Many schools named Robert E. Lee have changed monikers, sometimes halfheartedly: In clever Austin, Texas, Robert E. Lee Elementary School is now Russell Lee. (He was the first photography professor at the University of Texas.) R. David Cox’s The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee (Eerdmans, 2017) feeds ammo to the machine gunners on both sides.

On the one hand, Lee shared the general racism of his era and considered blacks at least temporarily inferior to whites. He observed slaves not working hard unless forced to and thought the tendency racial rather than the common practice of those who see their labor as not yielding any personal or familial benefit. (The poor productivity of Soviet and Chinese communal farms in the 20th century made that apparent.)

On the other hand, Lee wrote that slavery is “a moral, political evil” and said he would gladly give up his slaves to avoid civil war. He called his slaves “servants,” favored emancipation, and thought freedom “will sooner result from the mild and melting influence of Christianity, than the stormy tempests of fiery controversy.”

Cox shows that Lee was a serious Christian with strong belief in God’s sovereignty. That influenced his thinking in 1865: When one of his generals, Edward Alexander, proposed that the Confederates should “scatter like rabbits & partridges in the woods” and begin guerrilla warfare, Lee said no, since “God had given victory to the Yankees. … As Christian men, Gen. Alexander, you & I have no right to think for one moment of our personal feelings or affairs. We must consider only the effect which our actions will have upon the country at large … fresh rapine & destruction.”

For similar reasons Lee disagreed with Alexander’s signing up with the army of Brazil and naval officer Matthew Maury’s move to Mexico: He told Maury that “the guidance of an ever-merciful God, may save us from destruction.”

According to Lee’s nephew, he told a mother who introduced her two sons in the context of berating the North, “Madam, don’t bring up your sons to detest the United States Government. Recollect that we form but one country now. Abandon all these local animosities, and make your sons Americans.”

BOOKMARKS

Dream With Me by John Perkins (Baker, 2017) displays the civil rights pioneer’s continued Christian optimism: Perkins has given the best devotionals by which I’ve been blessed. Jackie Robinson: A Spiritual Biography, by Michael Long and Chris Lamb (WJK, 2017) is inspiring. Rookies face great pressure when they’re only playing for a contract, but on Robinson’s back rode the hopes and hatred of millions—and God brought him through.

Warren Cole Smith has written for WORLD and does weekly interviews on the Listening In podcast: He now has put out Print the Legend (Eagle Trail Press, 2017), a Western adventure novel that melds action, tragedy, and beauty as it sweeps readers through a New Mexico landscape soon littered with corpses. Gyorgy Spiro’s novel Captivity (Restless, 2015) colorfully depicts the Jewish communities of Rome, Jerusalem, and Alexandria 2,000 years ago, but he treats Jesus—in a cameo role—disrespectfully.

Frances FitzGerald’s The Evangelicals (Simon & Schuster, 2017) has 752 pages filled with detail new to me, but errors and incomprehension concerning things I know about leave me without confidence in other parts. Paul Sohn’s Quarter-Life Calling (FaithWords, 2017) could help millennials searching for purpose.

Eric Bolling’s The Swamp (St. Martin’s Press, 2017) gives details about Washington corruption and cronyism. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, edited by Jack Zipes (Princeton, 2017), includes stories in which the apprentice’s overconfidence proves disastrous and others in which he rightly overthrows the evil magician: Which version dominates tells us a lot about societies.

Ashley McGuire’s Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female (Regnery, 2017) is a lively written summary of how weird some of our cultural rulers have become. Papi: My Story, by David Ortiz with Michael Holley (HMH, 2017), includes amusing incidents and bad language. —M.O.