reconstruction. You're being reconstructed, whether you know it or not, when you listen to all the propaganda and leave everything that comes off the TV set and on the radio. You're being propagandized. You're being brainwashed. You're being basically controlled. I had an interesting conversation with a woman who called me on the phone and She said, Mr. Weaver said, you've been a good customer for years.

[John Weaver] And it was telephone service. And she said, well, I can save you some money. I said, really? I said, I'd really like to save some money. How are you going to save me some money? She said, well, we can bundle everything in one bill. And you can have your TV. You can have your internet. And you can have your phone service. And it'll just be all one bill. And we can save you lots of money. I said, well, that's wonderful. I said, tell me how much money you're going to save me. on my TV. Well, she said, how much are you paying? I said, I'm not paying anything.

[John Weaver] Oh, she said, you have an antenna. I said, no ma'am, I don't have an antenna. She said, well, how much do you pay? I said, I don't pay anything. She said, how can you have TV and don't pay anything? I said, because I don't have TV. That's not the... You know what she said? What? You don't have a TV. She said, what do you do? I said, man, have you ever heard the word reading? I'm serious.

[John Weaver] She was absolutely shocked that we didn't have a TV in our house and hadn't had for years and years. And I don't want one. I'm just simply pointing out the fact, you know, we receive all kind of propaganda and don't even realize what's happening. Basil Manley, a Baptist pastor and chaplain and provisional A confederate congressman said this, that he viewed secession not as rebellion, but as a Christian reform movement. W. W. Bennett, in his book, The Great Revival, said this, talking about Southern soldiers, their conviction of right and what they did were second only to their convictions of the truth of the Christian religion. Nor has the stern logic of events eradicated this conviction from the Southern mind.

[John Weaver] The cause may be lost, but its principles still live and must continue to live so long as there remains a human nature in a human nature, any perception and appreciation of justice, truth and virtue. He said you cannot lose the principles. You cannot lose the if you lose the principles, you lose hope. And I usually tell people the cause is not lost as long as there is a biblical hope and you understand the principles. But in the Old South, there was Southern hope. Secondly, there was Southern honor. Honor was one of the, I would say it was the glue basically that held the family and the community together.

[John Weaver] Men were men and women were women. Men of honor worked, provided, protected and loved their wives and their families. It was an honor to work. It was an honor to be independent. It was an honor not to be in debt. It was an honor not to be dependent upon charity. It was an honor to be a man. It was an honor to be a woman. The woman was more feminine then than she is today. Here's this code of honor that was basically in the old South. Listen to it. The code of honor for Southern men required having, number one, a reputation for honesty and integrity.

[John Weaver] I can tell you this. When I was a boy, which was a long time ago, I watched my father make deals with other farmers. And sometimes those deals back then were $40,000 and $50,000, which was a lot of money. back then, and all they did was shake hands. There was no contract. They just agreed. I've seen my father and I've seen other farmers. When a farmer died, I've seen them go up to the widow and say, I owe your husband so much and I want to pay it right now. They would pay the debt after the man was dead when no one else knew about the debt, but they knew about it.

[John Weaver] The Code of Honor, first of all, said this. A reputation of honesty and integrity.

[John Weaver] Secondly, a reputation for martial courage and strength. That is, you were able to fight. Number three, self-sufficiency and mastery defined as a patriarchal dominion over the household. In other words, you had your household in order. Wife, children, slaves if you had them. Number four, a willingness to use violence. to defend any perceived slight to his reputation as a man of integrity, strength, and courage, as well as any threat to his independence or to his kin."

[John Weaver] Now think about the threats to our independence today that no one is fighting. I was telling some of the fellows before service today I have a friend, he's now dead, or I have a friend, he was a pastor, he called me one day, he said, John, I found out how to get men up in arms marching on Washington, D.C. I said, really, tell me how? He said, well, he said, no one's concerned about abortion. That doesn't upset anybody. No one's concerned about sodomy. That doesn't upset anybody. Nobody's concerned about the social condition and deterioration in this country. That doesn't upset anybody. He said, let's get Congress to pass a law banning balls of every size, shape, and form. And men will be in arms marching on Washington, D.C.

[John Weaver] Just because there's no more football, no more baseball, no more soccer, no more golf, no. Yeah, just stop and think about that. We'll fight for our pleasures, but we won't fight for our independence and for our freedom.

[John Weaver] Now, an advice of a North Carolina Carlinian, William Pettigrew, to his younger brother, said this. As far as it can be done, we should live peaceably with our associates. But as we can always as we cannot always do so, it is necessary occasionally to resist. And when our honor demands resistance, it should be done with courage. Well, you know, that's the same truth as Romans chapter 12 and verse 18, where the Bible says as much as in you is live peaceably with all men. In other words, God understands there are some men that you cannot live peaceably with. In other words, all I'm saying is, there was Southern honor. Men were going to defend their integrity. They were going to defend their families. They were going to defend their independence. Southern men have always been fighters.

[John Weaver] Whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not, you look and study and find out, of every war that this country has ever been in, the majority of the soldiers have been from the South. Listen to Alexander Sozinitsyn. He said, a decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outsider observer notices in the West today. Oh, let me stop there. A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. Along with this is a loss of will in the West.

[John Weaver] We can't defend ourselves if we're not willing to die for anything. There is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. In other words, all we want is money. So this Southern emphasis on honor affected women as well as men, because Southern women wanted to be women. They wanted to be homemakers. They wanted to be wives. They wanted to be good neighbors. I want to give you two definitions.

[John Weaver] The first one is Robert E. Lee's definition of a gentleman. And Robert E. Lee could not envision a Christian not being a gentleman. Neither could he envision a gentleman not being a Christian. To him, they were one and the same. Here's what Lee said. Lee's description of what a gentleman should be was this. The forebearing use of power does not only form the touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is the test of a true gentleman. In other words, I've got power over you.

[John Weaver] I have authority over you. Listen to what he says now. The power which the strong have over the weak, the magistrate over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly, the forebearing or inoffensive use of all this power authority, or the total absence of it when the case admits it, will show the gentleman in plain light. The gentleman does not needlessly or unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him.

[John Weaver] He can not only forgive, he can forget. And he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character, which imparts sufficient strength to let the past be the past. A true gentleman of honor feels humbled when he can help humbling others.

[John Weaver] Now, let that sink in. A true gentleman of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others. That's why the Bible says in Proverbs 29, verse 23, a man's pride shall bring him low, but honor shall uphold the upright in spirit. And so, Robert Lee is a real gentleman. It's not someone who's going to take advantage of others. He's going to be someone who will let the bygones be bygones. He's not going to just bring up past sins and past errors and past mistakes just for the sake of bringing them up. So that's the man. Ladies, I want you to listen, because this, you might think it's out of date a little bit, but that's fine.

[John Weaver] This was written by Verena Davis, Jeff Davis's wife, on being a lady. Listen, what is a lady? A lady is simply someone who cares about herself and others. She sees that her garments are clean and neatly pressed. Her shoes are polished and every button is in place. She is neat and tidy even at the breakfast table and wishes to appear well to her own family. She keeps her hair clean and well-groomed and never puts her hand to her hair to rearrange it or search for loose pins while others can see. A lady does not monopolize the conversation. She does not talk of herself and her own affairs listens with well-simulated interest to a story that bores her. That's most wives.

[John Weaver] This is the mark of good breeding. She does not sit apart with one or two friends, but makes the gentle effort to assure a good time for all with pleasant conversation. A lady does not say or do anything that will upset those around her or to make them uncomfortable. A lady does not let any man kiss her or put his arm around her unless she is engaged to him.

[John Weaver] And even then, she should be a little stingy with her favors. A lady, when she brushes off her hat, does not forget to brush away the cobwebs from her hair or from her brain. She does not conclude that every man who has said something pleasant to her has fallen in love with her. A lady is possessed of refinement, which prevents her from all fidgeting, from playing with her handkerchief, her umbrella, her purse, or whatever may be in her hands. When she sits down, she remains quietly, her hands resting easily without movement, and her whole figure is filled with repose.

[John Weaver] She is calm, composed, self-controlled at all times, yet there are no airs about her. These qualities are what keep her from talking and laughing loudly, And they prevent her from hurting the feelings of anyone. A lady does not grow weary in well-doing, but encourages herself by trying to live up to the ideal of a woman. Isn't that amazing? Verena Davis wrote that. The Bible says in Proverbs 11, in verse 16, a gracious woman retaineth honor and strong men retain riches. In the South, it was an honor for a man to be a man. It was an honor for a woman to be a woman. There was no confusion. The truth of the matter is, I'll be 79 if the Lord lets me live to September. I've never wanted to be a woman at all. I've always wanted to be a man, you know. Isn't that amazing? And that's exactly what the scripture says. God created us man and woman. So there was southern hope, there is southern honor. Here's the third thing, and that's southern heritage.

[John Weaver] Let me tell you this about heritage. Heritage is the status that is acquired by a person through birth. Your heritage is your birthright. Your heritage is what you were born with. Down in Georgia, I've seen many bumper stickers. One of them that stands out says simply this, I was not born in the South, but I got here as soon as I could. Well, that is true. And I got news for you, those who are born in the South have inherited this great inheritance of our ancestors. We can no more change the fact that we're Southerners any more than a leopard could change its spots. We would not want to change.

[John Weaver] Whatsoever, I remember when I was in college years ago, I had to take a class in voice and diction. And My teacher, Mr. Pratt, was from the north. And I gave a recitation and he looked at me and said, Mr. Weaver. I said, yes, Mr. Pratt. He said, you still have that southern accent. I looked at him, I said, Mr. Pratt, do you know why I still have that southern accent? He said, why?

[John Weaver] I said, because I'm a southerner and I'm planning on keeping it. I'm not planning on changing it. I said, I want to speak correctly, but you're not going to change me into a Yankee. I said, that's all there is to it. I mean, I wasn't ugly, but I'm just going to be pointing out the fact we have a heritage. The psalmist said in Psalm 16 and verse six, the lions are following me in pleasant places. I have a goodly heritage. God has given us a goodly heritage. Psalm 61 and verse five, the Bible says, for thou, O God, has heard my vows. Thou hast given me the heritage of those that fear thy name. Have you ever heard the vow that Major R.E.

[John Weaver] Wilson gave, the oath that he gave? Listen to this. Major Wilson said, If I ever disown, repudiate or apologize for the cause for which Lee fought and Jackson died, let the lightnings of heaven rend me and the scorn of all good men and true women be my portion. Sun, moon, stars all fall on me when I cease to love the Confederacy. Tis the cause, not the fate of the cause that is glorious. That's heritage. N.B.

[John Weaver] Littlejohn sent his son off to fight with the Yankees. I want you to listen to what he said to his son. This is so far removed of what a father would tell his son today, but here's what he said. He shook his son's hand as the son was about to leave. He said, my son, I grasp your hand probably for the last time upon earth. You're going to meet the dangers and hardships consequent to a soldier's life. You may fill a soldier's grave. Well, father and son, you may die. Let me impress upon your mind to never fill it dishonorably.

[John Weaver] Ever be at your post of duty. Be an honor to our beloved Southland. Go where your superiors order you. Never turn your back upon the foe, except when deemed necessary by your superior officers. Be true to your God, yourself and your country. Never bring reproach upon your beloved Southland or yourself. Never desert your country. But if necessary, die at your post of honor. Wow. Yeah, there's not only Southern hope and Southern honor, there is Southern heritage as well.

[John Weaver] Henry Grady was the editor of the Atlanta Constitution. And on December the 21st, 1886, which would be 21 years after the war for Southern Independence was over, he was speaking to the New England Society in New York. And the title of his address was the New South. I want you to listen to what Grady said. He said, the South has nothing for which to apologize.

[John Weaver] Now, remember, he's speaking to folks in Massachusetts. The South has nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle between the states was war and not rebellion, revolution and no conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own conscience if I did not make this claim in this presence. The South has nothing to take back.

[John Weaver] In my native town of Athens, Georgia, is a monument that crowns its eternal central hill, a plain white shaft, deep cut into its shining side, is a name dear to me above the names of men, could better soldiers name, that of a brave and simple man who died a brave and simple death. Not for all the glories of New England, from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of that monument, I shall send my children to reverence him who ennobled their name with his heroic blood. Wow, that was 1886.

[John Weaver] Gray went on to venerate the Confederate soldier by telling everybody that the Confederate soldier was fighting for truth and righteousness and principle. That's what our Confederate ancestors fought for. They not only had hope, they had honor, and they understood their own heritage. Robert L. Dabney, who, of course, Stonewall Jackson's chief of staff, was speaking also on the subject of the New South at Hampton-Sydney College in 1882.

[John Weaver] And listen to what he said. It behooves the New South in dismissing the animosities of the past. To see to it that they retain all that was true in its principles or ennobling in its examples. There are those pretending to belong to this company who exclaim, let us bury the dead past. The issues are all antiquated and of no more practical significance. Let us forget the passions of the past. We're in a new world. It's new questions alone that concern us.

[John Weaver] Dabney says, but I rejoin. Be sure that the former issues are dead before you really bury them. There are issues that cannot die without the death of a people of their honor, their civilization and their greatness. Take care that you do not bury too much while burying the dead past, that you do not bury the inspiring memories of great patriots whose actions, whether successful or not, are the eternal glory of your race and section.

[John Weaver] the influence of their virtues, the guiding principles of their histories. Would you bury the names and memories of Jackson and Lee and their noble army of martyrs? Would you bury true history whose years are those of the God of truth? He said, you better be careful what you bury. You can bury too much. We have to understand we have a heritage and that heritage has been given to us by God. You have that undergirded the old South, Southern hope, Southern honor, Southern heritage. And then you have a fourth one that is Southern hospitality. Do you realize the South is probably the most friendly section in the entire country?

[John Weaver] All natural born Southerners wave to each other, speak to each other. Whether we know each other or not, it's just that simple. I had an Aunt that was that lived in Toledo, Ohio, for years and years. And when my uncle retired, they moved back to the South. And my aunt could not get over the fact that everyone spoke to her and waved to her. She didn't even know them.

[John Weaver] And she told me one day, she said, you don't understand. This is so traumatic for me. I said, what do you mean traumatic? She said, up north, if someone you do not know speaks to your waves as you run. I said, well, if you tried that down here, you'd be running yourself to death because everybody speaks and everybody waves. It's just that simple. Us Southerners love fellowship. I mean, they love barbecues. They love get togethers. They love reunion.

[John Weaver] They enjoy the company of family and friends. Let me tell you something. When I was a child, We had company every Sunday. Every Sunday. Every Sunday. There was one old couple I never will forget. He played the piano. He was a tall, slender man. And before he was converted, he played in a juke joint. And when he played the piano, I mean, you could hear him two blocks away. I mean, he would bang that piano.

[John Weaver] And his wife was elderly, too. And he would come up to my father after church on Sunday and he'd say to my dad, Brother Weaver, may my wife and I come home and break bread with you today. They were there inviting themselves to dinner. So what did it matter to you? And dad would always say, well, sure, you may come. And anybody who came to our house on Sunday afternoon, they stayed with us and all afternoon they ate supper with us and then went back to church together with us on Sunday night.

[John Weaver] And of course, for some of you young ones, I'll explain this to you. I could never figure out when I was your age why the adults would always want to take a nap on Sunday afternoon until I got to be groggy. Yeah, I found out, you know, it's good to get an hour's worth of snooze every now and then. But, you know, I thought that's crazy. I mean, this is a wonderful time to play in there inside sleeping.

[John Weaver] I don't understand all this. But the truth of the matter is we had company every Sunday, every Sunday. And let me tell you something else. If you were at our house and it was dinner time or supper time, if you were there, you ate with us. I don't care who you were, you ate with us. My wife can tell you that after we were married, we would come home to visit and we would sit down at the dinner table at my parents house And we would sit down and eat dinner with people I've never seen before in my life. You know, if you were there, you just ate.

[John Weaver] That was part of Southern hospitality. That's all there is to it. And the Bible tells us that we are to be hospitable one to another. In fact, Romans chapter 12 and verse 13 says, distributed to the necessity of the saints given to hospitality. The Bible says in 1 Peter 4 and verse 9, Use hospitality one to another without grudging. Pastors are particularly commanded to be hospitable. In First Timothy, chapter three and verse two, a bishop then must be blameless. The husband and wife vigilant, sober, good behavior given to hospitality. The Bible says in Titus one in verse eight, but a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, just holy tempered.

[John Weaver] I got news for you. Southerners by nature are indeed hospitable. That's true. You know, the Lord has a sense of humor and I'm thankful. It's astounding. I've had two flat tires years ago. The first one, we were on our way to visit a pastor friend who was in a nursing home. He was actually dying and I had a flat tire. And so I pulled off the side of the road, and just time I pulled off the side of the road, a truck pulled in right behind me.

[John Weaver] And here a young man jumped out and said, I'll get that for you, sir. And I said, well, thank you. I appreciate that. I mean, I could have done it. But he said, I'll get that for you. And so he got the jacket and started changing the tire. About that time, his phone rang and he picked it up and he said, listen to me now. He said, I'm sorry.

[John Weaver] He said, I can't talk to you right now. He said, I'm helping change the tire for two elderly folks. My wife and I were only in our 60s at the time and we were elderly. But he changed the tire and I thanked him. The second time I was on my way to church, And the tire went flat, and a man pulled in right behind me. Of course, I had a shirt and tie on.

[John Weaver] And he said, you don't have to get dirty. He said, I'll get that for you. I said, well, I appreciate that. I said, I'm going to wave and preach. And I said, I just would not like to preach with dirt all over my shirt. He changed the tire, and then he reached in his pocket and gave me $10 to get it fixed with it. I said, Lord, that's Southern folks.

[John Weaver] I didn't know either one of those people. Never. All I'm trying to say is, Southern folks are hospitable. Let me tell you, if you come to visit me and you go to the agrarama, which is an 18th, 19th century working farm is what it amounts to, you'll see several old houses with dog trots. You know what a dog trot was? Anybody know what a dog trot was? A dog trot usually was a straight through, in other words, the roofs were this way, this way. In fact, the house I was raised in had a dog trot. There's the front porch, then straight through, and then went around like this.

[John Weaver] And so you had bedrooms on this side, and then you had your kitchen and dining room back here. Well, my parents closed in the first dog trot and just made a living room out of it. But that's what a dog trot was. But then the houses also had traveler's rooms. And a traveler's room was attached to the outside of the house. It had a bed, it had a wash pan, it had water, it had whatever you would need. And so a man passing by, if he got there at night, here's this traveler's room. He just gets off his horse, ties his horse, goes in, washes up, goes to bed, and probably stays the next morning for breakfast. I don't even know who he was, but all of these old houses had traveler's rooms.

[John Weaver] That undoubtedly took place from 2 Kings chapter 4. You remember when Elijah was passing by and the woman said, this man is passing by all the time. Let's build a little room for him and let's put a table and a candle and a bed in it. And that's exactly what happened. And so you would find that these travelers rooms were all in all of these old houses and you can see them there even today.

[John Weaver] So I'm talking about Southern community. I'm talking about Southern hospitality. When I was a boy, when a barn burned down, guess what? All the neighbors came together and helped rebuild the barn. When someone died, the church, the community came together, brought food, took care of everything. If somebody needed help, they did help. I had a neighbor. who had a stroke. He was a farmer. I was raised on a farm, but I was pasturing at that time. And when my neighbor had that stroke, my girls and myself and his wife planted all of his crops and harvested all those crops just because he was incapable of doing it. I'm just simply saying, that is in the South.

[John Weaver] You can't get over this. When I was seven years old, there was a rabid fox in our community. 20 to 25 men came to our house and sat on the front porch figuring out how They were going to kill that rabid fox so he would not attack anyone. You don't have 20, 25 men. Every one of them armed. I'll tell you something else, you've probably never heard of this, but every time we would have a quote unquote revival, actually it would be a Bible conference revival teaching.

[John Weaver] We always had cottage prayer meetings. You'd have cottage prayer meetings a week to two weeks before the meeting ever began. As a child, I would go to those cottage prayer meetings. You would sing and you would pray. And we would have 30 to 50 people every night prior to the meeting. So the question and each each family would host it differently. I'm just simply saying, folks, you have to understand there was this Southern hospital. It was a clue that bound people together as well.

[John Weaver] Henry Benjamin Whipple was of Minnesota. He toured the South in 1843 and 1844 to try to recover his health since he was from Minnesota. And here's what he wrote in his diary. November the 25th, he was at St. Augustine, Florida. He wrote this. The people of the southern states are generally much more hospitable than northerners, and the difference must be attributed to the fact that they are not such money loving people.

[John Weaver] You do not see the low, mean cupidity, that base selfishness, those striking a characteristic of one of our portions as our restless Yankee brethren. I am more and more convinced that most of the exaggerated stories of abolitionists exist only in the imagination, and from personal observation, I know that the efforts of the abolitionists in the North have only served to injure the slave and destroy the kind and fraternal feeling which existed between the North and the South. Wow.

[John Weaver] So here's a man saying, the settlers don't like the Yankees, they don't have that money, hunger, money, love and desire that the Yankees had. So it was hope, it was honor, it was heritage, it was hospitality that underpinned the Sabbath. See, you can have a group of people in a locality, but you do not have community. You can have people gather together, really, but you do not have community. You can only have community when you have commonality, when you have a common faith and a common heritage. Listen to me. Do you realize? You cannot even have community unless you have the same language. What do I mean? Here's a good example, by the way. I'll give you a biblical example first, you remember in the book of Judges chapter 12.

[John Weaver] 42,000 men were killed. Because they could not say chivalry. They had a different accent. I love this one. Here's a good example from history in 1883. In 1883, Sitting Bull, the great Sioux chief, Sitting Bull was a guest of honor at the opening ceremonies of the Northern Pacific Railroad when it was his turn to speak. He said in the Lakota language, I hate all white people.

[John Weaver] You are thieves and liars. You've taken away our land and made us outcasts. A quick-thinking interpreter told the crowd the chief was happy to be there, and he looked forward to peace and prosperity with the white people. Sitting Bull received a standing ovation. If you want community, you need hope, you need honor, you need heritage, and you need hospitality, and you need the same language. Do you realize that all of these things that I just mentioned will come together in eternity? Our hope will be finalized. There will be honor. There will be a heritage. And we will have all the same language. We'll speak the language of heaven. That is for sure. Yeah. If you wonder today why we're so divided, so fractured, cannot get along, look no further than the loss of these things. We need real communities. We need to get together with people who believe, who know, and we have the same heritage in the same culture.

[John Weaver] That's all there is to it. Have you ever noticed when the Chinese come to this country, they go to Chinatown? You know why? Because they have a commonality. When the other groups come, they go to their group. Why? They have a commonality. And it takes the grace of God to bring a commonality between all of us. by giving us his grace and his mercy. Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, we bow to thee.

[John Weaver] We thank you for your word. We thank you for your truth. And we ask more that you would help us and build us up to the most holy faith. And may your perfect and holy will be accomplished in our lives. In the name of Jesus Christ, we ask and pray. Amen.

Community in the Old South & in the Confederacy

John Weaver | SermonAudio

Lecture Metadata	Details
Speaker	John Weaver
Source	SermonAudio
Media ID	812320585870
Subject	Family Government
Course	The Christian Family: Children, Fatherhood, and Generational Faithfulness: The World And Times Of Jesse James
Genre	Sermon
Date	2023-08-01
Dictation Name
Book	Book 028: The Christian Family: Children, Fatherhood, and Generational Faithfulness — Chapter 13
Source Timed Segments	82

Formatted Transcript

Introduction: The Nature of True Community

Community requires commonality; without shared culture, faith, and heritage, there is no unity. The word 'community' itself means 'with unity' or that which is held in common.

Thank you. All right. So we're talking about communities in the South and in the old Confederacy as well. So many people have not understood that communities does involve a common cultural heritage and, of course, a faith as well. But my Christian friend who sent me this little quote, I hit it on the head. Here's what he said. He thinks that the next quote-unquote civil war, not using the word civil in that sense of the word, but the next war that's going to actually take place in this country is going to take place for these reasons.

Listen carefully what he said. We all understand the concept of nation in the geopolitical sense. Biblically, however, nations, nation or ethnos, is not an amalgamated conglomeration of people from different linguistic, cultural, political, or religious persuasions. It is a particular people group akin to a large extended family. Thus, conventions, customs, ethics, values, laws, and its applications, suitable, desirous, and effective in one, that is, one group, are odious and repugnant to the other. It should be noted, however, that ethnicity ought not to be an essential factor, but integration and a degree of conformity is essential to any immigration policy. Further, while aliens and sojourners could be a blessing to a godly theonomic society, they are a curse to a rebellious antinomian society. Multiculturalism, diversity, unbiblical ideologies, deficient concepts of history and heritage do not and cannot promote community. Think of the word community. Com is a preposition which means with, and the rest of the word is unity. So community means basically that there is a people, there is a group that is one, that they are unified and they have a commonality. In fact, the word community is from the Latin word communitas, which refers to that which is held in common. So let me put it to you like this, where there is no commonality, there is no community. One reason that you can have people that live next door to you or down the street from you or down the road from you, and you don't even know their names, you don't even know who they are, is the fact that you have absolutely nothing in common.

Rebuilding Society on God’s Law

If society collapses, it must be rebuilt on God’s law, not human wisdom. Building on any other foundation invites a curse, as illustrated by the rebuilding of Jericho.

So our communities basically need to be resurrection. Now, you have to understand this resurrection is always on God's terms. It's no man's terms. If our communities are going to be resurrected, they're going to be resurrected based upon the word of God. Here's a question that I like to ask people. If our society disintegrated today, totally, completely, economic, social, everything's just went south. Everything's totally gone. And you have the opportunity to rebuild society tomorrow from the bottom up. Here's my question. Whose law would you use to rebuild society?

Now, if you tell me, well, brother, we were what I would do, I would take the best that man can offer and I would rebuild on that. In that case, you might as well let it stay down because it's going to curse from the beginning. You remember in the book of Joshua, chapter 6, when they destroyed Jericho, Joshua said,

Scripture Reading — Joshua 6:26

"Cursed be the man before the Lord that rises up and buildeth this city of Jericho."

He shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates thereof. And if you will read in 1 Kings chapter 16 and verse 34, it was Hiel the Bethelite, who actually rebuilt Jericho. And he did indeed lay the foundation, the Bible says, in Abiram his first son. That is, he sacrificed his first son and he set up the gate in Segub, his second son. In other words, he murdered his own sons, offered them in sacrifice for setting up Jericho. In other words, the point I'm trying to make, if we do not build according to God's law, it is basically a waste of time because it's going to fail. It's going to be cursed.

The Necessity of Godly Individuals and Families

Communities are only as strong as the individuals and families within them. Spiritual community requires spiritual people governed by God’s Word rather than external force.

In order to have a community, you've got to remember you have to have individuals and then you have to have families. Every community is made up of individuals. Every community is made up of families. Our communities are never, ever going to be any better than our individuals and our families as well. So if you have an unresurrected community, the truth of the matter is you're not going to have a good community whatsoever. You cannot have a spiritual community with unspiritual people. You cannot have a godly community with ungodly people. You cannot have a community with people fussing and fighting and feuding all of the time. Because the truth of the matter is, you're just going to have war left and right.

Robert Winthrop, who happened to be a congressman and a former Speaker of the House, who died in 1894, he was speaking before the Massachusetts Bible Society, and here is what he said. Listen carefully. All societies of men must be governed in some way or the other. The less they may have of stringent self-government, the more they must rely on individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them, either by the word of God or the strong arm of man, either by the Bible or the bayonet.

So what he's saying is this, if society is not going to do right, there's got to be always someone who will make them do that which is right. So if we do not want the strong arm of man forcing us, that means that we as individuals and families must rely upon the power of God within us and his word and his truth. So it's easy for someone who is right and holy and godly to live with other people who are right, holy and godly. I don't have any conflicts with God's people. I don't have any conflicts with Presbyterians.

The Theological Roots of the War and Cultural Change

A change in culture is always preceded by a change in theology. The North’s apostasy into Unitarianism and rationalism clashed with the South’s biblical faith, leading to war and Reconstruction.

You cannot have a change in culture without a change in theology. Let me say this another way. A change in culture is always preceded by a change in theology. You want to know why our culture has changed in this country? Because our theology has changed. Stop and think of all the grain and all the revenue, everything that we've sent, just say for India. Don't worry about China. Don't think about Iraq and Iran. Just think about India. Think of all the food and all the grain that we have sent to India for years and years and years and years and years. And it's all wasted. Now, some get to eat of it, but do you realize if they had a pile of grain as high as this building, the cows could walk in and eat whatever they wanted to eat, defecate wherever they wanted to defecate, because cows are worshipped in India.

I have seen, I have it on video, I've seen pictures of Indian women offering bowls of milk to big wharf rats and then bowing down and worshipping the wharf rats. Listen, you're not going to change that culture unless you change the theology. Do you understand that? We used to send missionaries to foreign countries. Now we send soldiers. Because now we're trying to force the change instead of allowing it to be a biblical change. The only point I'm trying to say is you're not going to ever force religion down somebody's throat and you're not going to change their culture until you change their theology.

Now, when the South did not voluntarily relinquish the word of God and when the South did not bow to the rationalism and transcendentalism of the North, there was war. And the war basically was to force the Northern way of thinking upon us when it did not work. And the South lost, then there was Reconstruction, and Reconstruction was nothing more than a military move to force us into submitting to the thinking of the North. That's exactly what it was. By the way, political correctness is still the same thing as reconstruction. You're being reconstructed, whether you know it or not, when you listen to all the propaganda and leave everything that comes off the TV set and on the radio. You're being propagandized. You're being brainwashed. You're being basically controlled. I had an interesting conversation with a woman who called me on the phone and she said, "Mr. Weaver, you've been a good customer for years."

Southern Hope: Biblical Hope as the Foundation

The Old South was settled by Scots-Irish who loved God’s Word. Southern hope was biblical hope, and the South unashamedly held to Scripture as the divinely inspired Word of God.

First, there was Southern hope. Southern hope is nothing less than what you and I would call biblical hope. You have to remember that the South was settled basically by Scots-Irish. I mean, here were people who came with a love for the Word of God. Even General Nathan Bedford Forrest's mother, Mary, she was a Presbyterian. She loved the Word of God. She left him a Bible that had been really underlined and marked up by her. I mean, she was a woman of the Word. And General Forrest, of course, understood his mother. And of course, she gave him that Bible as well.

So you have to understand that there was a theological aspect in the war of northern aggression. I might get to talk about that a little bit later. The North basically had apostatized. They had gone into Unitarianism. They had gone into Rationalism. They had gone into Transcendentalism. And the South basically stayed with the Word of God. You remember James Henley Thornwell, he was a Presbyterian who died in 1862. He was the one that also pointed out that there was indeed a theological concept in this war.

And he said those on the other side were red republicans and heathen and these on the southern side were of course for religion and political order and this kind of thing. So by and large the South was unashamedly Christian. They believe the Bible to be the divinely inspired Word of God. And when the North made fun of us and called us the Bible Belt, that was not a compliment. That was meant to be a slam because they were so far above us in their thinking, in their rationalism. They set their minds above the Word of God. And the Bible Belt was considered a slam. It was not considered a compliment whatsoever. No, the truth of the matter is the Bible was first and foremost in the South.

Now, there were people in the North who were Christians, I understand that, and there were people in the North who were what they used to call Copperheads. They were very Southern in their sympathies. When I say that the South was predominantly Christian, that does not mean that everyone in the South was a Christian. Neither does it mean that there were no Christians in the North, but it does mean that generally speaking, the North had apostatized and left the word of God. I want you to listen to the testimony of Robert E. Lee. He said this. The Bible is the book of books, a book which supplies the place of all others and cannot be replaced. Later, he said this. There are many things in that old book that I may never be able to explain, but I accept them as the infallible Word of God and receive its teaching as inspired by the Holy Ghost. I prefer the Bible to any other book.

There is enough in that to satisfy the most ardent thirst for knowledge, to open the way to true wisdom, and to teach the only road to salvation and eternal happiness. It is not above human comprehension and is sufficient to satisfy all desires. So likely the South believe the Bible was indeed the word of God. What many pastors have not understood and many people have not understood that there was indeed a theological aspect to that war.

Southern Honor: The Glue of Family and Community

Honor required honesty, courage, self-sufficiency, and defense of reputation. Men were protectors and providers; women embraced femininity and virtue. This code bound communities together.

Men were men and women were women. Men of honor worked, provided, protected and loved their wives and their families. It was an honor to work. It was an honor to be independent. It was an honor not to be in debt. It was an honor not to be dependent upon charity. It was an honor to be a man. It was an honor to be a woman. The woman was more feminine then than she is today. Here's this code of honor that was basically in the old South. Listen to it. The code of honor for Southern men required having, number one, a reputation for honesty and integrity.

I can tell you this. When I was a boy, which was a long time ago, I watched my father make deals with other farmers. And sometimes those deals back then were $40,000 and $50,000, which was a lot of money back then, and all they did was shake hands. There was no contract. They just agreed. I've seen my father and I've seen other farmers. When a farmer died, I've seen them go up to the widow and say, "I owe your husband so much and I want to pay it right now." They would pay the debt after the man was dead when no one else knew about the debt, but they knew about it.

The Code of Honor, first of all, said this. A reputation of honesty and integrity. Secondly, a reputation for martial courage and strength. That is, you were able to fight. Number three, self-sufficiency and mastery defined as a patriarchal dominion over the household. In other words, you had your household in order. Wife, children, slaves if you had them. Number four, a willingness to use violence to defend any perceived slight to his reputation as a man of integrity, strength, and courage, as well as any threat to his independence or to his kin.

Now think about the threats to our independence today that no one is fighting. I was telling some of the fellows before service today I have a friend, he's now dead, or I have a friend, he was a pastor, he called me one day, he said, "John, I found out how to get men up in arms marching on Washington, D.C." I said, "Really, tell me how?" He said, "Well," he said, "no one's concerned about abortion. That doesn't upset anybody. No one's concerned about sodomy. That doesn't upset anybody. Nobody's concerned about the social condition and deterioration in this country. That doesn't upset anybody. He said, let's get Congress to pass a law banning balls of every size, shape, and form. And men will be in arms marching on Washington, D.C."

Just because there's no more football, no more baseball, no more soccer, no more golf, no. Yeah, just stop and think about that. We'll fight for our pleasures, but we won't fight for our independence and for our freedom. Now, an advice of a North Carolina Carolinian, William Pettigrew, to his younger brother, said this. "As far as it can be done, we should live peaceably with our associates. But as we cannot always do so, it is necessary occasionally to resist. And when our honor demands resistance, it should be done with courage." Well, you know, that's the same truth as Romans chapter 12 and verse 18, where the Bible says,

Scripture Reading — Romans 12:18

"As much as in you is, live peaceably with all men."

In other words, God understands there are some men that you cannot live peaceably with. In other words, all I'm saying is, there was Southern honor. Men were going to defend their integrity. They were going to defend their families. They were going to defend their independence. Southern men have always been fighters.

Whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not, you look and study and find out, of every war that this country has ever been in, the majority of the soldiers have been from the South. Listen to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He said, "A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today." Oh, let me stop there. A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. Along with this is a loss of will in the West.

We can't defend ourselves if we're not willing to die for anything. There is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. In other words, all we want is money. So this Southern emphasis on honor affected women as well as men, because Southern women wanted to be women. They wanted to be homemakers. They wanted to be wives. They wanted to be good neighbors. I want to give you two definitions.

The first one is Robert E. Lee's definition of a gentleman. And Robert E. Lee could not envision a Christian not being a gentleman. Neither could he envision a gentleman not being a Christian. To him, they were one and the same. Here's what Lee said. Lee's description of what a gentleman should be was this. "The forebearing use of power does not only form the touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is the test of a true gentleman." In other words, I've got power over you.

I have authority over you. Listen to what he says now. "The power which the strong have over the weak, the magistrate over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly, the forebearing or inoffensive use of all this power authority, or the total absence of it when the case admits it, will show the gentleman in plain light. The gentleman does not needlessly or unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him." He can not only forgive, he can forget. And he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character, which imparts sufficient strength to let the past be the past. A true gentleman of honor feels humbled when he can help humbling others.

Now, let that sink in. A true gentleman of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others. That's why the Bible says in Proverbs 29, verse 23,

Scripture Reading — Proverbs 29:23

"A man's pride shall bring him low, but honor shall uphold the upright in spirit."

And so, Robert Lee is a real gentleman. It's not someone who's going to take advantage of others. He's going to be someone who will let the bygones be bygones. He's not going to just bring up past sins and past errors and past mistakes just for the sake of bringing them up. So that's the man. Ladies, I want you to listen, because this, you might think it's out of date a little bit, but that's fine.

Southern Heritage: Birthright and Identity

Heritage is a birthright received from ancestors. Southerners inherit a legacy of faith and valor exemplified by Lee and Jackson, which must not be buried or apologized for.

Let me tell you this about heritage. Heritage is the status that is acquired by a person through birth. Your heritage is your birthright. Your heritage is what you were born with. Down in Georgia, I've seen many bumper stickers. One of them that stands out says simply this, "I was not born in the South, but I got here as soon as I could." Well, that is true. And I got news for you, those who are born in the South have inherited this great inheritance of our ancestors. We can no more change the fact that we're Southerners any more than a leopard could change its spots. We would not want to change.

Whatsoever, I remember when I was in college years ago, I had to take a class in voice and diction. And my teacher, Mr. Pratt, was from the north. And I gave a recitation and he looked at me and said, "Mr. Weaver." I said, "Yes, Mr. Pratt." He said, "You still have that southern accent." I looked at him, I said, "Mr. Pratt, do you know why I still have that southern accent?" He said, "Why?"

I said, "Because I'm a southerner and I'm planning on keeping it. I'm not planning on changing it. I said, I want to speak correctly, but you're not going to change me into a Yankee. I said, that's all there is to it." I mean, I wasn't ugly, but I'm just going to be pointing out the fact we have a heritage. The psalmist said in Psalm 16 and verse 6,

Scripture Reading — Psalm 16:6

"The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage."

God has given us a goodly heritage. Psalm 61 and verse 5, the Bible says, "For thou, O God, hast heard my vows: thou hast given me the heritage of those that fear thy name." Have you ever heard the vow that Major R.E. Wilson gave, the oath that he gave?

Listen to this. Major Wilson said, "If I ever disown, repudiate or apologize for the cause for which Lee fought and Jackson died, let the lightnings of heaven rend me and the scorn of all good men and true women be my portion. Sun, moon, stars all fall on me when I cease to love the Confederacy. 'Tis the cause, not the fate of the cause that is glorious." That's heritage. N.B. Littlejohn sent his son off to fight with the Yankees. I want you to listen to what he said to his son. This is so far removed of what a father would tell his son today, but here's what he said. He shook his son's hand as the son was about to leave. He said, "My son, I grasp your hand probably for the last time upon earth. You're going to meet the dangers and hardships consequent to a soldier's life. You may fill a soldier's grave. Well, father and son, you may die. Let me impress upon your mind to never fill it dishonorably."

"Ever be at your post of duty. Be an honor to our beloved Southland. Go where your superiors order you. Never turn your back upon the foe, except when deemed necessary by your superior officers. Be true to your God, yourself and your country. Never bring reproach upon your beloved Southland or yourself. Never desert your country. But if necessary, die at your post of honor." Wow. Yeah, there's not only Southern hope and Southern honor, there is Southern heritage as well.

Henry Grady was the editor of the Atlanta Constitution. And on December the 21st, 1886, which would be 21 years after the war for Southern Independence was over, he was speaking to the New England Society in New York. And the title of his address was "The New South." I want you to listen to what Grady said. He said, "The South has nothing for which to apologize."

Now, remember, he's speaking to folks in Massachusetts. "The South has nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle between the states was war and not rebellion, revolution and no conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own conscience if I did not make this claim in this presence. The South has nothing to take back." "In my native town of Athens, Georgia, is a monument that crowns its eternal central hill, a plain white shaft, deep cut into its shining side, is a name dear to me above the names of men, could better soldiers name, that of a brave and simple man who died a brave and simple death. Not for all the glories of New England, from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of that monument, I shall send my children to reverence him who ennobled their name with his heroic blood." Wow, that was 1886.

Grady went on to venerate the Confederate soldier by telling everybody that the Confederate soldier was fighting for truth and righteousness and principle. That's what our Confederate ancestors fought for. They not only had hope, they had honor, and they understood their own heritage. Robert L. Dabney, who, of course, Stonewall Jackson's chief of staff, was speaking also on the subject of the New South at Hampden-Sydney College in 1882. And listen to what he said. "It behooves the New South in dismissing the animosities of the past to see to it that they retain all that was true in its principles or ennobling in its examples. There are those pretending to belong to this company who exclaim, 'Let us bury the dead past. The issues are all antiquated and of no more practical significance. Let us forget the passions of the past. We're in a new world. It's new questions alone that concern us.'"

Dabney says, "But I rejoin. Be sure that the former issues are dead before you really bury them. There are issues that cannot die without the death of a people of their honor, their civilization and their greatness. Take care that you do not bury too much while burying the dead past, that you do not bury the inspiring memories of great patriots whose actions, whether successful or not, are the eternal glory of your race and section." "The influence of their virtues, the guiding principles of their histories. Would you bury the names and memories of Jackson and Lee and their noble army of martyrs? Would you bury true history whose years are those of the God of truth?" He said, you better be careful what you bury. You can bury too much. We have to understand we have a heritage and that heritage has been given to us by God. You have that undergirded the old South, Southern hope, Southern honor, Southern heritage. And then you have a fourth one that is Southern hospitality. Do you realize the South is probably the most friendly section in the entire country?

Southern Hospitality: The Glue of Fellowship

Southerners are naturally hospitable, welcoming strangers and sharing meals. This practice, commanded in Scripture, fostered deep community bonds and mutual care.

All natural born Southerners wave to each other, speak to each other. Whether we know each other or not, it's just that simple. I had an aunt that lived in Toledo, Ohio, for years and years. And when my uncle retired, they moved back to the South. And my aunt could not get over the fact that everyone spoke to her and waved to her. She didn't even know them. And she told me one day, she said, "You don't understand. This is so traumatic for me." I said, "What do you mean traumatic?" She said, "Up north, if someone you do not know speaks to you or waves at you, you run." I said, "Well, if you tried that down here, you'd be running yourself to death because everybody speaks and everybody waves. It's just that simple." Us Southerners love fellowship. I mean, they love barbecues. They love get-togethers. They love reunion.

They enjoy the company of family and friends. Let me tell you something. When I was a child, we had company every Sunday. Every Sunday. Every Sunday. There was one old couple I never will forget. He played the piano. He was a tall, slender man. And before he was converted, he played in a juke joint. And when he played the piano, I mean, you could hear him two blocks away. I mean, he would bang that piano.

And his wife was elderly, too. And he would come up to my father after church on Sunday and he'd say to my dad, "Brother Weaver, may my wife and I come home and break bread with you today?" They were there inviting themselves to dinner. So what did it matter to you? And dad would always say, "Well, sure, you may come." And anybody who came to our house on Sunday afternoon, they stayed with us all afternoon, they ate supper with us and then went back to church together with us on Sunday night. And of course, for some of you young ones, I'll explain this to you. I could never figure out when I was your age why the adults would always want to take a nap on Sunday afternoon until I got to be groggy. Yeah, I found out, you know, it's good to get an hour's worth of snooze every now and then. But, you know, I thought that's crazy. I mean, this is a wonderful time to play and they're inside sleeping.

I don't understand all this. But the truth of the matter is we had company every Sunday, every Sunday. And let me tell you something else. If you were at our house and it was dinner time or supper time, if you were there, you ate with us. I don't care who you were, you ate with us. My wife can tell you that after we were married, we would come home to visit and we would sit down at the dinner table at my parents' house and we would sit down and eat dinner with people I've never seen before in my life. You know, if you were there, you just ate.

That was part of Southern hospitality. That's all there is to it. And the Bible tells us that we are to be hospitable one to another. In fact, Romans chapter 12 and verse 13 says,

Scripture Reading — Romans 12:13

"Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality."

The Bible says in 1 Peter 4 and verse 9, "Use hospitality one to another without grudging." Pastors are particularly commanded to be hospitable. In 1 Timothy, chapter 3 and verse 2, "A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality." The Bible says in Titus 1 and verse 8, "But a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate." I got news for you. Southerners by nature are indeed hospitable. That's true. You know, the Lord has a sense of humor and I'm thankful. It's astounding. I've had two flat tires years ago. The first one, we were on our way to visit a pastor friend who was in a nursing home. He was actually dying and I had a flat tire. And so I pulled off the side of the road, and just time I pulled off the side of the road, a truck pulled in right behind me.

And here a young man jumped out and said, "I'll get that for you, sir." And I said, "Well, thank you. I appreciate that." I mean, I could have done it. But he said, "I'll get that for you." And so he got the jack and started changing the tire. About that time, his phone rang and he picked it up and he said, listen to me now. He said, "I'm sorry." He said, "I can't talk to you right now." He said, "I'm helping change the tire for two elderly folks." My wife and I were only in our 60s at the time and we were elderly. But he changed the tire and I thanked him. The second time I was on my way to church, and the tire went flat, and a man pulled in right behind me. Of course, I had a shirt and tie on.

And he said, "You don't have to get dirty." He said, "I'll get that for you." I said, "Well, I appreciate that. I'm going to go and preach." And I said, "I just would not like to preach with dirt all over my shirt." He changed the tire, and then he reached in his pocket and gave me $10 to get it fixed with. I said, "Lord, that's Southern folks." I didn't know either one of those people. Never. All I'm trying to say is, Southern folks are hospitable. Let me tell you, if you come to visit me and you go to the Agrirama, which is an 18th, 19th century working farm is what it amounts to, you'll see several old houses with dog trots. You know what a dog trot was? Anybody know what a dog trot was? A dog trot usually was a straight through, in other words, the roofs were this way, this way. In fact, the house I was raised in had a dog trot. There's the front porch, then straight through, and then went around like this.

And so you had bedrooms on this side, and then you had your kitchen and dining room back here. Well, my parents closed in the first dog trot and just made a living room out of it. But that's what a dog trot was. But then the houses also had traveler's rooms. And a traveler's room was attached to the outside of the house. It had a bed, it had a wash pan, it had water, it had whatever you would need. And so a man passing by, if he got there at night, here's this traveler's room. He just gets off his horse, ties his horse, goes in, washes up, goes to bed, and probably stays the next morning for breakfast. I don't even know who he was, but all of these old houses had traveler's rooms.

That undoubtedly took place from 2 Kings chapter 4. You remember when Elijah was passing by and the woman said, "This man is passing by all the time. Let's build a little room for him and let's put a table and a candle and a bed in it." And that's exactly what happened. And so you would find that these travelers rooms were all in all of these old houses and you can see them there even today.

So I'm talking about Southern community. I'm talking about Southern hospitality. When I was a boy, when a barn burned down, guess what? All the neighbors came together and helped rebuild the barn. When someone died, the church, the community came together, brought food, took care of everything. If somebody needed help, they did help. I had a neighbor who had a stroke. He was a farmer. I was raised on a farm, but I was pastoring at that time. And when my neighbor had that stroke, my girls and myself and his wife planted all of his crops and harvested all those crops just because he was incapable of doing it. I'm just simply saying, that is in the South.

You can't get over this. When I was seven years old, there was a rabid fox in our community. 20 to 25 men came to our house and sat on the front porch figuring out how they were going to kill that rabid fox so he would not attack anyone. You don't have 20, 25 men. Every one of them armed. I'll tell you something else, you've probably never heard of this, but every time we would have a quote-unquote revival, actually it would be a Bible conference revival teaching. We always had cottage prayer meetings. You'd have cottage prayer meetings a week to two weeks before the meeting ever began. As a child, I would go to those cottage prayer meetings. You would sing and you would pray. And we would have 30 to 50 people every night prior to the meeting. So the question and each family would host it differently. I'm just simply saying, folks, you have to understand there was this Southern hospitality. It was a glue that bound people together as well.

Henry Benjamin Whipple was of Minnesota. He toured the South in 1843 and 1844 to try to recover his health since he was from Minnesota. And here's what he wrote in his diary. November the 25th, he was at St. Augustine, Florida. He wrote this. "The people of the southern states are generally much more hospitable than northerners, and the difference must be attributed to the fact that they are not such money loving people."

"You do not see the low, mean cupidity, that base selfishness, those striking a characteristic of one of our portions as our restless Yankee brethren. I am more and more convinced that most of the exaggerated stories of abolitionists exist only in the imagination, and from personal observation, I know that the efforts of the abolitionists in the North have only served to injure the slave and destroy the kind and fraternal feeling which existed between the North and the South." Wow.

The Necessity of a Common Language and Conclusion

Community requires a shared language, both literally and spiritually. The loss of hope, honor, heritage, and hospitality explains today’s division. In eternity, these will be perfectly restored.

So here's a man saying, the Southerners don't like the Yankees, they don't have that money hunger, money love and desire that the Yankees had. So it was hope, it was honor, it was heritage, it was hospitality that underpinned the South. See, you can have a group of people in a locality, but you do not have community. You can have people gather together, really, but you do not have community. You can only have community when you have commonality, when you have a common faith and a common heritage. Listen to me. Do you realize? You cannot even have community unless you have the same language. What do I mean? Here's a good example, by the way. I'll give you a biblical example first, you remember in the book of Judges chapter 12.

42,000 men were killed. Because they could not say Shibboleth. They had a different accent. I love this one. Here's a good example from history in 1883. In 1883, Sitting Bull, the great Sioux chief, Sitting Bull was a guest of honor at the opening ceremonies of the Northern Pacific Railroad. When it was his turn to speak, he said in the Lakota language, "I hate all white people."

"You are thieves and liars. You've taken away our land and made us outcasts." A quick-thinking interpreter told the crowd the chief was happy to be there, and he looked forward to peace and prosperity with the white people. Sitting Bull received a standing ovation. If you want community, you need hope, you need honor, you need heritage, and you need hospitality, and you need the same language. Do you realize that all of these things that I just mentioned will come together in eternity? Our hope will be finalized. There will be honor. There will be a heritage. And we will have all the same language. We'll speak the language of heaven. That is for sure. Yeah. If you wonder today why we're so divided, so fractured, cannot get along, look no further than the loss of these things. We need real communities. We need to get together with people who believe, who know, and we have the same heritage in the same culture.

That's all there is to it. Have you ever noticed when the Chinese come to this country, they go to Chinatown? You know why? Because they have a commonality. When the other groups come, they go to their group. Why? They have a commonality. And it takes the grace of God to bring a commonality between all of us by giving us his grace and his mercy. Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, we bow to thee.

We thank you for your word. We thank you for your truth. And we ask more that you would help us and build us up to the most holy faith. And may your perfect and holy will be accomplished in our lives. In the name of Jesus Christ, we ask and pray. Amen.

Study Guide

Major Themes

Commonality as the Basis of Community

Summary: True community cannot exist without shared faith, culture, and heritage. The word 'community' itself implies unity around common things.

Evidence: Weaver states: 'where there is no commonality, there is no community' and explains the Latin root communitas.

The Necessity of God’s Law for Societal Rebuilding

Summary: Any attempt to rebuild society on human wisdom rather than God’s law is doomed and cursed, as seen in the rebuilding of Jericho.

Evidence: Weaver asks whose law would be used to rebuild society and cites Joshua 6 and 1 Kings 16:34.

Theological Roots of the War Between the States

Summary: The war was fundamentally a theological conflict between the Bible-believing South and the apostate, rationalistic North.

Evidence: Weaver cites James Henley Thornwell and says 'a change in culture is always preceded by a change in theology.'

Southern Hope as Biblical Hope

Summary: The Old South’s hope was grounded in the Bible as the infallible Word of God, in contrast to Northern rationalism.

Evidence: Weaver quotes Robert E. Lee on the Bible and notes the South was 'unashamedly Christian.'

The Code of Southern Honor

Summary: Honor demanded integrity, courage, self-sufficiency, and defense of reputation, binding families and communities together.

Evidence: Weaver lists the four requirements of the Southern code of honor and quotes William Pettigrew.

Heritage as a God-Given Birthright

Summary: Southern heritage is an inheritance from ancestors who fought for truth and principle, and it must not be repudiated.

Evidence: Weaver quotes Psalm 16:6, Major R.E. Wilson’s oath, and Henry Grady’s 1886 speech.

Southern Hospitality as a Biblical Mandate

Summary: Hospitality was a natural Southern trait that fostered community, commanded in Scripture and practiced through shared meals and traveler’s rooms.

Evidence: Weaver cites Romans 12:13, 1 Peter 4:9, and personal anecdotes of Sunday company and traveler’s rooms.

The Loss of Courage and Will in Modern Society

Summary: A decline in courage, especially among elites, has left the West unwilling to defend its independence and values.

Evidence: Weaver quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn on the loss of civic courage and contrasts it with Southern martial spirit.

Key Arguments

Community Requires Commonality

Summary: Without shared faith, culture, and heritage, people cannot form true community, only a collection of individuals.

Evidence: Weaver says, 'where there is no commonality, there is no community' and explains the etymology of 'community.'

Society Must Be Rebuilt on God’s Law

Summary: Any society rebuilt on human wisdom rather than God’s law is cursed from the start, as Jericho’s rebuilding demonstrates.

Evidence: Weaver asks, 'Whose law would you use to rebuild society?' and references Joshua 6 and 1 Kings 16:34.

Cultural Change Follows Theological Change

Summary: The North’s apostasy into rationalism led to cultural decay and war; true cultural change requires theological transformation.

Evidence: Weaver states, 'A change in culture is always preceded by a change in theology' and gives the example of India.

The Old South Was Founded on Biblical Hope

Summary: The South’s hope was rooted in the Bible as God’s infallible Word, giving it a distinct identity from the rationalistic North.

Evidence: Weaver quotes Robert E. Lee: 'I prefer the Bible to any other book' and notes the South was 'unashamedly Christian.'

Honor Was the Glue of Southern Society

Summary: A shared code of honor—honesty, courage, self-sufficiency, and defense of reputation—united families and communities.

Evidence: Weaver lists the four points of the Southern honor code and quotes William Pettigrew on necessary resistance.

Southern Heritage Is a Sacred Birthright

Summary: The legacy of Confederate ancestors who fought for principle must be preserved, not buried or apologized for.

Evidence: Weaver quotes Henry Grady: 'The South has nothing for which to apologize' and Robert L. Dabney’s warning against burying too much.

Hospitality Is Essential to Community

Summary: Biblical hospitality, practiced naturally in the South, creates bonds of fellowship and mutual care that sustain community.

Evidence: Weaver cites Romans 12:13, 1 Peter 4:9, and describes Sunday company, traveler’s rooms, and community barn-raisings.

A Common Language Is Necessary for Unity

Summary: Community requires a shared language; without it, division and misunderstanding prevail, as seen in Judges 12 and the Sitting Bull incident.

Evidence: Weaver references the Shibboleth incident and the 1883 mistranslation of Sitting Bull’s speech.

Scripture References

Joshua 6:26

Context: Weaver cites Joshua’s curse on anyone who rebuilds Jericho to illustrate that rebuilding society on anything other than God’s law brings a curse.

1 Kings 16:34

Context: Weaver references Hiel the Bethelite who rebuilt Jericho and sacrificed his sons, fulfilling Joshua’s curse, as a warning against building without God’s law.

Romans 12:18

Context: Weaver quotes this verse to support the idea that while we should live peaceably, there are times when honor demands resistance.

Proverbs 29:23

Context: Weaver quotes this verse to contrast pride with the honor that upholds the upright, in the context of Robert E. Lee’s definition of a gentleman.

Proverbs 11:16

Context: Weaver cites this verse to affirm that a gracious woman retains honor, paralleling Varina Davis’s description of a lady.

Psalm 16:6

Context: Weaver quotes this verse to express gratitude for the goodly heritage God has given Southerners.

Psalm 61:5

Context: Weaver references this verse to connect the heritage of those who fear God’s name with the Southern heritage of faith.

Romans 12:13

Context: Weaver quotes this verse to command hospitality as a Christian duty, exemplified by Southern practice.

1 Peter 4:9

Context: Weaver cites this verse to reinforce the command to use hospitality without grudging.

1 Timothy 3:2

Context: Weaver references this verse to show that pastors are particularly commanded to be hospitable.

Titus 1:8

Context: Weaver quotes this verse to further emphasize the requirement for leaders to be lovers of hospitality.

Judges 12:5-6

Context: Weaver references the Shibboleth incident where 42,000 Ephraimites were killed because of their accent, illustrating the necessity of a common language for community.

2 Kings 4:10

Context: Weaver alludes to the Shunammite woman’s provision of a room for Elisha as the biblical precedent for Southern traveler’s rooms.

Historical References

Robert Winthrop (died 1894)

Context: Weaver quotes Winthrop’s speech to the Massachusetts Bible Society on the necessity of self-government by the Word of God or external force by the bayonet.

General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s mother, Mary

Context: Weaver mentions Mary Forrest as a Presbyterian woman of the Word who left her son a marked-up Bible, illustrating Southern biblical hope.

James Henley Thornwell (died 1862)

Context: Weaver cites Thornwell, a Presbyterian, who identified the theological nature of the war, calling Northerners 'red republicans and heathen.'

Robert E. Lee

Context: Weaver quotes Lee’s testimony on the Bible as the infallible Word of God and his definition of a gentleman.

Basil Manly

Context: Weaver notes that Manly, a Baptist pastor and Confederate congressman, viewed secession as a Christian reform movement.

W. W. Bennett, The Great Revival

Context: Weaver quotes Bennett on the enduring principles of the Southern cause, which cannot be lost as long as biblical hope remains.

William Pettigrew of North Carolina

Context: Weaver quotes Pettigrew’s advice to his brother on the necessity of resisting when honor demands it.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Context: Weaver quotes Solzhenitsyn on the decline of courage in the West, particularly among the ruling elite.

Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis

Context: Weaver reads Varina Davis’s description of a lady, emphasizing feminine honor and refinement.

Major R. E. Wilson’s oath

Context: Weaver quotes Wilson’s vow never to disown the Confederate cause, illustrating Southern heritage.

Important Quotes

where there is no commonality, there is no community.

Significance: This is the central thesis of the lecture: community is impossible without shared faith, culture, and heritage.

A change in culture is always preceded by a change in theology.

Significance: Weaver argues that the cultural decay in America stems from theological apostasy, a key to understanding the War Between the States.

The Bible is the book of books, a book which supplies the place of all others and cannot be replaced.

Significance: Robert E. Lee’s testimony exemplifies the Southern commitment to biblical hope and the authority of Scripture.

The forebearing use of power does not only form the touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is the test of a true gentleman.

Significance: Lee’s definition of a gentleman encapsulates the Southern code of honor, emphasizing humility and restraint.

If I ever disown, repudiate or apologize for the cause for which Lee fought and Jackson died, let the lightnings of heaven rend me and the scorn of all good men and true women be my portion.

Significance: Major Wilson’s oath illustrates the deep sense of heritage and unapologetic loyalty to the Confederate cause.

The South has nothing for which to apologize.

Significance: Henry Grady’s bold declaration in New York affirms the South’s conviction that its cause was just and honorable.

Be sure that the former issues are dead before you really bury them. There are issues that cannot die without the death of a people of their honor, their civilization and their greatness.

Significance: Dabney’s warning against burying the past underscores the enduring importance of Southern principles and heritage.

The people of the southern states are generally much more hospitable than northerners, and the difference must be attributed to the fact that they are not such money loving people.

Significance: Whipple’s observation highlights hospitality as a defining Southern virtue, rooted in a non-materialistic culture.

Discussion Questions

What does Weaver mean by 'where there is no commonality, there is no community,' and how does this apply to modern churches and neighborhoods?

Context: Weaver argues that community requires shared faith, culture, and heritage; this question explores the practical implications.

How does the biblical account of Jericho’s rebuilding (Joshua 6, 1 Kings 16) inform our approach to cultural and societal reconstruction today?

Context: Weaver uses Jericho as a warning against building on any foundation other than God’s law.

In what ways did the theological differences between the North and South contribute to the War Between the States, according to Weaver?

Context: Weaver asserts that the war was fundamentally theological, with the North embracing rationalism and the South holding to Scripture.

How does the Southern code of honor (honesty, courage, self-sufficiency, defense of reputation) compare to biblical teachings on manhood and integrity?

Context: Weaver lists the four points of the honor code and connects them to Scripture; this question invites comparison and evaluation.

What is the relationship between heritage and identity, and why does Weaver insist that Southern heritage must not be buried or apologized for?

Context: Weaver quotes Grady and Dabney to argue that heritage is a God-given birthright essential to communal identity.

How does biblical hospitality (Romans 12:13, 1 Peter 4:9) serve as a glue for community, and what can we learn from historical Southern practices?

Context: Weaver describes Sunday company, traveler’s rooms, and community mutual aid as expressions of hospitality.

Why does Weaver emphasize the need for a common language, and how does the Shibboleth incident (Judges 12) illustrate the importance of shared communication for unity?

Context: Weaver uses the Shibboleth story and the Sitting Bull anecdote to show that language barriers prevent true community.

According to Weaver, what are the consequences of losing hope, honor, heritage, and hospitality in a society, and how might they be recovered?

Context: The lecture concludes that the loss of these four elements explains modern division; this question asks for application and restoration.

Applications

Cultivate Commonality in Christian Community

Summary: Believers must intentionally build relationships with those who share a common faith and heritage, as community requires unity around God’s Word.

Evidence: Weaver states, 'if you and I are going to have a Christian community, we have to have people who think alike' on basic commonalities.

Rebuild Personal and Family Life on God’s Law

Summary: Individuals and families must govern themselves by Scripture to avoid the need for external force and to contribute to a godly society.

Evidence: Weaver quotes Winthrop: 'Men must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them, either by the word of God or the strong arm of man.'

Guard Against Theological and Cultural Drift

Summary: Recognize that cultural decay follows theological compromise; hold fast to biblical truth to preserve a distinct Christian witness.

Evidence: Weaver warns, 'A change in culture is always preceded by a change in theology' and points to the North’s apostasy.

Embody Biblical Honor in Daily Life

Summary: Men should cultivate integrity, courage, and responsibility; women should embrace godly femininity, reflecting the honor that strengthens families and communities.

Evidence: Weaver describes the Southern honor code and quotes Varina Davis on being a lady, tying both to Scripture.

Preserve and Transmit a Godly Heritage

Summary: Parents should teach their children the legacy of faith and valor from their ancestors, refusing to apologize for biblical principles.

Evidence: Weaver quotes Littlejohn’s charge to his son and Grady’s declaration: 'The South has nothing for which to apologize.'

Practice Radical Hospitality

Summary: Open homes and lives to fellow believers and strangers alike, following the biblical command and Southern example of generous hospitality.

Evidence: Weaver cites Romans 12:13, 1 Peter 4:9, and describes Sunday dinners and traveler’s rooms as models.

Resist Propaganda and Reclaim Independent Thinking

Summary: Be aware of media and cultural pressures that undermine biblical values, and cultivate discernment by grounding thought in Scripture.

Evidence: Weaver shares his conversation with the TV saleswoman and warns that 'political correctness is still the same thing as reconstruction.'

Pursue Unity Through a Common Spiritual Language

Summary: Strive for unity in the faith by ensuring that the church shares a common confession and understanding of God’s Word, avoiding the confusion of mixed messages.

Evidence: Weaver uses the Shibboleth incident and Sitting Bull story to illustrate the necessity of a common language for true community.

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | clean_readable_transcript | 2026-06-05T17:23:29Z

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | weaver_study | 2026-06-06T08:14:14Z

Clean Transcript

Community in the Old South & in the Confederacy

Clean readable transcript. This view follows the Commentary.net cleaned segment text while preserving timestamps for audio follow-along.

Thank you. All right. So we're talking about communities in the South and in the old Confederacy as well. So many people have not understood that communities does involve a common cultural heritage and, of course, a faith as well. But my Christian friend who sent me this little quote, I hit it on the head. Here's what he said. He thinks that the next quote-unquote civil war, not using the word civil in that sense of the word, but the next war that's going to actually take place in this country is going to take place for these reasons.
#1 | 0:00 to 0:43 | cleaned
Listen carefully what he said. We all understand the concept of nation in the geopolitical sense. Biblically, however, nations, nation or ethnos, is not an amalgamated conglomeration of people from different linguistic, cultural, political, or religious persuasions. It is a particular people group akin to a large extended family. Thus, conventions, customs, ethics, values, laws, and its applications, suitable, desirous, and effective in one, that is, one group, are odious and repugnant to the other. It should be noted, however, that ethnicity ought not to be an essential factor, but integration and a degree of conformity is essential to any immigration policy.
#2 | 0:43 to 1:37 | cleaned
Further, while aliens and sojourners could be a blessing to a godly theonomic society, they are a curse to a rebellious antinomian society. Multiculturalism, diversity, unbiblical ideologies, deficient concepts of history and heritage do not and cannot promote community. Think of the word community. Com is a preposition which means with, and the rest of the word is unity. So community means basically that there is a people, there is a group that is one, that they are unified and they have a commonality. In fact, the word community is from the Latin word communitas, which refers to that which is held in common. So let me put it to you like this, where there is no commonality, there is no community. One reason that you can have people that live next door to you or down the street from you or down the road from you, and you don't even know their names, you don't even know who they are, is the fact that you have absolutely nothing in common.
#3 | 1:38 to 2:48 | cleaned
Why in the world are you going to visit with someone when you're totally opposites? And there's no commonality there. And consequently, you know, you cannot have community. You've heard that old adage, birds of a feather flock together. Well, that's certainly true with people as well. If you and I are going to have a Christian community, that is, we have to have people who think alike. That does not mean that we're going to agree on every little detail in every specific area. But it does mean that we have to come together with some basic commonalities as well.
#4 | 2:51 to 3:21 | cleaned
So our communities basically need to be resurrection. Now, you have to understand this resurrection is always on God's terms. It's no man's terms. If our communities are going to be resurrected, they're going to be resurrected based upon the word of God. Here's a question that I like to ask people. If our society disintegrated today, totally, completely, economic, social, everything's just went south. Everything's totally gone. And you have the opportunity to rebuild society tomorrow from the bottom up. Here's my question. Whose law would you use to rebuild society?
#5 | 3:21 to 4:03 | cleaned
Now, if you tell me, well, brother, we were what I would do, I would take the best that man can offer and I would rebuild on that. In that case, you might as well let it stay down because it's going to curse from the beginning. You remember in the book of Joshua, chapter 6, when they destroyed Jericho, Joshua said, "Cursed be the man before the Lord that rises up and buildeth this city of Jericho."
#6 | 4:05 to 4:30 | cleaned
He shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates thereof. And if you will read in 1 Kings chapter 16 and verse 34, it was Hiel the Bethelite, who actually rebuilt Jericho. And he did indeed lay the foundation, the Bible says, in Abiram his first son. That is, he sacrificed his first son and he set up the gate in Segub, his second son. In other words, he murdered his own sons, offered them in sacrifice for setting up Jericho. In other words, the point I'm trying to make, if we do not build according to God's law, it is basically a waste of time because it's going to fail. It's going to be cursed.
#7 | 4:30 to 5:11 | cleaned
In order to have a community, you've got to remember you have to have individuals and then you have to have families. Every community is made up of individuals. Every community is made up of families. Our communities are never, ever going to be any better than our individuals and our families as well. So if you have an unresurrected community, the truth of the matter is you're not going to have a good community whatsoever. You cannot have a spiritual community with unspiritual people. You cannot have a godly community with ungodly people. You cannot have a community with people fussing and fighting and feuding all of the time. Because the truth of the matter is, you're just going to have war left and right.
#8 | 5:12 to 5:56 | cleaned
Robert Winthrop, who happened to be a congressman and a former Speaker of the House, who died in 1894, he was speaking before the Massachusetts Bible Society, and here is what he said. Listen carefully. All societies of men must be governed in some way or the other. The less they may have of stringent self-government, the more they must rely on individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them, either by the word of God or the strong arm of man, either by the Bible or the bayonet.
#9 | 5:57 to 6:49 | cleaned
So what he's saying is this, if society is not going to do right, there's got to be always someone who will make them do that which is right. So if we do not want the strong arm of man forcing us, that means that we as individuals and families must rely upon the power of God within us and his word and his truth. So it's easy for someone who is right and holy and godly to live with other people who are right, holy and godly. I don't have any conflicts with God's people. I don't have any conflicts with Presbyterians.
#10 | 6:52 to 7:25 | cleaned
I preach in Presbyterian churches all the time, although I'm a Baptist. In fact, I had a Presbyterian pastor who's a dear friend of mine down to the last class, and he was shooting very, very well. And so I went up, I put my hand on his shoulder and I said, you know, for a half-baptized brother, you're really shooting well. Of course, he laughed at me. You know, I was joking with him. But that's the point.
#11 | 7:27 to 7:51 | cleaned
I have no problem with him and he has no problem with me. I preach every year in a Presbyterian church down in Alabama and right straight across the street is a big Baptist church. And the pastor always puts on the billboard outside, "Come here, Baptist Pastor John Weaver." No Baptist ever come, but I'm just going to point out the fact, you know, people who love each other and love the Lord, you're not going to have any problem.
#12 | 7:51 to 8:16 | cleaned
It doesn't matter if you disagree on something. You're just still not going to have any problem. Think about the Old South. Think about the Confederacy. Think about the glue that held those people together. At the same time, think about why we are falling apart today. I'm going to give you four things, hopefully very quickly. Four major concepts that the old South had that we do not have today, basically speaking.
#13 | 8:16 to 8:43 | cleaned
First, there was Southern hope. Southern hope is nothing less than what you and I would call biblical hope. You have to remember that the South was settled basically by Scots-Irish. I mean, here were people who came with a love for the Word of God. Even General Nathan Bedford Forrest's mother, Mary, she was a Presbyterian. She loved the Word of God. She left him a Bible that had been really underlined and marked up by her. I mean, she was a woman of the Word. And General Forrest, of course, understood his mother. And of course, she gave him that Bible as well.
#14 | 8:44 to 9:24 | cleaned
So you have to understand that there was a theological aspect in the war of northern aggression. I might get to talk about that a little bit later. The North basically had apostatized. They had gone into Unitarianism. They had gone into Rationalism. They had gone into Transcendentalism. And the South basically stayed with the Word of God. You remember James Henley Thornwell, he was a Presbyterian who died in 1862. He was the one that also pointed out that there was indeed a theological concept in this war.
#15 | 9:24 to 9:55 | cleaned
And he said those on the other side were red republicans and heathen and these on the southern side were of course for religion and political order and this kind of thing. So by and large the South was unashamedly Christian. They believe the Bible to be the divinely inspired Word of God. And when the North made fun of us and called us the Bible Belt, that was not a compliment.
#16 | 9:55 to 10:21 | cleaned
That was meant to be a slam because they were so far above us in their thinking, in their rationalism. They set their minds above the Word of God. And the Bible Belt was considered a slam. It was not considered a compliment whatsoever. No, the truth of the matter is the Bible was first and foremost in the South.
#17 | 10:21 to 10:42 | cleaned
Now, there were people in the North who were Christians, I understand that, and there were people in the North who were what they used to call Copperheads. They were very Southern in their sympathies. When I say that the South was predominantly Christian, that does not mean that everyone in the South was a Christian. Neither does it mean that there were no Christians in the North, but it does mean that generally speaking, the North had apostatized and left the word of God.
#18 | 10:42 to 11:12 | cleaned
I want you to listen to the testimony of Robert E. Lee. He said this. The Bible is the book of books, a book which supplies the place of all others and cannot be replaced. Later, he said this. There are many things in that old book that I may never be able to explain, but I accept them as the infallible Word of God and receive its teaching as inspired by the Holy Ghost. I prefer the Bible to any other book.
#19 | 11:13 to 11:40 | cleaned
There is enough in that to satisfy the most ardent thirst for knowledge, to open the way to true wisdom, and to teach the only road to salvation and eternal happiness. It is not above human comprehension and is sufficient to satisfy all desires. So likely the South believe the Bible was indeed the word of God. What many pastors have not understood and many people have not understood that there was indeed a theological aspect to that war.
#20 | 11:41 to 12:07 | cleaned
You cannot have a change in culture without a change in theology. Let me say this another way. A change in culture is always preceded by a change in theology. You want to know why our culture has changed in this country? Because our theology has changed. Stop and think of all the grain and all the revenue, everything that we've sent, just say for India. Don't worry about China. Don't think about Iraq and Iran. Just think about India. Think of all the food and all the grain that we have sent to India for years and years and years and years and years. And it's all wasted. Now, some get to eat of it, but do you realize if they had a pile of grain as high as this building, the cows could walk in and eat whatever they wanted to eat, defecate wherever they wanted to defecate, because cows are worshipped in India.
#21 | 12:08 to 13:13 | cleaned
I have seen, I have it on video, I've seen pictures of Indian women offering bowls of milk to big wharf rats and then bowing down and worshipping the wharf rats. Listen, you're not going to change that culture unless you change the theology. Do you understand that? We used to send missionaries to foreign countries. Now we send soldiers. Because now we're trying to force the change instead of allowing it to be a biblical change. The only point I'm trying to say is you're not going to ever force religion down somebody's throat and you're not going to change their culture until you change their theology.
#22 | 13:13 to 13:53 | cleaned
Now, when the South did not voluntarily relinquish the word of God and when the South did not bow to the rationalism and transcendentalism of the North, there was war. And the war basically was to force the Northern way of thinking upon us when it did not work. And the South lost, then there was Reconstruction, and Reconstruction was nothing more than a military move to force us into submitting to the thinking of the North.
#23 | 13:53 to 14:25 | cleaned
That's exactly what it was. By the way, political correctness is still the same thing as reconstruction. You're being reconstructed, whether you know it or not, when you listen to all the propaganda and leave everything that comes off the TV set and on the radio. You're being propagandized. You're being brainwashed. You're being basically controlled. I had an interesting conversation with a woman who called me on the phone and she said, "Mr. Weaver, you've been a good customer for years."
#24 | 14:26 to 14:57 | cleaned
And it was telephone service. And she said, "Well, I can save you some money." I said, "Really? I'd really like to save some money. How are you going to save me some money?" She said, "Well, we can bundle everything in one bill. And you can have your TV. You can have your internet. And you can have your phone service. And it'll just be all one bill. And we can save you lots of money." I said, "Well, that's wonderful. Tell me how much money you're going to save me on my TV." Well, she said, "How much are you paying?" I said, "I'm not paying anything."
#25 | 14:57 to 15:31 | cleaned
"Oh," she said, "you have an antenna." I said, "No ma'am, I don't have an antenna." She said, "Well, how much do you pay?" I said, "I don't pay anything." She said, "How can you have TV and don't pay anything?" I said, "Because I don't have TV." That's not the... You know what she said? "What? You don't have a TV." She said, "What do you do?" I said, "Ma'am, have you ever heard the word reading?" I'm serious.
#26 | 15:33 to 16:05 | cleaned
She was absolutely shocked that we didn't have a TV in our house and hadn't had for years and years. And I don't want one. I'm just simply pointing out the fact, you know, we receive all kind of propaganda and don't even realize what's happening. Basil Manly, a Baptist pastor and chaplain and provisional Confederate congressman said this, that he viewed secession not as rebellion, but as a Christian reform movement. W. W. Bennett, in his book, The Great Revival, said this, talking about Southern soldiers, "Their conviction of right in what they did were second only to their convictions of the truth of the Christian religion. Nor has the stern logic of events eradicated this conviction from the Southern mind."
#27 | 16:06 to 16:55 | cleaned
"The cause may be lost, but its principles still live and must continue to live so long as there remains a human nature and in a human nature, any perception and appreciation of justice, truth and virtue." He said you cannot lose the principles. You cannot lose the—if you lose the principles, you lose hope. And I usually tell people the cause is not lost as long as there is a biblical hope and you understand the principles. But in the Old South, there was Southern hope. Secondly, there was Southern honor. Honor was one of the, I would say it was the glue basically that held the family and the community together.
#28 | 16:55 to 17:37 | cleaned
Men were men and women were women. Men of honor worked, provided, protected and loved their wives and their families. It was an honor to work. It was an honor to be independent. It was an honor not to be in debt. It was an honor not to be dependent upon charity. It was an honor to be a man. It was an honor to be a woman. The woman was more feminine then than she is today. Here's this code of honor that was basically in the old South. Listen to it. The code of honor for Southern men required having, number one, a reputation for honesty and integrity.
#29 | 17:37 to 18:22 | cleaned
I can tell you this. When I was a boy, which was a long time ago, I watched my father make deals with other farmers. And sometimes those deals back then were $40,000 and $50,000, which was a lot of money back then, and all they did was shake hands. There was no contract. They just agreed. I've seen my father and I've seen other farmers. When a farmer died, I've seen them go up to the widow and say, "I owe your husband so much and I want to pay it right now." They would pay the debt after the man was dead when no one else knew about the debt, but they knew about it.
#30 | 18:24 to 19:07 | cleaned
The Code of Honor, first of all, said this. A reputation of honesty and integrity.
#31 | 19:09 to 19:14 | cleaned
Secondly, a reputation for martial courage and strength. That is, you were able to fight. Number three, self-sufficiency and mastery defined as a patriarchal dominion over the household. In other words, you had your household in order. Wife, children, slaves if you had them. Number four, a willingness to use violence to defend any perceived slight to his reputation as a man of integrity, strength, and courage, as well as any threat to his independence or to his kin.
#32 | 19:15 to 19:47 | cleaned
Now think about the threats to our independence today that no one is fighting. I was telling some of the fellows before service today I have a friend, he's now dead, or I have a friend, he was a pastor, he called me one day, he said, "John, I found out how to get men up in arms marching on Washington, D.C." I said, "Really, tell me how?" He said, "Well," he said, "no one's concerned about abortion. That doesn't upset anybody. No one's concerned about sodomy. That doesn't upset anybody. Nobody's concerned about the social condition and deterioration in this country. That doesn't upset anybody. He said, let's get Congress to pass a law banning balls of every size, shape, and form. And men will be in arms marching on Washington, D.C."
#33 | 19:47 to 20:36 | cleaned
Just because there's no more football, no more baseball, no more soccer, no more golf, no. Yeah, just stop and think about that. We'll fight for our pleasures, but we won't fight for our independence and for our freedom.
#34 | 20:37 to 20:47 | cleaned
Now, an advice of a North Carolina Carolinian, William Pettigrew, to his younger brother, said this. "As far as it can be done, we should live peaceably with our associates. But as we cannot always do so, it is necessary occasionally to resist. And when our honor demands resistance, it should be done with courage." Well, you know, that's the same truth as Romans chapter 12 and verse 18, where the Bible says, "As much as in you is, live peaceably with all men." In other words, God understands there are some men that you cannot live peaceably with. In other words, all I'm saying is, there was Southern honor. Men were going to defend their integrity. They were going to defend their families. They were going to defend their independence. Southern men have always been fighters.
#35 | 20:48 to 21:40 | cleaned
Whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not, you look and study and find out, of every war that this country has ever been in, the majority of the soldiers have been from the South. Listen to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He said, "A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today." Oh, let me stop there. A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. Along with this is a loss of will in the West.
#36 | 21:41 to 22:39 | cleaned
We can't defend ourselves if we're not willing to die for anything. There is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. In other words, all we want is money. So this Southern emphasis on honor affected women as well as men, because Southern women wanted to be women. They wanted to be homemakers. They wanted to be wives. They wanted to be good neighbors. I want to give you two definitions.
#37 | 22:39 to 23:09 | cleaned
The first one is Robert E. Lee's definition of a gentleman. And Robert E. Lee could not envision a Christian not being a gentleman. Neither could he envision a gentleman not being a Christian. To him, they were one and the same. Here's what Lee said. Lee's description of what a gentleman should be was this. "The forebearing use of power does not only form the touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is the test of a true gentleman." In other words, I've got power over you.
#38 | 23:09 to 23:47 | cleaned
I have authority over you. Listen to what he says now. "The power which the strong have over the weak, the magistrate over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly, the forebearing or inoffensive use of all this power authority, or the total absence of it when the case admits it, will show the gentleman in plain light. The gentleman does not needlessly or unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him."
#39 | 23:47 to 24:21 | cleaned
He can not only forgive, he can forget. And he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character, which imparts sufficient strength to let the past be the past. A true gentleman of honor feels humbled when he can help humbling others.
#40 | 24:22 to 24:39 | cleaned
Now, let that sink in. A true gentleman of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others. That's why the Bible says in Proverbs 29, verse 23, "A man's pride shall bring him low, but honor shall uphold the upright in spirit." And so, Robert Lee is a real gentleman. It's not someone who's going to take advantage of others. He's going to be someone who will let the bygones be bygones. He's not going to just bring up past sins and past errors and past mistakes just for the sake of bringing them up. So that's the man. Ladies, I want you to listen, because this, you might think it's out of date a little bit, but that's fine.
#41 | 24:40 to 25:23 | cleaned
This was written by Varina Davis, Jeff Davis's wife, on being a lady. Listen, what is a lady? A lady is simply someone who cares about herself and others. She sees that her garments are clean and neatly pressed. Her shoes are polished and every button is in place. She is neat and tidy even at the breakfast table and wishes to appear well to her own family. She keeps her hair clean and well-groomed and never puts her hand to her hair to rearrange it or search for loose pins while others can see. A lady does not monopolize the conversation. She does not talk of herself and her own affairs, listens with well-simulated interest to a story that bores her. That's most wives.
#42 | 25:24 to 26:21 | cleaned
This is the mark of good breeding. She does not sit apart with one or two friends, but makes the gentle effort to assure a good time for all with pleasant conversation. A lady does not say or do anything that will upset those around her or to make them uncomfortable. A lady does not let any man kiss her or put his arm around her unless she is engaged to him.
#43 | 26:23 to 26:49 | cleaned
And even then, she should be a little stingy with her favors. A lady, when she brushes off her hat, does not forget to brush away the cobwebs from her hair or from her brain. She does not conclude that every man who has said something pleasant to her has fallen in love with her. A lady is possessed of refinement, which prevents her from all fidgeting, from playing with her handkerchief, her umbrella, her purse, or whatever may be in her hands. When she sits down, she remains quietly, her hands resting easily without movement, and her whole figure is filled with repose.
#44 | 26:50 to 27:27 | cleaned
She is calm, composed, self-controlled at all times, yet there are no airs about her. These qualities are what keep her from talking and laughing loudly, and they prevent her from hurting the feelings of anyone. A lady does not grow weary in well-doing, but encourages herself by trying to live up to the ideal of a woman. Isn't that amazing? Varina Davis wrote that. The Bible says in Proverbs 11, in verse 16, "A gracious woman retaineth honor and strong men retain riches." In the South, it was an honor for a man to be a man. It was an honor for a woman to be a woman. There was no confusion. The truth of the matter is, I'll be 79 if the Lord lets me live to September. I've never wanted to be a woman at all. I've always wanted to be a man, you know. Isn't that amazing? And that's exactly what the scripture says. God created us man and woman. So there was southern hope, there is southern honor. Here's the third thing, and that's southern heritage.
#45 | 27:28 to 28:35 | cleaned
Let me tell you this about heritage. Heritage is the status that is acquired by a person through birth. Your heritage is your birthright. Your heritage is what you were born with. Down in Georgia, I've seen many bumper stickers. One of them that stands out says simply this, "I was not born in the South, but I got here as soon as I could." Well, that is true. And I got news for you, those who are born in the South have inherited this great inheritance of our ancestors. We can no more change the fact that we're Southerners any more than a leopard could change its spots. We would not want to change.
#46 | 28:36 to 29:27 | cleaned
Whatsoever, I remember when I was in college years ago, I had to take a class in voice and diction. And my teacher, Mr. Pratt, was from the north. And I gave a recitation and he looked at me and said, "Mr. Weaver." I said, "Yes, Mr. Pratt." He said, "You still have that southern accent." I looked at him, I said, "Mr. Pratt, do you know why I still have that southern accent?" He said, "Why?"
#47 | 29:28 to 30:00 | cleaned
I said, "Because I'm a southerner and I'm planning on keeping it. I'm not planning on changing it. I said, I want to speak correctly, but you're not going to change me into a Yankee. I said, that's all there is to it." I mean, I wasn't ugly, but I'm just going to be pointing out the fact we have a heritage. The psalmist said in Psalm 16 and verse 6, "The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage." God has given us a goodly heritage. Psalm 61 and verse 5, the Bible says, "For thou, O God, hast heard my vows: thou hast given me the heritage of those that fear thy name." Have you ever heard the vow that Major R.E. Wilson gave, the oath that he gave?
#48 | 30:01 to 30:42 | cleaned
Listen to this. Major Wilson said, "If I ever disown, repudiate or apologize for the cause for which Lee fought and Jackson died, let the lightnings of heaven rend me and the scorn of all good men and true women be my portion. Sun, moon, stars all fall on me when I cease to love the Confederacy. 'Tis the cause, not the fate of the cause that is glorious." That's heritage. N.B.
#49 | 30:42 to 31:17 | cleaned
Littlejohn sent his son off to fight with the Yankees. I want you to listen to what he said to his son. This is so far removed of what a father would tell his son today, but here's what he said. He shook his son's hand as the son was about to leave. He said, "My son, I grasp your hand probably for the last time upon earth. You're going to meet the dangers and hardships consequent to a soldier's life. You may fill a soldier's grave. Well, father and son, you may die. Let me impress upon your mind to never fill it dishonorably."
#50 | 31:17 to 32:03 | cleaned
"Ever be at your post of duty. Be an honor to our beloved Southland. Go where your superiors order you. Never turn your back upon the foe, except when deemed necessary by your superior officers. Be true to your God, yourself and your country. Never bring reproach upon your beloved Southland or yourself. Never desert your country. But if necessary, die at your post of honor." Wow. Yeah, there's not only Southern hope and Southern honor, there is Southern heritage as well.
#51 | 32:04 to 32:39 | cleaned
Henry Grady was the editor of the Atlanta Constitution. And on December the 21st, 1886, which would be 21 years after the war for Southern Independence was over, he was speaking to the New England Society in New York. And the title of his address was "The New South." I want you to listen to what Grady said. He said, "The South has nothing for which to apologize."
#52 | 32:39 to 33:11 | cleaned
Now, remember, he's speaking to folks in Massachusetts. "The South has nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle between the states was war and not rebellion, revolution and no conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own conscience if I did not make this claim in this presence. The South has nothing to take back."
#53 | 33:11 to 33:41 | cleaned
"In my native town of Athens, Georgia, is a monument that crowns its eternal central hill, a plain white shaft, deep cut into its shining side, is a name dear to me above the names of men, could better soldiers name, that of a brave and simple man who died a brave and simple death. Not for all the glories of New England, from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of that monument, I shall send my children to reverence him who ennobled their name with his heroic blood." Wow, that was 1886.
#54 | 33:43 to 34:26 | cleaned
Grady went on to venerate the Confederate soldier by telling everybody that the Confederate soldier was fighting for truth and righteousness and principle. That's what our Confederate ancestors fought for. They not only had hope, they had honor, and they understood their own heritage. Robert L. Dabney, who, of course, Stonewall Jackson's chief of staff, was speaking also on the subject of the New South at Hampden-Sydney College in 1882.
#55 | 34:26 to 35:02 | cleaned
And listen to what he said. "It behooves the New South in dismissing the animosities of the past to see to it that they retain all that was true in its principles or ennobling in its examples. There are those pretending to belong to this company who exclaim, 'Let us bury the dead past. The issues are all antiquated and of no more practical significance. Let us forget the passions of the past. We're in a new world. It's new questions alone that concern us.'"
#56 | 35:02 to 35:36 | cleaned
Dabney says, "But I rejoin. Be sure that the former issues are dead before you really bury them. There are issues that cannot die without the death of a people of their honor, their civilization and their greatness. Take care that you do not bury too much while burying the dead past, that you do not bury the inspiring memories of great patriots whose actions, whether successful or not, are the eternal glory of your race and section."
#57 | 35:37 to 36:05 | cleaned
"The influence of their virtues, the guiding principles of their histories. Would you bury the names and memories of Jackson and Lee and their noble army of martyrs? Would you bury true history whose years are those of the God of truth?" He said, you better be careful what you bury. You can bury too much. We have to understand we have a heritage and that heritage has been given to us by God. You have that undergirded the old South, Southern hope, Southern honor, Southern heritage. And then you have a fourth one that is Southern hospitality. Do you realize the South is probably the most friendly section in the entire country?
#58 | 36:06 to 36:48 | cleaned
All natural born Southerners wave to each other, speak to each other. Whether we know each other or not, it's just that simple. I had an aunt that lived in Toledo, Ohio, for years and years. And when my uncle retired, they moved back to the South. And my aunt could not get over the fact that everyone spoke to her and waved to her. She didn't even know them.
#59 | 36:49 to 37:21 | cleaned
And she told me one day, she said, "You don't understand. This is so traumatic for me." I said, "What do you mean traumatic?" She said, "Up north, if someone you do not know speaks to you or waves at you, you run." I said, "Well, if you tried that down here, you'd be running yourself to death because everybody speaks and everybody waves. It's just that simple." Us Southerners love fellowship. I mean, they love barbecues. They love get-togethers. They love reunion.
#60 | 37:23 to 37:53 | cleaned
They enjoy the company of family and friends. Let me tell you something. When I was a child, we had company every Sunday. Every Sunday. Every Sunday. There was one old couple I never will forget. He played the piano. He was a tall, slender man. And before he was converted, he played in a juke joint. And when he played the piano, I mean, you could hear him two blocks away. I mean, he would bang that piano.
#61 | 37:53 to 38:25 | cleaned
And his wife was elderly, too. And he would come up to my father after church on Sunday and he'd say to my dad, "Brother Weaver, may my wife and I come home and break bread with you today?" They were there inviting themselves to dinner. So what did it matter to you? And dad would always say, "Well, sure, you may come." And anybody who came to our house on Sunday afternoon, they stayed with us all afternoon, they ate supper with us and then went back to church together with us on Sunday night.
#62 | 38:26 to 38:56 | cleaned
And of course, for some of you young ones, I'll explain this to you. I could never figure out when I was your age why the adults would always want to take a nap on Sunday afternoon until I got to be groggy. Yeah, I found out, you know, it's good to get an hour's worth of snooze every now and then. But, you know, I thought that's crazy. I mean, this is a wonderful time to play and they're inside sleeping.
#63 | 38:57 to 39:19 | cleaned
I don't understand all this. But the truth of the matter is we had company every Sunday, every Sunday. And let me tell you something else. If you were at our house and it was dinner time or supper time, if you were there, you ate with us. I don't care who you were, you ate with us. My wife can tell you that after we were married, we would come home to visit and we would sit down at the dinner table at my parents' house and we would sit down and eat dinner with people I've never seen before in my life. You know, if you were there, you just ate.
#64 | 39:19 to 40:03 | cleaned
That was part of Southern hospitality. That's all there is to it. And the Bible tells us that we are to be hospitable one to another. In fact, Romans chapter 12 and verse 13 says, "Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality." The Bible says in 1 Peter 4 and verse 9, "Use hospitality one to another without grudging." Pastors are particularly commanded to be hospitable. In 1 Timothy, chapter 3 and verse 2, "A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality." The Bible says in Titus 1 and verse 8, "But a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate."
#65 | 40:03 to 40:47 | cleaned
I got news for you. Southerners by nature are indeed hospitable. That's true. You know, the Lord has a sense of humor and I'm thankful. It's astounding. I've had two flat tires years ago. The first one, we were on our way to visit a pastor friend who was in a nursing home. He was actually dying and I had a flat tire. And so I pulled off the side of the road, and just time I pulled off the side of the road, a truck pulled in right behind me.
#66 | 40:48 to 41:28 | cleaned
And here a young man jumped out and said, "I'll get that for you, sir." And I said, "Well, thank you. I appreciate that." I mean, I could have done it. But he said, "I'll get that for you." And so he got the jack and started changing the tire. About that time, his phone rang and he picked it up and he said, listen to me now. He said, "I'm sorry."
#67 | 41:29 to 41:51 | cleaned
He said, "I can't talk to you right now." He said, "I'm helping change the tire for two elderly folks." My wife and I were only in our 60s at the time and we were elderly. But he changed the tire and I thanked him. The second time I was on my way to church, and the tire went flat, and a man pulled in right behind me. Of course, I had a shirt and tie on.
#68 | 41:52 to 42:14 | cleaned
And he said, "You don't have to get dirty." He said, "I'll get that for you." I said, "Well, I appreciate that. I'm going to go and preach." And I said, "I just would not like to preach with dirt all over my shirt." He changed the tire, and then he reached in his pocket and gave me $10 to get it fixed with. I said, "Lord, that's Southern folks."
#69 | 42:14 to 42:32 | cleaned
I didn't know either one of those people. Never. All I'm trying to say is, Southern folks are hospitable. Let me tell you, if you come to visit me and you go to the Agrirama, which is an 18th, 19th century working farm is what it amounts to, you'll see several old houses with dog trots. You know what a dog trot was? Anybody know what a dog trot was? A dog trot usually was a straight through, in other words, the roofs were this way, this way. In fact, the house I was raised in had a dog trot. There's the front porch, then straight through, and then went around like this.
#70 | 42:33 to 43:17 | cleaned
And so you had bedrooms on this side, and then you had your kitchen and dining room back here. Well, my parents closed in the first dog trot and just made a living room out of it. But that's what a dog trot was. But then the houses also had traveler's rooms. And a traveler's room was attached to the outside of the house. It had a bed, it had a wash pan, it had water, it had whatever you would need. And so a man passing by, if he got there at night, here's this traveler's room. He just gets off his horse, ties his horse, goes in, washes up, goes to bed, and probably stays the next morning for breakfast. I don't even know who he was, but all of these old houses had traveler's rooms.
#71 | 43:17 to 44:01 | cleaned
That undoubtedly took place from 2 Kings chapter 4. You remember when Elijah was passing by and the woman said, "This man is passing by all the time. Let's build a little room for him and let's put a table and a candle and a bed in it." And that's exactly what happened. And so you would find that these travelers rooms were all in all of these old houses and you can see them there even today.
#72 | 44:02 to 44:24 | cleaned
So I'm talking about Southern community. I'm talking about Southern hospitality. When I was a boy, when a barn burned down, guess what? All the neighbors came together and helped rebuild the barn. When someone died, the church, the community came together, brought food, took care of everything. If somebody needed help, they did help. I had a neighbor who had a stroke. He was a farmer. I was raised on a farm, but I was pastoring at that time. And when my neighbor had that stroke, my girls and myself and his wife planted all of his crops and harvested all those crops just because he was incapable of doing it. I'm just simply saying, that is in the South.
#73 | 44:25 to 45:35 | cleaned
You can't get over this. When I was seven years old, there was a rabid fox in our community. 20 to 25 men came to our house and sat on the front porch figuring out how they were going to kill that rabid fox so he would not attack anyone. You don't have 20, 25 men. Every one of them armed. I'll tell you something else, you've probably never heard of this, but every time we would have a quote-unquote revival, actually it would be a Bible conference revival teaching.
#74 | 45:35 to 46:20 | cleaned
We always had cottage prayer meetings. You'd have cottage prayer meetings a week to two weeks before the meeting ever began. As a child, I would go to those cottage prayer meetings. You would sing and you would pray. And we would have 30 to 50 people every night prior to the meeting. So the question and each family would host it differently. I'm just simply saying, folks, you have to understand there was this Southern hospitality. It was a glue that bound people together as well.
#75 | 46:21 to 47:02 | cleaned
Henry Benjamin Whipple was of Minnesota. He toured the South in 1843 and 1844 to try to recover his health since he was from Minnesota. And here's what he wrote in his diary. November the 25th, he was at St. Augustine, Florida. He wrote this. "The people of the southern states are generally much more hospitable than northerners, and the difference must be attributed to the fact that they are not such money loving people."
#76 | 47:04 to 47:35 | cleaned
"You do not see the low, mean cupidity, that base selfishness, those striking a characteristic of one of our portions as our restless Yankee brethren. I am more and more convinced that most of the exaggerated stories of abolitionists exist only in the imagination, and from personal observation, I know that the efforts of the abolitionists in the North have only served to injure the slave and destroy the kind and fraternal feeling which existed between the North and the South." Wow.
#77 | 47:36 to 48:10 | cleaned
So here's a man saying, the Southerners don't like the Yankees, they don't have that money hunger, money love and desire that the Yankees had. So it was hope, it was honor, it was heritage, it was hospitality that underpinned the South. See, you can have a group of people in a locality, but you do not have community. You can have people gather together, really, but you do not have community. You can only have community when you have commonality, when you have a common faith and a common heritage. Listen to me. Do you realize? You cannot even have community unless you have the same language. What do I mean? Here's a good example, by the way. I'll give you a biblical example first, you remember in the book of Judges chapter 12.
#78 | 48:12 to 49:10 | cleaned
42,000 men were killed. Because they could not say Shibboleth. They had a different accent. I love this one. Here's a good example from history in 1883. In 1883, Sitting Bull, the great Sioux chief, Sitting Bull was a guest of honor at the opening ceremonies of the Northern Pacific Railroad. When it was his turn to speak, he said in the Lakota language, "I hate all white people."
#79 | 49:10 to 49:51 | cleaned
"You are thieves and liars. You've taken away our land and made us outcasts." A quick-thinking interpreter told the crowd the chief was happy to be there, and he looked forward to peace and prosperity with the white people. Sitting Bull received a standing ovation. If you want community, you need hope, you need honor, you need heritage, and you need hospitality, and you need the same language. Do you realize that all of these things that I just mentioned will come together in eternity? Our hope will be finalized. There will be honor. There will be a heritage. And we will have all the same language. We'll speak the language of heaven. That is for sure. Yeah. If you wonder today why we're so divided, so fractured, cannot get along, look no further than the loss of these things. We need real communities. We need to get together with people who believe, who know, and we have the same heritage in the same culture.
#80 | 49:52 to 51:16 | cleaned
That's all there is to it. Have you ever noticed when the Chinese come to this country, they go to Chinatown? You know why? Because they have a commonality. When the other groups come, they go to their group. Why? They have a commonality. And it takes the grace of God to bring a commonality between all of us by giving us his grace and his mercy. Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, we bow to thee.
#81 | 51:16 to 51:50 | cleaned
We thank you for your word. We thank you for your truth. And we ask more that you would help us and build us up to the most holy faith. And may your perfect and holy will be accomplished in our lives. In the name of Jesus Christ, we ask and pray. Amen.
#82 | 51:50 to 52:04 | cleaned

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | clean_readable_transcript | 2026-06-05T17:23:29Z

Community in the Old South & in the Confederacy

John Weaver | Freedom Ministries

John Weaver argues that true community requires commonality—shared faith, heritage, and culture—and that the Old South possessed four foundational elements now largely lost: biblical hope, honor, heritage, and hospitality. He contends that the War Between the States was fundamentally theological, with the North having apostatized into rationalism while the South held to Scripture. Without a return to God’s law and these communal virtues, society remains fractured and cannot be rebuilt.

Introduction: The Nature of True Community

Community requires commonality; without shared culture, faith, and heritage, there is no unity. The word 'community' itself means 'with unity' or that which is held in common.

Rebuilding Society on God’s Law

If society collapses, it must be rebuilt on God’s law, not human wisdom. Building on any other foundation invites a curse, as illustrated by the rebuilding of Jericho.

Scripture Reading — Joshua 6:26

"Cursed be the man before the Lord that rises up and buildeth this city of Jericho."

The Necessity of Godly Individuals and Families

Communities are only as strong as the individuals and families within them. Spiritual community requires spiritual people governed by God’s Word rather than external force.

The Theological Roots of the War and Cultural Change

A change in culture is always preceded by a change in theology. The North’s apostasy into Unitarianism and rationalism clashed with the South’s biblical faith, leading to war and Reconstruction.

Southern Hope: Biblical Hope as the Foundation

The Old South was settled by Scots-Irish who loved God’s Word. Southern hope was biblical hope, and the South unashamedly held to Scripture as the divinely inspired Word of God.

Southern Honor: The Glue of Family and Community

Honor required honesty, courage, self-sufficiency, and defense of reputation. Men were protectors and providers; women embraced femininity and virtue. This code bound communities together.

Scripture Reading — Romans 12:18

"As much as in you is, live peaceably with all men."

Now, let that sink in. A true gentleman of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others. That's why the Bible says in Proverbs 29, verse 23,

Scripture Reading — Proverbs 29:23

"A man's pride shall bring him low, but honor shall uphold the upright in spirit."

Southern Heritage: Birthright and Identity

Heritage is a birthright received from ancestors. Southerners inherit a legacy of faith and valor exemplified by Lee and Jackson, which must not be buried or apologized for.

Scripture Reading — Psalm 16:6

"The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage."

Southern Hospitality: The Glue of Fellowship

Southerners are naturally hospitable, welcoming strangers and sharing meals. This practice, commanded in Scripture, fostered deep community bonds and mutual care.

That was part of Southern hospitality. That's all there is to it. And the Bible tells us that we are to be hospitable one to another. In fact, Romans chapter 12 and verse 13 says,

Scripture Reading — Romans 12:13

"Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality."

The Necessity of a Common Language and Conclusion

Community requires a shared language, both literally and spiritually. The loss of hope, honor, heritage, and hospitality explains today’s division. In eternity, these will be perfectly restored.

Community in the Old South & in the Confederacy

John Weaver | SermonAudio

Lecture Metadata	Details
Speaker	John Weaver
Source	SermonAudio
Media ID	812320585870
Subject	Family Government
Course	The Christian Family: Children, Fatherhood, and Generational Faithfulness: The World And Times Of Jesse James
Genre	Sermon
Date	2023-08-01
Dictation Name
Book	Book 028: The Christian Family: Children, Fatherhood, and Generational Faithfulness — Chapter 13
Source Timed Segments	82

Lecture Guide

Outline

Introduction: The Nature of True Community: Community requires commonality; without shared culture, faith, and heritage, there is no unity. The word 'community' itself means 'with unity' or that which is held in common.
Rebuilding Society on God’s Law: If society collapses, it must be rebuilt on God’s law, not human wisdom. Building on any other foundation invites a curse, as illustrated by the rebuilding of Jericho.
The Necessity of Godly Individuals and Families: Communities are only as strong as the individuals and families within them. Spiritual community requires spiritual people governed by God’s Word rather than external force.
The Theological Roots of the War and Cultural Change: A change in culture is always preceded by a change in theology. The North’s apostasy into Unitarianism and rationalism clashed with the South’s biblical faith, leading to war and Reconstruction.
Southern Hope: Biblical Hope as the Foundation: The Old South was settled by Scots-Irish who loved God’s Word. Southern hope was biblical hope, and the South unashamedly held to Scripture as the divinely inspired Word of God.
Southern Honor: The Glue of Family and Community: Honor required honesty, courage, self-sufficiency, and defense of reputation. Men were protectors and providers; women embraced femininity and virtue. This code bound communities together.
Southern Heritage: Birthright and Identity: Heritage is a birthright received from ancestors. Southerners inherit a legacy of faith and valor exemplified by Lee and Jackson, which must not be buried or apologized for.
Southern Hospitality: The Glue of Fellowship: Southerners are naturally hospitable, welcoming strangers and sharing meals. This practice, commanded in Scripture, fostered deep community bonds and mutual care.
The Necessity of a Common Language and Conclusion: Community requires a shared language, both literally and spiritually. The loss of hope, honor, heritage, and hospitality explains today’s division. In eternity, these will be perfectly restored.

Major Themes

Key Arguments

Community Requires Commonality

Without shared faith, culture, and heritage, people cannot form true community, only a collection of individuals.

Weaver says, 'where there is no commonality, there is no community' and explains the etymology of 'community.'

Society Must Be Rebuilt on God’s Law

Any society rebuilt on human wisdom rather than God’s law is cursed from the start, as Jericho’s rebuilding demonstrates.

Weaver asks, 'Whose law would you use to rebuild society?' and references Joshua 6 and 1 Kings 16:34.

Cultural Change Follows Theological Change

The North’s apostasy into rationalism led to cultural decay and war; true cultural change requires theological transformation.

Weaver states, 'A change in culture is always preceded by a change in theology' and gives the example of India.

The Old South Was Founded on Biblical Hope

The South’s hope was rooted in the Bible as God’s infallible Word, giving it a distinct identity from the rationalistic North.

Weaver quotes Robert E. Lee: 'I prefer the Bible to any other book' and notes the South was 'unashamedly Christian.'

Honor Was the Glue of Southern Society

A shared code of honor—honesty, courage, self-sufficiency, and defense of reputation—united families and communities.

Weaver lists the four points of the Southern honor code and quotes William Pettigrew on necessary resistance.

Southern Heritage Is a Sacred Birthright

The legacy of Confederate ancestors who fought for principle must be preserved, not buried or apologized for.

Weaver quotes Henry Grady: 'The South has nothing for which to apologize' and Robert L. Dabney’s warning against burying too much.

Hospitality Is Essential to Community

Biblical hospitality, practiced naturally in the South, creates bonds of fellowship and mutual care that sustain community.

Weaver cites Romans 12:13, 1 Peter 4:9, and describes Sunday company, traveler’s rooms, and community barn-raisings.

A Common Language Is Necessary for Unity

Community requires a shared language; without it, division and misunderstanding prevail, as seen in Judges 12 and the Sitting Bull incident.

Weaver references the Shibboleth incident and the 1883 mistranslation of Sitting Bull’s speech.

Scripture References

Joshua 6:26: Weaver cites Joshua’s curse on anyone who rebuilds Jericho to illustrate that rebuilding society on anything other than God’s law brings a curse.
1 Kings 16:34: Weaver references Hiel the Bethelite who rebuilt Jericho and sacrificed his sons, fulfilling Joshua’s curse, as a warning against building without God’s law.
Romans 12:18: Weaver quotes this verse to support the idea that while we should live peaceably, there are times when honor demands resistance.
Proverbs 29:23: Weaver quotes this verse to contrast pride with the honor that upholds the upright, in the context of Robert E. Lee’s definition of a gentleman.
Proverbs 11:16: Weaver cites this verse to affirm that a gracious woman retains honor, paralleling Varina Davis’s description of a lady.
Psalm 16:6: Weaver quotes this verse to express gratitude for the goodly heritage God has given Southerners.
Psalm 61:5: Weaver references this verse to connect the heritage of those who fear God’s name with the Southern heritage of faith.
Romans 12:13: Weaver quotes this verse to command hospitality as a Christian duty, exemplified by Southern practice.
1 Peter 4:9: Weaver cites this verse to reinforce the command to use hospitality without grudging.
1 Timothy 3:2: Weaver references this verse to show that pastors are particularly commanded to be hospitable.
Titus 1:8: Weaver quotes this verse to further emphasize the requirement for leaders to be lovers of hospitality.
Judges 12:5-6: Weaver references the Shibboleth incident where 42,000 Ephraimites were killed because of their accent, illustrating the necessity of a common language for community.
2 Kings 4:10: Weaver alludes to the Shunammite woman’s provision of a room for Elisha as the biblical precedent for Southern traveler’s rooms.

Historical References

Robert Winthrop (died 1894): Weaver quotes Winthrop’s speech to the Massachusetts Bible Society on the necessity of self-government by the Word of God or external force by the bayonet.
General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s mother, Mary: Weaver mentions Mary Forrest as a Presbyterian woman of the Word who left her son a marked-up Bible, illustrating Southern biblical hope.
James Henley Thornwell (died 1862): Weaver cites Thornwell, a Presbyterian, who identified the theological nature of the war, calling Northerners 'red republicans and heathen.'
Robert E. Lee: Weaver quotes Lee’s testimony on the Bible as the infallible Word of God and his definition of a gentleman.
Basil Manly: Weaver notes that Manly, a Baptist pastor and Confederate congressman, viewed secession as a Christian reform movement.
W. W. Bennett, The Great Revival: Weaver quotes Bennett on the enduring principles of the Southern cause, which cannot be lost as long as biblical hope remains.
William Pettigrew of North Carolina: Weaver quotes Pettigrew’s advice to his brother on the necessity of resisting when honor demands it.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Weaver quotes Solzhenitsyn on the decline of courage in the West, particularly among the ruling elite.
Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis: Weaver reads Varina Davis’s description of a lady, emphasizing feminine honor and refinement.
Major R. E. Wilson’s oath: Weaver quotes Wilson’s vow never to disown the Confederate cause, illustrating Southern heritage.

Important Quotes

where there is no commonality, there is no community.

This is the central thesis of the lecture: community is impossible without shared faith, culture, and heritage.

A change in culture is always preceded by a change in theology.

Weaver argues that the cultural decay in America stems from theological apostasy, a key to understanding the War Between the States.

The Bible is the book of books, a book which supplies the place of all others and cannot be replaced.

Robert E. Lee’s testimony exemplifies the Southern commitment to biblical hope and the authority of Scripture.

The forebearing use of power does not only form the touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is the test of a true gentleman.

Lee’s definition of a gentleman encapsulates the Southern code of honor, emphasizing humility and restraint.

If I ever disown, repudiate or apologize for the cause for which Lee fought and Jackson died, let the lightnings of heaven rend me and the scorn of all good men and true women be my portion.

Major Wilson’s oath illustrates the deep sense of heritage and unapologetic loyalty to the Confederate cause.

The South has nothing for which to apologize.

Henry Grady’s bold declaration in New York affirms the South’s conviction that its cause was just and honorable.

Be sure that the former issues are dead before you really bury them. There are issues that cannot die without the death of a people of their honor, their civilization and their greatness.

Dabney’s warning against burying the past underscores the enduring importance of Southern principles and heritage.

The people of the southern states are generally much more hospitable than northerners, and the difference must be attributed to the fact that they are not such money loving people.

Whipple’s observation highlights hospitality as a defining Southern virtue, rooted in a non-materialistic culture.

Discussion Questions

[Question]

What does Weaver mean by 'where there is no commonality, there is no community,' and how does this apply to modern churches and neighborhoods?

[Context]

Weaver argues that community requires shared faith, culture, and heritage; this question explores the practical implications.

[Question]

How does the biblical account of Jericho’s rebuilding (Joshua 6, 1 Kings 16) inform our approach to cultural and societal reconstruction today?

[Context]

Weaver uses Jericho as a warning against building on any foundation other than God’s law.

[Question]

In what ways did the theological differences between the North and South contribute to the War Between the States, according to Weaver?

[Context]

Weaver asserts that the war was fundamentally theological, with the North embracing rationalism and the South holding to Scripture.

[Question]

How does the Southern code of honor (honesty, courage, self-sufficiency, defense of reputation) compare to biblical teachings on manhood and integrity?

[Context]

Weaver lists the four points of the honor code and connects them to Scripture; this question invites comparison and evaluation.

[Question]

What is the relationship between heritage and identity, and why does Weaver insist that Southern heritage must not be buried or apologized for?

[Context]

Weaver quotes Grady and Dabney to argue that heritage is a God-given birthright essential to communal identity.

[Question]

How does biblical hospitality (Romans 12:13, 1 Peter 4:9) serve as a glue for community, and what can we learn from historical Southern practices?

[Context]

Weaver describes Sunday company, traveler’s rooms, and community mutual aid as expressions of hospitality.

[Question]

Why does Weaver emphasize the need for a common language, and how does the Shibboleth incident (Judges 12) illustrate the importance of shared communication for unity?

[Context]

Weaver uses the Shibboleth story and the Sitting Bull anecdote to show that language barriers prevent true community.

[Question]

According to Weaver, what are the consequences of losing hope, honor, heritage, and hospitality in a society, and how might they be recovered?

[Context]

The lecture concludes that the loss of these four elements explains modern division; this question asks for application and restoration.

Applications

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deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | weaver_study | 2026-06-06T08:14:14Z