A brief timeline of when slavery ended in the United States
By / Jun 24

Last weekend, Americans celebrated Juneteenth National Independence Day, our nation’s newest legal public holiday. The observance honors Juneteenth, the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery which dates back to June 19, 1865. But for some Black Americans, slavery both ended before and after that date. 

Here is a brief timeline of the 86-year period of the abolition of slavery within the continental United States. 

1780: Pennsylvania adopts a gradual abolition of slavery

In 1780, the Pennsylvania legislature passed the “Act for the Gradual Emancipation of Slavery.” The law freed only slaves born after its enactment, and the registered children of slaves would be enslaved until their 28th birthday. Also, while Pennsylvanians could no longer legally import slaves, they could buy and sell those who had been registered after 1780. 

1783: Massachusetts becomes first state to abolish slavery 

When the state adopted its constitution in 1780, slavery was still legal in Massachusetts. But in three related court cases from 1781 to 1783, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court applied the principle of judicial review to abolish slavery, stating the laws and customs that sanctioned slavery were incompatible with the new state constitution.

1787: Slavery is banned in new territories in the northwest

The Confederation Congress adopted the Northwest Ordinance in 1787. This law established a government for the Northwest Territory, outlined the process for admitting a new state to the Union, and outlawed slavery in the new territories.

1817: Gradual emancipation adopted in northern and western U.S. 

Following the Pennsylvania model, many northern states adopted a process of gradual emancipation. While about two dozen slaves were still held in those states by the time of the Civil War, by 1817 every state in the northern and western U.S. had committed to abolition. 

1863: Emancipation Proclamation expands the policy of abolition

On Jan. 1, 1863, during the second year of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.” The “designated States” to which the Proclamation applied were Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. The proclamation did not free slaves in the border states (which were loyal to the Union) or southern states that were controlled by the Union Army. 

1865: The U.S. ratifies a Constitutional amendment abolishing slavery

On Jan. 31, 1865, the House of Representatives passed a proposed amendment that stated, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The amendment needed 115 votes to pass and received 119 (with 56 votes in opposition). The following day, Lincoln approved a joint resolution of Congress submitting it to the state legislatures for ratification. The number of states needed to ratify the 13th Amendment was reached on Dec. 6.

1866: Slavery is abolished in the territories of Native American tribes.

The so-called “Five Civilized Tribes” of the southeastern U.S. (the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole) were the only Native American groups to formally recognize the institution of African slavery. As the legal scholar J. Gordon Hylton noted, “at the outset of the Civil War, African-American slaves made up 14% of the population of Indian Territory occupied by the civilized tribes.” Because of tribal sovereignty, neither the Emancipation Proclamation nor the 13th Amendment to the Constitution directly applied to what Hylton says were the “unorganized portion of the American public domain that was set apart for the Native American tribes.”

The United States government addressed the issue of slavery in Indian Territory in 1866 by entering into new treaties with each of the Civilized Tribes. Until these treaties, notes Hylton, only the Cherokee had taken steps to abolish slavery. In each of the 1866 treaties the tribal signatory acknowledged that slavery would no longer be recognized as a legal institution by the tribe.

The end of slavery within the continental United States thus officially came to an end as a legal institution on June 14, 1866.

The moral universe of Thomas Jefferson
By / Jun 22

In her brilliant book, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life, Zena Hitz writes that true education involves “a reaching out past the surface, a questioning of appearances, a longing for more than is evident.” Her contention contrasts with modern conceptions of education that see the goal as absorbing correct opinions and dictating to students the predetermined correct interpretation.

Thomas S. Kidd’s new biography of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh, models the kind of intellectual exploration Hitz celebrates. There is perhaps no more controversial figure from American history than Thomas Jefferson, our nation’s third president and the author of America’s most cherished document, the Declaration of Independence. Kidd succeeds in revealing the complexity of this enigmatic man by, on the one hand, refusing to bypass his moral deficiencies, while, on the other hand, elucidating his intellectual genius and unmatched contributions to America’s political formation. As a result, Kidd’s biography takes readers, perhaps more successfully than any previous attempt, into the inner life of the “sage of Monticello.”

Just like Disney and the COVID-19 pandemic, the telling of history has been unable to evade the forces of politicization. On one side, we are told that figures like Jefferson are anathema and that their contributions should be deleted from the pages of history books because of their obvious moral failures. On the other side, such figures are placed on pedestals and celebrated as heroes with their mistakes fully whitewashed. Kidd wisely avoids both extremes in his biography, which serves as a “narrative of Jefferson’s moral universe more than a traditional biography” (3).

Through Kidd’s close examination of Jefferson’s inner life and corresponding actions, a picture emerges of a man with many contradictions. How could the same man write one of the most compelling arguments for universal human freedom in history while holding slaves in bondage for the entirety of his life? How could the same man champion frugality as a republican virtue, yet pursue luxury to the degree that his entire adult life was lived under a dark cloud of suffocating debt? How could one so skeptical of dogmatic religious assertions call himself a Christian and remain a lifelong reader of the Bible?

The central dilemma in Jefferson’s moral universe

Of course, perhaps the greatest enigma—and one that Kidd treats in depth—involves Jefferson’s sexual relationship with his slave (and half-sister of his deceased wife), Sally Hemings. Kidd’s discussion of Hemings occurs in several places throughout the book, and he calls the affair “arguably the central dilemma in Jefferson’s moral universe” (89). Hemings was inherited by Jefferson upon the death of his father-in-law and was herself the progeny of a sexual affair between master and slave.

Jefferson’s affair with Hemings began in France after Sally served as travel companion for Jefferson’s young daughter Polly in 1787. By this time, Jefferson had been a bachelor for nearly five years after the tragic death of his wife from complications following childbirth. Jefferson apparently promised her he would not remarry. While Jefferson would never speak openly about the affair, it became the source of public speculation and scorn during Jefferson’s many political battles. 

Kidd deftly examines Jefferson’s letters from Paris around the time of the affair to find clues but ultimately concludes that we have no direct evidence concerning the precise nature of their relationship. Jefferson envisioned himself in the style of the biblical patriarchs, ruling over his estate and slaves at Monticello, and followed that lifestyle even in his sexual habits. Sally Hemings would bear six of Jefferson’s children. Her son would later write that she was hesitant to return from Paris to the life of a slave in America but relented when Jefferson promised certain privileges and vowed to free her children when they reached the age of 21.

Sally herself was not mentioned in Jefferson’s will, even though he did emancipate two of her children presumably in keeping with his promise to her. Jefferson likely left her name out of his will to avoid political scandal. Nevertheless, she was informally freed at Jefferson’s death and formally emancipated five years later by Jefferson’s daughter.

Despite expressing early opposition to slavery, Jefferson never expended political capital to end the wicked institution and maintained negative views of Black people as a race throughout his life. In old age, Jefferson wrote against emancipation on the grounds that free Blacks’ “amalgamation with other colour produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character can innocently consent” (195). As Kidd points out, it’s hard to imagine how any man could reconcile such sentiments with his own contradictory actions. But again, we see in Jefferson a man of many enigmatic contradictions. 

Jefferson and the question of religion

What are we to make of Jefferson’s own religious faith? Kidd concludes that Jefferson was a Unitarian. He denied the Trinity, cut out most of the miraculous stories for his infamous cut-and-paste Bible, and despised esoteric conversations on matters of theological doctrine. But he maintained a lifelong belief in a Creator God who providentially ruled the universe and held the teachings of Jesus in high esteem. 

Jefferson’s writings are filled with references to God’s guiding providence, and Jefferson even appealed to God in prayer. He based the Declaration of Independence on the Christian doctrine of creation and adorned the walls of Monticello with French paintings of biblical scenes. He sent his daughter Patsy to Catholic school in France while they were living there during his diplomatic mission and preferred the spiritual temperament of America to the apathetic luxury of Europe. But these words and actions must not lead to Jefferson’s christening; to him, Jesus was a man—the most excellent one—but just a man all the same. 

Further, Jefferson was reared in a context informed by the Bible, and Jefferson himself knew the Bible better than many Christians today. Kidd masterfully recognizes scriptural allusions in Jefferson’s writings and points out how Jefferson and the other founders envisioned themselves repeating biblical and classical scenes from history on the new American stage (29).

But Jefferson’s most intense religious passions were reserved for his political convictions. Kidd deftly points out many instances of Jefferson applying biblical imagery to political happenings. The Age of Revolutions was, for Jefferson, a new creation. His Federalist political opponents were deemed “heretics” because of their longings for monarchical ways. The victory of republican liberty in America was a sure sign of God’s providential hand guiding history toward its climactic end. In Jefferson, we see already the seeds of that tendency to conflate America’s political actions positively with God’s actions in the world. 

In conclusion, Kidd’s biography leaves no stone unturned in examining the inner life of America’s third president. Jefferson’s legacy has loomed large since America’s inception, and Kidd’s deep dive into Jefferson’s moral and religious universe will aid readers who want to understand this brilliant man of confusing contradictions. 

A brief history of Southern Baptist missions in North America
By / Jun 14

Baptists have, historically, partnered for the sake of mission and the Great Commission. They do so out of a zeal to see people reached for the gospel, recognizing that local churches can do more by cooperating together than any one church can do on its own. The North American Mission Board (NAMB) is the fruit of a generations-long commitment on the part of Southern Baptists to reach North America with the gospel of Jesus Christ. As currently comprised, NAMB centers everything it does around the gospel through three primary strategic emphases: church planting, compassion ministry, and evangelism.

Send Network serves Southern Baptist churches by assisting them in the process of planting healthy, multiplying churches everywhere for everyone. Send Relief provides resources and creates mission opportunities for churches to meet tangible needs and see lives changed through the power of the gospel. Then, NAMB resources and provides evangelism training for churches and leaders as they share the gospel in their communities. As the endorsing agency for Southern Baptist chaplains, NAMB also trains, equips, and encourages chaplains who serve members of the Armed Services, in correctional facilities, and in other institutions.

Roots of NAMB

NAMB traces its historic roots back to 1845 and the creation of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) after Baptists in the South sought to organize their own convention following disagreements with Northern Baptists over issues related to slavery. When Southern Baptists met in Augusta, Georgia, in 1845 to constitute the SBC, one of their first decisions was to establish two missions agencies: the Foreign Mission Board and the Board of Domestic Missions.

In its earliest days from its headquarters in Marion, Alabama, the new board struggled to craft a compelling vision and develop an effective strategy that encouraged Southern Baptists to fund and engage with the new board. Most preferred working through already established local associations and state conventions.

A lack of consistent, tenured leadership was initially a major hurdle before Russell Holman, the first pastor of First Baptist Church New Orleans, took the reins and focused the Board’s strategy. Leading up to the Civil War, the Board began directing most of its efforts to areas of ministry where Southern Baptists were weakest, serving Native American populations and ministering in cities and in newly settled regions on the continent. The strategy allowed the Board to become more financially and missionally stable.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, however, Southern Baptist mission efforts were severely disrupted with the conflict making it practically impossible to raise funds since attention had turned to the war. By the close of the war in 1865, the Domestic Mission Board was destitute.

Under the direction of Martin T. Sumner, who led the organization for 13 years, the Board continuously expanded and contracted its missionary force as it navigated the financial balancing act of funding missionaries and avoiding significant debt.

The Board adopted a new name in 1874, the Home Mission Board (HMB), which it retained for more than a century. By 1882, the SBC decided to move the HMB to a more well-known city, Atlanta, Georgia, in attempt to reenergize support for the entity. The move, along with the election of influential Southern Baptist Isaac Tichenor, generated significant momentum for the HMB. The number of missionaries increased rapidly over the course of the next decade.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a significant lay missionary movement spurred Southern Baptists’ missionary efforts. The Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU), led by Annie Armstrong, rallied churches to support mission work and collected the first offering for home missions in 1895. A similar men’s movement sought to galvanize more men into supporting and participating in missions work as well.

By the 1900s, cooperation within the Southern Baptist Convention hit new levels of confidence, and the SBC initiated a significant fundraising campaign in 1919—the 75 Million Campaign—and several SBC entities drafted grand plans based on the incredible response from Southern Baptists. The HMB, authorized by the SBC to increase its programs, incurred debt in anticipation of the fundraising campaign.

Growth after the Depression 

But the funding boon was short-lived. Economic hardship in the South followed by the onset of the Great Depression forced the HMB to shift much of its focus toward paying off debt. Southern Baptists continued their support, however, and the HMB weathered the financial storm in large part due to the development of the SBC’s Cooperative Program in 1925 and the WMU’s collection of the home missions offering, which was named in honor of Annie Armstrong in 1934.

As the nation transitioned in the 1940s from a depressed economy to a booming one, Southern Baptists began to see rapidly increasing growth, and the HMB expanded its ministry efforts. While the predominant majority of Southern Baptists remained in the South, the SBC developed a nationwide presence, engaging in church planting, (what is now called) compassion ministry and chaplaincy. The HMB played a key role in each of those efforts.

The SBC also created new agencies over the next decade, launching the Radio Commission as an official entity of the SBC in 1946, and the men’s missionary movement became an official entity of the SBC, becoming the Brotherhood Commission of the SBC in 1950 with headquarters in Memphis, Tenn.

In 1953, the first Canadian church affiliated with Southern Baptists, and the seeds were sown for what eventually became the Canadian National Baptist Convention as Baptists in Canada strove to share the gospel across their nation.

Over the next several decades, Southern Baptist mission work persisted as the HMB worked with various ethnic and other language groups, expanding its missionary force and enlarging its evangelism efforts. In the late 1960s, a grassroots effort fueled the creation of Southern Baptist Disaster Relief, which grew into a national cooperative effort by the 1980s.

As the 20th century concluded, Southern Baptists determined to restructure and consolidate several existing entities by adopting the Covenant for a New Century in 1995. The move included bringing together the HMB, Brotherhood Commission and the Radio and Television Commission into a single Southern Baptist entity: the North American Mission Board. The transition was finalized in 1997.

Thirteen years later, messengers to the 2010 Southern Baptist Convention in Orlando, Florida, asked NAMB to focus more of its efforts on church planting as one aspect of the Great Commission Resurgence, which was approved by a wide margin of messengers. That same year, trustees elected current president, Kevin Ezell.

Under Ezell’s leadership, NAMB developed its church planting arm, Send Network, and launched Send Relief, its compassion ministry arm in 2016. In 2020, NAMB joined the SBC’s International Mission Board to cooperate under the banner of Send Relief to provide a single organization for Southern Baptists to work through in their compassion ministry efforts both in North America and around the world.

The United States and Canada have, in recent decades, been undergoing significant demographic shifts, and the future of missions in North America requires Great Commission intentionality on the part of Southern Baptist churches. NAMB’s vision is to boost the efforts of local churches as they reach those who desperately need to hear the gospel of Jesus.

Sources:

Arthur B. Rutledge and William G. Tanner. Mission to America: A History of Southern Baptist Home Missions. Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman Press, 1983.

Implementation Task Force: Covenant for a New Century. Baptist Press.

“SBC messengers adopt GCR report by wide margin.” Baptist Press.

“Big Changes for NAMB and State Conventions Under GCR Proposal.” Baptist Press.
“Canadian National Baptist Convention TimeLine.” Canadian National Baptist Convention.

What’s at stake when we brush past death
By / Apr 11

We are emerging from the two deadliest years in our country’s history. Let that sink in. There’s a reason your Facebook feed has been filled with more memorial posts than usual, that your own calendar has beckoned you to attend more funerals than you have in years — if you were even able to be present. Many of us are more than ready to return to the before times, when death was some far-off reality, something we could deal with later. But — as the pandemic gives way to war claiming innocent lives in Ukraine — the Church has a unique opportunity to offer to the world words for what it is enduring. God’s people also have a chance to extend to the grieving a hope that lives even in the face of death. 

No longer running from death

From 2019 to 2020, the death rate in the United States jumped by nearly 19%, and preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates it jumped another 2% in 2021. If you survived the last two years, it’s likely you know someone who didn’t. 

For me, it was my mom. I feared losing her for most of the 20 years since she was first diagnosed with cancer when I was in the seventh grade. But when her death came in 2020, I was surprised by God’s kindness hidden even in the hospice-calling and the funeral-planning. The psalms tell us that the death of each of those who die in faith is “precious in the sight of the Lord” (Psa. 116:15) and that he “is near to the brokenhearted” (Psa. 34:18). I found this to be palpably true. 

God cares for the dying and the grieving, and he wants his people to do this well, too. After trying to ignore and outrun death for years, I was surprised to see that Scripture did neither of these things. God’s Word sat with me in the reality and weight of death, while patiently offering surprising hope in the face of it. It did not rush toward a tidy conclusion about my loved one being in “a better place,” nor did it stew in some dark sadness to which the world tells me I am entitled while grieving. 

That’s because — unlike the counterfeits that offer us temporary reprieve — the hope we have in Christ in the face of death is not one that ignores or waters down its depths. It does not need to. No one acted like Goliath was not that big or menacing in telling the story of David defeating him. And no one needs to pretend the enemy of death that our Savior ultimately conquers is so small a foe. 

To speed past either the anguish that accompanies death or the hope that is dawning on the horizon undermines the very gospel story we claim to believe. And it will not ring true to the realities in which we live.

We do not need to run from discussions of death or to hide what the Bible has to say about it. Rather, a more robust theology of death prepares us to walk well through life in a fallen world — and all the loss it entails. It gives us a category for so much of what we see and grieve in the world, from the natural disasters popping up on our newsfeeds to the wrinkles appearing on our own faces. 

Considering death in light of its inevitability is not masochism; it is wisdom. It teaches us to number our own days, to labor — not in vain — but with eternity in view. Just like it helps to develop a theology of suffering — at least a hazy idea of how God might still be good when all is going wrong — before we dive headlong into it, it serves us to foster a theology of death before we are desperate for one.

So many around us are grieving specific and general losses. For too long, many churches have failed to give us a language and context for such grief and loss, even though the Bible provides each of these in spades. Considering with our churches and in personal study how the Bible views and addresses death gives us courage to enter into the broken places with others. It also prevents us from lobbing clichés at the grief-stricken that don’t align with Scripture and, frankly, do more harm than good. 

Suffering with others

God’s people have a better story to tell in the face of death. Yet, too often, we don’t take the opportunity to tell it because we are uncomfortable with the mysteries inherent in our understanding of it. But I would argue that what the world is looking for, more than our certainty, is our willingness to co-suffer with those who are facing and grieving the reality of death. 

When we attempt to do that, however feebly, we embody to others a Savior who faced death for us and experiences it with us. To that end, here are four practical ways God’s people can begin to better walk with others through death, offering to one another a form of the hope we are desperate for in times like these.

  1. Sit in the ash heap. Trusting God in the midst of our pain and others’ means we don’t have to explain it away. We can hold the truths that he is good and that this hurts in tension. And we can take a page from Job’s friends on those first seven days and just be quiet. The ministry of quiet presence is one of the greatest gifts we can offer to someone in the midst of grief. 
  1. Return to the Word. In sharp contrast to Christian culture at times, the Bible has plenty to say about death and grief. It depicts both in ways that ring true to reality. If you’re in the thick of it or know someone who is, you can start by borrowing the language of lament found throughout the Psalms. Though we think of praise as defining the Psalms, there are more psalms of lament in the Bible than any other type, not to mention an entire book called Lamentations. Lament prayers say at least two things: “I am hurting. And you are a God who hears.”
  1. Remember the dead. The Bible also points us to a rhythm of remembrance that has sustained God’s people across history. It can do the same now as we turn to face death alongside those who can no longer ignore it. Consider regular opportunities to remember the dead and your own mortality, such as Ash Wednesday or even communion. Did someone at your church lose a friend or family member a year ago or five years ago? Rather than wondering “How are you?” try asking, “What was she like?” It’s a story they just might be longing to tell. 
  1. Revive our Hope. Walking through death with others is a gracious reminder that we, too, will one day walk through these waters. Contemplating death allows us to consider Jesus’ words anew: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). Consider as we walk through this season of Lent leading up to Easter that the hope is somehow heightened by being willing to face what is hard. It is because we are a people who die that it is good news to sing, “My Redeemer lives.” 

When we grow a greater theology of death, we are also more equipped to offer to the world the kernels of hope it contains. I recently read a New York Magazine article in which an atheist confessed that pandemic losses made her wonder if she should try church again. 

“Mostly I wanted a way to mourn,” Sarah Jones writes, “not just my own loss but the galloping mass death enveloping the world.” 

Jones adds that she was raised to be “a strict conservative Christian” but that she abandoned the evangelicalism that was not, in her experience, “good with mystery, or with death.” Belief in an afterlife felt “too easy.” And yet, she found herself searching for something like it when death took her grandfather and then a friend. 

“I didn’t need answers, not immediately,” she wrote, “but I wanted to know it was possible to find them if I worked hard enough to look . . . I wanted to stretch out my arms to something, even if I couldn’t tell what it was.” 

The apostle Paul thought about death enough to develop a vision for being like Christ in it (Phil. 3:10). What opportunities, I wonder, are we missing if we don’t do the same?

What can we learn from John Leland’s life? 
By / Apr 7

When describing the relationship between the church and state, I often turn to the great language of John Leland: “Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men, than it has to do with the principles of mathematics.” The quote is a reminder that the government has no authority to intervene in the religious opinions of citizens, just as it cannot dictate the rules of algebra or calculus. Leland was a relentless advocate for religious liberty, dedicating his life to the protection of this first liberty. He was also an eccentric figure, providing a massive ball of cheese to President Jefferson upon his inauguration, for example. Eric Smith, in the first biography of Leland titled John Leland: A Jeffersonian Baptist in Early America, gives us a window into the world and life of a man, in all his complexity, who spent his life defending the rights of all to live in accordance with their consciences. Smith recently joined us to talk about this new biography of this eccentric early Baptist leader.

Alex Ward: John Leland (1754–1841) lived across an incredibly dynamic period of American history. You point out that he could remember the coronation of King George III of England as well as the election of William Henry Harrison as the ninth president of the United States. He also would have grown up in the environment shaped by the First Great Awakening and lived to see Charles Finney’s revivalism of the Second. How did this affect Leland?

Eric Smith: Leland spent over 60 years in public life, in an era of unprecedented change in American culture. As an old man, he came to think of himself as a kind of Rip Van Winkle: had he fallen asleep before the Revolution, and then awakened in the 1840s to the age of steam trains and American political parties, he would not have recognized the same world! 

Leland’s long and eventful life intersected so many of the important changes that swept America from 1760–1840: the rise of popular, revivalistic religion; the disestablishment of religion in America and progress of religious freedom for all people; the increasing individualization of American society; the growth and sophistication of Baptist Christianity; the emergence of a popular political culture and the participation of evangelicals in partisan politics; the decline and modification of Calvinistic theology in America; the complicated journey of evangelicals and slavery; the rise of voluntary evangelical alliances to influence American politics and culture, and more. 

Leland celebrated many of these changes; others he fought kicking and screaming. In either case, his biography provides a unique vantage point from which to view the transformation of early America.  

AW: The word that so often comes to mind reading your biography to describe Leland is “individualistic.” He was a man who was led by his conscience and would not allow for another’s authority over him, even to the point of balking at ordination requirements in the Baptist church. Beyond just a strong personality, what led to his deep sense of individualism?

ES: Leland’s individualism defined his life, motivating his legendary efforts for religious freedom, as well as his more eccentric practices. He not only resisted the state-established church, but also ordination, settled pastorates, the use of historic creeds, denominational life, and even the Lord’s Supper. Without a doubt, Leland’s own, quirky personality lay behind much of this. But he also found his individualistic inclinations confirmed in his private reading of the New Testament, where God saves, leads, and judges men and women as individuals. If God called men to account as individuals on the last day, Leland reasoned, then each man and woman had the responsibility, and should be granted the freedom, to prepare for that encounter as best he or she knew how. 

The greatest historical factor in Leland’s individualism is the radical revivalism of the Great Awakening, which he imbibed from an early age in the “New Light” hotbed of Grafton, Massachusetts. Along with many of his neighbors in the 1760s, Leland exchanged the traditional, church-centered piety of Puritan Congregationalism for a highly individualistic brand of new birth religion. Along with the paramount experience of the new birth, Leland’s New Light spirituality involved the individual’s direct communication with God through charismatic phenomena, such as dreams, visions, “Bible impulses,” and prophetic premonitions.  

AW: When you describe Leland’s definition of religious liberty, you say that he “spoke fluently the revolutionary language of liberty, albeit with a Baptist accent.” How did these two strands work together in Leland’s thought? 

ES: Leland lived the majority of his life in Massachusetts, but spent his most formative, young-adult years in revolutionary Virginia. There, from 1776–1790, Leland absorbed and engaged with the religious freedom arguments of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Neither man could be considered a traditional, orthodox Christian. But both Madison and Jefferson maintained that the state and religion both flourished when individuals were left free to believe (or disbelieve) according to their own consciences. Leland would frequently quote and allude to the arguments of the Virginia statement for the rest of his life. 

But Leland also saw many New Testament principles at work in their reasoning. The individual’s responsibility before God at judgment; the theological distinction between the church and the state under the New Covenant; the necessity of a personal, supernatural conversion to be made right with God; and the inherent power of the gospel to change hearts all compelled Leland to argue for a policy of full religious freedom for all. After Leland returned to his native Massachusetts in 1791, he utilized a powerful combination of biblical and Jeffersonian arguments to contend for disestablishment and full religious freedom, in sermons, speeches, tracts, editorials, and in a brief term in the Massachusetts state legislature. 

AW: Leland was not the only prominent Baptist advocate of religious liberty at this time. Isaac Backus, though a generation older, was an important figure for New England Baptists in their struggle against the Congregationalist state church. How were these two Baptists similar, and how did they differ when it came to church-state relations? Did the views of one or the other “win” in the Baptist tradition?  

ES: Backus had been the leading Baptist religious liberty spokesman for several decades when Leland came along, and the two men collaborated with and appreciated one another. But while Backus fought religious discrimination and compulsory religious taxes, he also believed that the state should promote religion in a general way. Leland spoke forcefully of “disentangling” or “divorcing” the church and the state, while Backus favored what he termed a “sweet harmony” between the two. For example, Backus had no trouble reading government-appointed fast day proclamations from his pulpit and did not object to the requirement of general religious test-oaths for state office-holders. 

Leland, more influenced by Jefferson and Madison, believed such “entanglements” of church and state ultimately damaged both. Church-state unions harmed the state by violating the consciences of law-abiding citizens, creating a frustrated and unstable populous. Church-state unions corrupted the church by filling it with nominal Christians who had not truly been converted. Leland thus drew a stricter line of separation between the church and the state than did Backus. They made common cause in the fight for disestablishment, but after this goal was achieved, the tension between their two positions became more apparent among American Baptists. Generally speaking, Backus’s view won out among mainstream Baptist leaders in New England and more urban areas, while Leland’s view held sway in more rural and frontier regions of early America. 

AW: How do we reconcile Leland’s strict separation between church and state and his willingness to baptize the argument of Jefferson and Madison, stump for political parties, and also preach before Congress? Is there a contradiction there for Leland? 

ES: Jefferson coined the famous phrase, “a wall of separation between church and state,” in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut, on the same day that Leland delivered the famous “mammoth cheese” to Jefferson at the White House. Yet it is interesting to note that neither Leland nor his fellow New England Baptists utilized Jefferson’s “wall” metaphor. Precisely what Jefferson meant by this image remains debated: did he intend to create a radically secular public square, or did he envision a more “neighborly wall,” in which religion was safe to flourish beyond the reach of government meddling? 

Whatever Jefferson intended, Leland clearly favored the latter vision. He labored to distinguish the church and the state, and to “dissolve any unnatural connection” between the two, so that both could prosper in America. The government’s role was to protect the basic rights of all its citizens, regardless of their personal convictions. This meant refusing to privilege or “establish” any particular church. It also meant preserving citizens’ rights to the “free exercise” of religion. Citizens should be allowed to not only practice their personally-held beliefs, but to try and persuade (not coerce) their neighbors of the same. Leland believed that if the state would simply preserve these freedoms, the gospel would triumph over all rival belief systems of its own power.  

AW: Leland is probably best remembered for his religious liberty advocacy. But he was not restricted to that issue. One way he is often portrayed, incorrectly you argue in the book, is as a proto-abolitionist. Is that a fair depiction of him over the course of his life? How did his views change?

ES: Like many evangelicals over this period, Leland took a journey regarding slavery. In the 1780s, he ministered to slaves in the “Great Revival,” when thousands of black Virginians poured into Baptist churches. In the wake of this revival, Leland and other Virginia Baptists began to publicly denounce the evils of slavery, and called for its eventual eradication. Leland’s powerful arguments stirred the wealthy planter Robert Carter to liberate over 400 of his own slaves. 

While this is remarkable, it is also important to note that Leland was more “anti-slavery” than “abolitionist.” Rather than calling for an immediate end to the institution (as abolitionists in the 1830s would), he acknowledged the complexity of emancipation and urged Virginia legislators to find a solution “consistent with good policy” as soon as possible. After leaving Virginia in the early 1790s, Leland said little about slavery, and his Virginia Baptist colleagues also pulled back from the issue. As Leland identified more closely with the Jacksonian Democrats, he shared President Jackson’s criticisms of abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison. In the end, there existed little difference between Leland’s position and that of his political hero, Thomas Jefferson (who also lamented slavery, but offered no solutions).

AW: Recent polling has shown a sharp decrease in religious attendance and identification, especially among Gen Z. Out of this fractured sense of shared moral consensus, an ever-increasing competition of voices in the public square are seeking to define what is good for culture and society. What does Leland have to offer for modern Christians, and particularly Baptists, in how he interacted with the culture around him? 

ES: Leland is best remembered for a handful of splashy historical episodes, like his delivery of a 1200-plus-pound wheel of cheese to Thomas Jefferson, or his purported negotiations with James Madison to include a Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution. But Leland was first and foremost an evangelist. He spent the majority of his life preaching the gospel up and down the Atlantic coast as an itinerant revivalist and was proudest of the 1,524 converted individuals he led into the waters of baptism. 

Leland engaged in politics largely to ensure that Americans would enjoy the freedom to preach and to respond to this gospel. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not want the state’s assistance in establishing churches; he also did not fear the changes in American society, or the diversification of the American population. To the end of his life, Leland maintained that if the gospel is simply turned loose in a free marketplace of ideas, it will prove itself compelling, time and time again. I think Leland encourages us to spend less time wringing our hands over the state of the culture, and more time sharing the gospel with confidence in its power to change hearts. 

AW: What stands out to you as the most important factor of Leland’s life for modern Christians? Are there any ways that we can especially learn from this unique and idiosyncratic preacher? 

ES: Leland is not a perfect model, and he knew it. He liked to say that, “Christ did not trust his cause to the goodness of his followers, but rested it on his own shoulders.” But we can learn from both the strengths and the weaknesses of historic Christians. As for his foibles, Leland’s hyper-individualism led him to devalue the role of the church in the believer’s life. I find this to be a most relevant warning for modern American Christians. 

Yet there is also so much to admire about Leland. He was a courageous, passionate, single-minded preacher of the gospel. As an itinerant evangelist, he repeatedly sacrificed his own comfort and safety to tell early Americans about the salvation that is found in Jesus Christ. He stood out from many of his contemporaries in his ability to communicate the good news to ordinary people in an accessible and engaging manner. He also never forgot that he needed the gospel as much as any of his listeners. “Let the preacher view himself as a brother-sinner to his hearers,” Leland advised, “and view sin as a great misfortune, as well as a crime; and, out of pity and love, persuade, and pray the sinner to be reconciled to God, if he wishes to do him good.”

Why 21st century Baptists need 18th century Baptists like Isaac Backus
By / Mar 7

Isaac Backus (1724–1806) has been described as the preeminent champion of religious liberty in America since Roger Williams. As a Baptist in New England, it is not surprising that Backus drew upon the tradition of Williams in formulating his views on religious liberty and how the church and state relate to one another. Yet, for Backus and early Baptists, these ideas were not detached from their views on the church. Baptists viewed subjects such as liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state as much a part of church polity (governance) as regenerate membership and believers’ baptism. 

Backus published many writings on the church and models for contemporary Baptists how to think about polity, biblically and consistently. He wrote on these issues as a minister in Massachusetts where the Congregationalist Church enforced strict order. Backus’ faithful ministry in a hostile environment provides modern Baptists with a model to follow in how to be faithful to our Baptist distinctives while being good citizens. Backus shows us three areas in ecclesiology where Baptists need retrieval.

Covenant Theology

Isaac Backus grew up in a nominal Congregationalist home. He and his family were brought to faith in Christ due to the first Great Awakening and the preaching of men like George Whitefield. Later, Backus and others withdrew from the Congregationalist church to form a Separatist church. Though he was baptized by immersion in 1751 due to biblical conviction, his church was still practicing paedobaptism. The deeper that he studied Scripture and wrestled with the biblical teaching on the covenants, the more he realized that the sprinkling of infants could not be biblically supported. 

In January 1756, Backus and five others signed a church covenant constituting as a Baptist church in Middleborough, Massachusetts. Backus wrote a pamphlet later that year defending his Baptist views. His defense of the Baptist way arose out of an exposition of Galatians 4:22-31 regarding the bond woman and the free woman. Backus distinguished the Jewish church (Old Testament Israel) and the Christian church (New Testament assembly) based upon the covenants of Scripture. In his exposition of the text, Backus demonstrated how infant baptism arose from a blurring of the distinction between the Jewish church and the Christian church. 

Baptist ecclesiology is historically rooted in covenant theology which guides believers in how to read the Scriptures and put the redemptive story together in light of the covenants. It also forms a key component in understanding the nature of church. Backus demonstrated that membership in the covenant community in OT Israel does not transfer over to the NT church. The new covenant community contains many differences (though some similarities) with the old covenant community. Covenant theology protects us from equating nations as modern Israel by showing that the covenant community now is the NT church, not a political nation. Baptist covenant theology framed the new covenant of the church which requires that the covenant community consist only of the regenerate.

Regenerate membership

Flowing out of Baptist covenant theology is the Baptist distinctive known as regenerate church membership. From the beginning of the Baptist movement in 17th-century England, Baptists championed that the church is made up of believers only, not believers and their children. A person entered the covenant community based upon being born again, professing faith in Christ, and then being baptized upon their profession of faith. For Backus and other Baptists living in areas that were under the jurisdiction of establishment paedobaptist churches, their insistence on regenerate membership was linked with church autonomy. Since each church was composed of true believers, they could determine who was a member of the covenant community, ordain their ministers, and discipline any church member who walked waywardly. 

The first pamphlet Backus published argued that the same God who calls sinners unto salvation also calls ministers to gospel ministry, not the establishment church. Launching from that point, Backus noted how each church possessed a right to call men and govern their own affairs. A church composed of a mixed multitude could not do this properly. However, a covenant community that based membership on regeneration and then baptism would be guided by the Holy Spirit and could make biblically wise decisions. 

Baptists today need a real recovery of regenerate membership. Baptist polity is unsustainable if churches do not insist on the reality of the new birth as a prerequisite to baptism and admittance into a local church. Baptist churches do not proclaim to be infallible in their admittance of members. Hence, churches practice church discipline and are forced at times to remove fellowship from members. This commitment to Baptist polity fueled evangelism and church planting as exemplified by Backus traveling to the South to preach the gospel in Virginia and North Carolina in 1789. A recovery of healthy Baptist churches will include a recovery of regenerate church membership.

Religious liberty

Backus’ greatest legacy is one of fighting tirelessly for religious liberty. Even before becoming a convictional Baptist, Backus spoke against the abuses of the establishment church in Massachusetts. In 1749, Backus was thrown in prison for refusing to pay the state church tax, and his widowed mother would be imprisoned for a similar reason in 1754. This did not stop him from arguing the case that there should not be a state supported church maintained by the taxes of the local citizens. Backus did not believe that Baptists should retreat and live as hermits. On the contrary, the push for religious liberty deepened the bonds between Baptist churches in New England. Backus led his church to join the Warren Association of Baptist Churches. 

Out of this association, he would be elected as a representative to argue for religious liberty before the Continental Congress that met in 1774. Backus would also petition and press for religious liberty to the Massachusetts General Assembly in 1775 and 1778, and he wrote out a proposed Bill of Rights in 1779 for a new Massachusetts state constitution. Finally, in 1788, Backus would be elected as a delegate to the state convention that adopted the Federal Constitution. In all these activities, Backus was a constant champion for the cause of religious liberty and that the church and state were separate entities. As his own life showed, this did not mean that Backus believed believers should retreat from the religious square. Backus believed that a society should be governed by virtue and morality that flowed from God’s standard. 

Baptists need to recover this spirit that speaks out as good citizens for what is morally good and promote the common good. Backus did not envision a nation that was governed by a pagan mindset. However, Backus also was not seeking to create a Baptist nation either. In his speech before the Massachusetts Convention that debated the proposed Federal Constitution, Backus supported the prohibition of religious tests for federal officeholders. Backus stated, “that religion is ever a matter between God and individuals” and the state should not be governed as if it were the church. In that moment, Backus championed separation of church and state and religious liberty for all. 

Baptist polity is rooted in understanding the difference between the state and the church. The church is the new covenant community made up of the regenerate who are then immersed and admitted into membership. A commitment to regenerate membership ensures robust evangelism and a desire for the purity of the church. Backus exemplified Baptist polity by arguing for the church’s freedom from state control while maintaining a godly witness in the public square. In the 21st century, Baptists need their 18th-century forebears to remind us of the Baptist way.

Why we should be thankful for Caesar Blackwell, the Alabama Baptist slave preacher
By / Feb 21

As a new seminary graduate in 2000, I moved to Montgomery, Alabama, with my young family to serve as a Southern Baptist pastor. And, though I was a native of the South and grew up in Mississippi, I quickly realized I had a lot to learn about Montgomery’s past — and how that past influenced the present. Montgomery was still largely a racially divided city, particularly in its churches. Black and white churches coexisted and sometimes worked together, but mostly dwelt in separate worlds. I wanted to know why this division persisted and what could be done to heal it. So, I began to dig into the complex history of the city related to race.

Questions began to emerge for me regarding why the church in my area failed on race for so long. Why did people who claimed to follow Jesus support slavery so fervently that Montgomery became the first capitol of the Confederacy with the largest slave market in America by 1860? Why, with so many churches, was Montgomery later a stronghold of Jim Crow segregation with a substantial reputation for the oppression of its Black citizenry through violence? With all of its history of injustice, why did it become the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement following the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-56 and activism by leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Fred Gray, and Rev. Ralph Abernathy? Montgomery seemed like a collision of worlds.

As time went on and I sought answers, I realized that William Faulkner’s line from Requiem for a Nun, “the past is never dead, it is not even past,” applied to Montgomery as much as any place in the nation. Why did so much division, pain, violence, oppression, and injustice happen in a city full of churches who are supposed to proclaim the gospel of peace? I began to think that if I could find the answer, then maybe it could bring healing to others as well. So I researched, walked the streets, dug through archives, and talked to people who lived through much of what happened. 

A seed of hope planted in the Black church 

I later realized that my question about why the church failed was all wrong. Yes, the historic white church that promoted and defended slavery, segregation, and racism in Montgomery and Alabama as a means of protecting and promoting its “way of life” over and above others failed in its fidelity to Christ and gospel mission. But, I realized that I was looking at this failure through a lens of my own perspective. That caused me to miss a redemptive thread. I discovered that the Black church didn’t fail during this time. Its seed was planted in the harsh and bitter soil of slavery, put out roots in the era of racial segregation, and later bore the fruit of justice that witnessed to the hope of healing for the nations found in reliance upon Jesus.

I wanted to know when this seed was planted so I could trace how it grew. So, I went back to Montgomery’s early days in the 1820s and encountered two figures in Baptist life that helped plant the seeds that would later grow into a Jesus and Justice movement. One was an English missionary named Lee Compere (1790-1871). Compere came to the Montgomery area in 1822 after being sent to Jamaica from the Baptist Missionary Society in England in 1815. The second was a Black slave preacher named Caesar Blackwell (1769-1845).

The ministry of Lee Compere 

Lee Compere had been baptized in 1812 by English Baptist leader, John Ryland, who had a close relationship with the former captain of a slave ship, who later became an Anglican priest and the writer of “Amazing Grace,” John Newton. Ryland was also friends with William Wilberforce and was associated with the abolitionist movement. Compere and his wife, Susannah, went to work among the slaves in Jamaica with the Ethiopian Baptist churches founded by George Liele (1750-1828), a freed slave, the first ordained Black Baptist preacher, and the first missionary sent from America to a foreign land. 

Compere was under strict orders to not get involved in matters related to slavery or politics, but he apparently rejected that instruction. While preaching the gospel, he and his wife opposed slavery and used her inheritance to buy the freedom of slaves. This work allegedly led to no small amount of controversy. As opposition grew and their health deteriorated, Compere and his wife left Jamaica in 1817 and went to Charleston, South Carolina. 

Compere’s work among Liele’s churches was fruitful, but also ahead of its time. These same Baptist churches full of slaves would rise up against slavery in 1831-32 in The Baptist War, leading to slavery’s abolition in the British Empire in 1833. Another Baptist Missionary Society missionary to Jamaica named William Knibb (also baptized by Ryland) would help lead those efforts, following in Compere’s footsteps, but ultimately being more successful.  

In 1822, the Comperes moved to East Alabama to minister among the indigenous Creek people and the Black slaves that were being brought into the area. They formed Withington Station and in the 1820s saw an interracial church develop made up of Creek Indians, Black slaves, and white people. Facing opposition for his abolitionist views from other Creek who owned slaves and opposition from the building encroachment of whites upon native lands, Compere moved to Montgomery in 1829 to found the First Baptist Church of Montgomery, which ultimately became one of the leading Baptist churches in Alabama. Compere’s influence among Baptists in the Montgomery area and Central Alabama was strong, but he would soon encounter more opposition in his church and the community and leave Alabama in 1833 to go minister to the Creek who were being forced to migrate west to Indian Territory.

Caesar Blackwell, the slave preacher 

Right before Compere traveled from Charleston to found Withington Station about 30 miles east of Montgomery, Caesar Blackwell came to faith in Jesus and was baptized as a slave in 1821. He soon began to preach the gospel and became a powerful evangelist, preacher, and discipler among the slave population that was brought into Central Alabama by white people hoping to become wealthy from growing cotton in the rich soil of the Black Belt region. My friend, Rev. Gary Burton, pastor of Pintlala Baptist Church in Pintlala, Alabama, is the chief curator of information about Blackwell’s life and says, “Caesar Blackwell lived as a slave and died as a slave. No one, however, was as influential within the slave population in central Alabama as Caesar.”

Blackwell was later purchased by the Alabama Baptist Association in 1828 for $625 and given freedom to preach and travel around to proclaim the gospel and disciple the slaves being brought in to the region for several years. Of course, it’s unfathomable to us that a Baptist Association would purchase a human being for any reason, but, it was becoming almost impossible for free Blacks to function as such in Alabama at this time. Alabama made it illegal to do so by 1833-34. Wayne Flynt, in his seminal work Alabama Baptists, says, 

Caesar preached freely (keeping the money he received) until 1835, when rising tensions over abolitionism caused the association to restrict his activities and require him to return all funds above his actual expenses. By this time the slave preacher had an extensive library, had imbibed Calvinist theology, and enjoyed debating the doctrines of election, grace, and the perseverance of the saints. So popular a preacher was Blackwell, that churches clamored for his services, and, when he preached at the annual associational meeting, standing room-only crowds of whites and blacks thronged to hear him (45).

Flynt goes on to say that part of what made Blackwell popular among white Baptists in Alabama was that he opposed the African spiritualism that was present among the slaves and that gave credence to dreams, visions, and voices. A case could be made that white Baptists found Blackwell useful in helping the slaves conform to their new environs and masters as they were sold in the markets in Montgomery to surrounding plantations. But, I don’t see evidence that Blackwell preached a truncated gospel shaped to produce subservience. Instead, he sought to ground the converted slaves in the depth of Christian doctrine from the Reformation. This is what Compere was also doing at the same time in the same area with the Creek as well as slaves. Just as the gospel provoked missionaries like Compere to confront the injustices of slavery and mistreatment of Native Americans in Jamaica and Alabama in the 1810s–1830s, it led Blackwell to minister a deep hope and reliance upon Jesus as deliverer in the growing slave population of Central Alabama. 

Nathan Ashby, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the Civil Rights Movement

Before his death in 1845, Blackwell led a slave named Nathan Ashby, who had had been able to purchase his own freedom for $900 (Flynt, 104), to faith in Jesus and instructed him in Christian teaching. Ashby later became the pastor of the slave congregation at the white-led First Baptist Montgomery in the 1850s. This was the same church that Compere founded in 1829 as an abolitionist, though by the 1840s it had fully succumbed to the pro-slavery position, as had almost all of Alabama. Still, Ashby, ministered to hundreds of slaves in this church and would lead 700 emancipated former slaves out of that church in 1867 to found what became First Baptist Church (Colored) on Columbus Street — the first “free negro” institution in Montgomery. This church would become the mother Black Baptist church for the Montgomery and Central Alabama region.

By 1868, Ashby helped found the Colored Baptist Convention of Alabama in his church. One hundred fifty-one delegates from 11 states met in Montgomery to form the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention with “a yearning to see the Gospel of Jesus Christ preached on the Mother Soil of Africa.” In 1880 it would merge with two other organizations to form the National Baptist Convention, the largest Black Baptist denomination in America. In 1877, a few hundred former slaves and freedmen would leave First Baptist and found what became Dexter Avenue Baptist Church with pastor Charles Octavius Boothe. In 1879, they would pay $270 for a lot on Dexter Avenue one block from the Alabama State Capitol where a former slave pen once stood. This church would later be pastored by Vernon Johns (1947-52) and Martin Luther King Jr. (1954-60).

By the 1880s, the Black population of Montgomery and the surrounding area was growing and starting businesses, churches, and colleges — and work was organized to proclaim the gospel around the world. Blackwell’s ministry, calling slaves to hope in and reliance upon Jesus by planting the seeds of the gospel deep in their lives, was bearing fruit. And, from those seeds would grow a strong church that looked to Jesus and called for justice in the face of great opposition.

This strength was seen over one hundred years after Blackwell’s death in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. On Dec.1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery. She was a strong Christian and was a product of the Black church in Montgomery that was birthed with hope in and reliance upon Jesus in the midst of the oppression of slavery and that grew up under the injustice, daily humiliations, and forced segregation of Jim Crow. On Dec. 5, 1955, King proclaimed before the first mass meeting of several thousand Black Montgomerians assembling at the beginning of the Bus Boycott at Holt Street Baptist Church, “I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are Christian people. We believe in the Christian religion. We believe in the teachings of Jesus. The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That’s all.”

The boycott lasted for 381 days before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court order striking down the segregated bussing laws. Approximately 40,000 Black bus riders in Montgomery banded together to say “no” to the injustice of segregation and to demand to be treated as full and equal human beings before God and this nation. This was the first large scale mass demonstration against segregation, and it launched the Civil Rights Movement. 

I want to suggest that the ministry of Blackwell (which began alongside Compere) and Ashby, as well as other Black Christians such as Cyrus Hale in the years following, be considered driving factors in the formation of the Black church of Montgomery that ultimately led to the Civil Rights Movement — a Christian-influenced movement seeking to apply the teachings of Jesus and the implications of the gospel related to human dignity and justice. I believe Compere, Blackwell, and other like-minded co-laborers planted gospel seeds in the Black community of Central Alabama that would see many come to faith in Christ for salvation and would then call for justice to “roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24).

I want to be clear that I vehemently reject the idea that any of these conditions in the antebellum South were in any way good or beneficial just because many slaves came to Christ. The whole system was evil. It is of great historic shame that many white Baptists did not fight with all they had to abolish the whole hellish system. What I do want to say, however, is that God still worked, even in the worst of conditions, through Black preachers like Blackwell, Ashby, and Liele, and through all who believed their message. As these gospel seeds were planted, I believe that God was faithful to rescue and redeem out of the oppression and injustice, not because of it. 

So, let us remember Blackwell and Ashby and so many other Black church leaders who laid the gospel groundwork that led to the Black church in the South upholding its witness even as it was persecuted and suffered. And, let us praise God and draw strength from the memory of our brothers and sisters in Christ who suffered and yet faithfully produced gospel fruit that would last and bear another harvest of justice a century later. 

Explainer: What you should know about veterans
By / Nov 12

Yesterday was Veterans Day, the official holiday in the United States that honors people who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces. Because veterans represent less than 10% of the total U.S. adult population, an increasing number of Americans are unfamiliar with veterans and issues related to them. 

Here are some things you should know about military veterans in the U.S.

What is a veteran?

The colloquial use of the term refers to any person who has served in the military. But according to federal law, the term “veteran” refers specifically to a person who served in the active military, naval, air, or space service, and who was discharged or released therefrom under conditions other than dishonorable.

What constitutes “active service”?

For the purposes of qualifying as a U.S. veteran, the forms of active service include:

Having served full-time duty in the Armed Forces (the United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard, including the reserve components) other than active duty for training. 

Having served full-time duty as a commissioned officer of the Regular or Reserve Corps of the Public Health Service, or as a commissioned officer of the Environmental Science Services Administration, Coast and Geodetic Survey, or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Service as a cadet in the Military, Coast Guard, or Air Force Academy, or as a midshipman at the Naval Academy, including enlisted service members who are reassigned to the Air Force, Military, or Naval Academy without a release from active duty.

Title 32 Full-time National Guard Duty: Order for full-time performance of operational activities (example: assisting with hurricane response efforts).

How long does someone have to serve to officially be considered a veteran?

According to the United States Department of Veteran Affairs (VA), there is no minimum length of service required to be considered a veteran for those who served before Sept. 8, 1980. After that date, service members must have served a minimum of 24 months of active duty to be considered a veteran. If the service member becomes disabled because of their time in the service, there is no minimum length of service to qualify for VA benefits.

What is an “other than dishonorable” discharge?

There are currently five types of discharges issued by the military services: honorable discharge (HD); discharge under honorable conditions (UHC) or general discharge (GD); discharge under other than honorable conditions (UOTHC) or undesirable discharge (UD); bad conduct discharge (BCD); and dishonorable discharge (DD). The statutory definition of veteran does not precisely match those five categories of the discharges, and the VA often determines on a case-by-case basis whether the claimant’s discharge qualifies as under conditions other than dishonorable. 

What is the difference between a wartime and peacetime veteran?

Every service member who meets the active duty requirement is classified as a veteran. But military service is classified as either wartime or peacetime service. Periods considered “wartime” for the purposes of veterans’ benefits are defined in law, and veterans who served during those periods are considered to have “served during wartime” even if the service was not in a combat zone. 

The largest cohort of veterans alive today served during the Vietnam Era (6.4 million), which lasted from 1964 to 1975. The second largest cohort of veterans served during peacetime only (4 million). 

How many veterans are there in the U.S.?

There are an estimated 19,162,515 veterans currently living in the U.S. The number of veterans declined by a third between 2000 and 2018. 

What is the median age of veterans?

The median age of veterans today is 65 years old. By service period, Post-9/11 veterans are the youngest with a median age of about 37, Vietnam Era veterans have a median age of about 71, and World War II veterans are the oldest with a median age of about 93. 

What percentage of veterans are enlisted/officer?

The vast majority of veterans (94%) come from the enlisted ranks, while fewer than 6% were commissioned officers.

What percentage of veterans are women?

Currently, women make up about 9% of veterans, or 1.7 million. By 2040, that number is projected to rise to 17%.

Which states have the highest percentage of veterans?

The top three states with the highest percentage of veterans in 2017 were Alaska, Maine, and Montana, respectively. The top three states (or federal districts) with the highest percentage of veteran women were the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Alaska.

Which cohort of veterans is most likely to have a service-connected disability?

Post-9/11 veterans had a 43% chance of having a service-connected disability (i.e., an injury, disease, or disability that was the result of service in the armed forces). According to the Census Bureau, after accounting for differences in demographic and social characteristics among, Post-9/11 veterans have a significantly higher rate of disability than veterans from other periods.

How do veterans and non-veterans compare demographically?

Based on a survey from 2017, male veterans were older, more likely to be White, non-Hispanic, more likely to be married, less likely to live below poverty, and had higher personal incomes than male non-veterans. Employed male veterans were more likely to work in production or transportation, and more likely to work for local, state, or federal governments than their non-veteran counterparts

Female veterans were more likely to be non-White, non-Hispanic, more likely to be divorced or separated, less likely to live below poverty, and had higher personal incomes than female non-veterans. Employed female veterans were more likely to be in management, business, science, and arts occupations, less likely to be in sales or service occupations, and more likely to work in local, state, or federal government than female non-veterans.

Regardless of gender, full-time, year-round veterans earned about $10,000 more than similar non-veteran counterparts. 

Mindy Belz helps Christians think about the Middle East
By / Sep 28

When news from the Middle East and Near East regions of the world begin to fill my screen, there’s one reporter that I want to read: Mindy Belz. 

I’ve known about her work as an editor and war correspondent with WORLD magazine for over 15 years, but her 2016 book, They Say We Are Infidels, was instrumental in shaping the way I understand this part of the world, revealing its rich Christian history. Her relationships with international churches and believers have provided her decades of insight into these predominantly Muslim parts of the world. 

As Christians in the West consider today’s international crises, as well as reflect on the impact of 9/11 20 years ago, Belz shines a light on both the histories and cultures of these far-off nations, shares her reasons for going into hard places, and points us to the eternal things that should guide our lives.

Jill Waggoner: Can you help us zoom out and understand the cultural landscape of the Middle East and the significance of Afghanistan?

Mindy Belz: Afghanistan commonly gets lumped into the Middle East because of the wars after 9/11, but it’s technically considered part of the wider Near East or Central Asia. That’s important, because Afghanistan is somewhat of a bridge. It has a lot of the Islamic elements that have bedeviled the United States and the Middle East (in Lebanon with Hamas and Iraq with al-Qaida and ISIS). But it also has this history of being under the thumb of the Soviet Union. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and subsequent occupation set the stage for the American engagement there. It began as a Cold War engagement, and then it moved into what we know today, an engagement over terrorism that had its base in Afghanistan. That history is significant to how it came onto the American radar, but of course, 9/11 propelled it there to stay. 

I traveled to Sudan in 1998, 1999, and in June of 2001. Sudan was engaged in this war that pitted Christians in the South versus Muslims in the North. It was a precursor to what we would see after 9/11. Christians have been like a footnote in these conflicts, and yet, to me, they were an important piece because what Christians experience is often a precursor to what the entire population is going to face. When we look at the war that was happening in Sudan in the 1990s, we see this dramatic and atrocious conflict between a jihadist government in the North and the Christian population in the South. That set a pattern for what we saw repeated in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, where this concept of “conquering infidels” came into play with really deadly force. 

JW: How did 9/11 change U.S. engagement in this region of the world?

MB: It had been a Cold War engagement up until that point, very much based on our national interests in keeping dominance over the Soviet Union, Russia, and its breakaway republics after the fall of the Berlin Wall. 9/11 changed it dramatically because then it became about U.S. survival. It was an attack on the U.S. homeland. Nothing like that had happened in modern memory. It was no longer war at a remove; it was war up close. 

Significantly, that moment built on the Cold War alliances. NATO, within days after 9/11, invoked Article 5. This was the first time in its history, putting NATO on a war footing in support of the United States. Among the victims of 9/11, there were more than 90 nations represented. We had tremendous international support for our response to it.  

JW: How would you help a younger audience think about 9/11?

MB: 9/11 is possibly the largest event of the century and certainly one of the landmark moments in U.S. history. 

It is important to go beyond the headlines and the 10-minute recap you see on the news. You can visit the 9/11 Memorial & Museum site or go to the museum and see the names. It’s such a powerful reminder of the ordinariness of the people who died. They had no intention of stepping into a war zone when they were going to work that day. I would encourage anyone to read some of the original sources on the 9/11 Museum site. Find the 911 calls on YouTube. Not everyone wants to go down that road, but I think it’s valuable to get a real sense of what people went through.

It is also important to generally appreciate what the terrorists’ goals were. I’ve had the 9/11 Commission Report on my shelf at the ready for years. It is a thick book, but mine is so well thumbed now. Parts of it read like a novel. It helps you understand all the players and what was happening from the FBI, CIA, and military standpoint. You understand what was happening in Washington and New York. It describes what ​​al-Qaida was planning and the hijackers’ stories leading up to that day. Original sources are what we have to rely on, especially as we see misinformation surface. 

I’ve [also] really enjoyed reading about the millennials whose whole generation has been shaped by how our country changed after 9/11. I have much encouragement and hope as I see how many of my children’s peers committed themselves to military service or aide or nongovernmental organizations. When I covered the refugee crisis, I saw many 20- and 30-somethings that dropped everything to help these refugees coming across the Mediterranean. That defines the generation to me. I have great hope because of how this generation has been shaped by really sobering, hard events. 

JW: How would you encourage the Western church to think about and understand the Christian church in the Middle and Near Eastern parts of the world?

MB: I went to Iraq to cover the war early on and discovered the Christians along the way. There was this rich history there outside of what many think of as the Holy Land. I was going in churches that were built in the 300s. Their liturgy was in Aramaic. They were holding on to traditions because they were precious to them, not because they were following rote tradition. Everywhere I went, I was having my own presuppositions exploded. 

I met people whose resilience drew me to them. They had a patience about the Christian conflict with Islam and a determination about it that seemed to be lacking in the American public. The U.S. eventually wanted to turn away from the conflict and commitments in Iraq, as we are seeing now in Afghanistan. One of the reasons these wars have ended in such disarray and with such tragic consequences is that we never engaged them on the terms in which we said we were. We failed to understand that this is an age-old conflict. We failed to look at the really good examples of how people from outside of Islam have engaged with Islam.

On my journeys, I [saw] great examples of people coexisting and also being great witnesses, and in some cases being martyrs. The Old English definition of a martyr is a witness. They were being martyrs on a daily basis, and sometimes with their own lives, in order to stand and to give testimony to the Muslims that they lived alongside. 

JW: Recently, my 10 year-old son got in my car as I was listening to the news. He asked what it was, and I told him. As I turned it off he said, ‘Why are you listening to that? Aren’t bad things happening?’ I wondered how you would answer that question. In a world where ‘bad things’ are happening, why should we pay attention?

MB: Because the love of Christ compels us to. We can all have a sense of discouragement and helplessness in the face of any days’ bad news, but we know Christ came to enter into bad news, bringing life and the good news of the gospel. 

Our life in the United States gives us so much material comfort and grace that we lose sight of the consummation of all things. We might be tempted to think that the consummation is like our day to day: the sun shining, peace with our neighbors, a grocery store nearby. Our current reality dulls our sense that there is a future — where Christ is reigning and has reconciled all things under his feet — that is beyond what we can imagine right now. We can be tempted to lose sight of that chapter of the gospel narrative. I have a sense that the Christians who went before me had a much clearer view of what is to come that compelled them through the hard things of any day. 

JW: Many people have had trauma in the last two years. I imagine that your journeys have allowed you to see things that I’ve never seen, creating difficulties for you on a personal level that might extend beyond the experience. Do you have a personal word for those who are dealing with trauma? 

MB: It is definitely a real thing and something that I’ve struggled with from time to time. I have faced life and death moments. Because I’m still here after those moments, I can say they propel us to the feet of Christ and into the arms of God. 

Sometimes I dread going into a place where there’s a lot that’s unknown. There also have been times where I felt like I knew the situation, but when I was walking down the street, I could feel the tension and feel how much things had changed. This happened to me in 2019 in Syria, and I knew I was not in a safe place. Within 30 minutes, a bomb went off right across the street from me. I’ve been in moments where all I know to do is pray and trust that God has me where he wants me. That might be a place of death or a place of witness — seeing something that’s really, really hard. 

I come back to this fraternity that we have with Jesus. In those moments, we see in a new way what he endured, and what he was willing to endure, for us. We also see our own weaknesses and shortcomings. We’re brought face to face with the fact that we’re not Jesus. We quake and have fear and sometimes we run away, and that’s okay to do. 

The only way I know to process those things is in community. The community that I have with my husband, first of all, is the only reason that I have been able to continue this work — his support, patience, and willingness to hear the things [I’ve experienced]. Also, I process with my church community, pastors, and friends who are good counselors. We have to process these things in community, but we also have to process them as a way of recognizing our weakness and the profound sacrifice that Jesus made. 

4 ways ​​the 9/11 attacks changed life in America
By / Sep 10

A recent poll of registered voters conducted by USA Today/Suffolk University finds that 60% of Americans say 9/11 changed their lives forever. While there are innumerable ways the terror attacks affected individuals, here are four ways 9/11 changed life for almost all Americans. 

1. Launched the global war on terror

The terrorist actions on 9/11 were the largest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. In reaction, America launched a “global war on terror” that has continued until today. Within a month, American troops were fighting a war in Afghanistan, the longest military conflict in American history. Two years later, the United States invaded Iraq and deposed President Saddam Hussein, partly based on the rationale that he “harbored and supported terrorists.”

Over the next decade, nearly 2 million U.S. service members were deployed to Afghanistan or Iran. Numerous others were deployed to other regions of the globe, such as Northern Africa and the Philippines. The efforts of the U.S. military arguably made the U.S. safer. Yet ​the men and women of the armed services, as well as their families, have had to endure the most in the aftermath. Over the past 20 years, more than 7,000 service members have been killed and over 50,000 have been wounded. 

2. Led to increases in both immigration and deportation

In the five years prior to 9/11, an average of 770,00 foreign nationals a year were granted lawful permanent residence (i.e., immigrants who receive a “green card”), admitted as temporary nonimmigrants, granted asylum or refugee status, or were naturalized. In ​​five years after the attacks, immigration increased to more than 850,000. Since 2005, immigration has ranged from a low of 990,553 in 2015 to a high of 1,266,129 in 2006. 

In the five years prior to 2001, there were roughly 180,000 annual forced deportations a year. While that number dropped slightly in 2002, it began to steadily climb until 2009–2010, when  deportations hit a record high of nearly 400,000 annually. 

Two significant changes led to the increase in deportations. In 2002, almost two dozen government agencies were merged into the Department of Homeland Security. The Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. Customs Service, which were previously part of the Department of Justice, were consolidated into the newly formed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

From 2008 to 2014, the Secure Communities program allowed local law enforcement to check the immigration status of every person booked in a county or local jail by comparing fingerprints against federal immigration records. By 2014, when President Obama announced plans to phase out the program, ICE had established Secure Communities partnerships with all 3,181 law enforcement jurisdictions in the nation. Currently, about half of persons deported have a criminal status. 

3. Ended airline hijacking in the U.S. 

The attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, began when four commercial airliners were hijacked. Since then, no U.S. airliner has been hijacked. But prior to 2001 they occurred with alarming regularity.

For example, between May 1961 and the end of 1972, there were 159 hijackings in American airspace. The majority of those occurred in a five-year stretch from 1968 and 1972. Hijackings in the U.S. sometimes ​​happened at a rate of one per week, and it was not uncommon for multiple hijackings to occur in the same day.

Prior to 9/11, airport security was primarily overseen by private companies. But on Nov. 19, 2001, Congress passed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act. The act created the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to oversee security in all modes of transportation. The act also expanded the Federal Air Marshal Service, required reinforced cockpit doors on all large aircraft, and implemented 100% checked baggage screening by federal officials. 

4. Expanded law enforcement tools in the fight against terrorism 

After 9/11, Congress passed two major laws intended to protect national security against foreign terrorists. The primary provisions of those laws increased penalties for terror-related crimes; expanded the list of activities that would qualify as terrorism; eased interagency communication to allow federal agencies to more effectively use all available resources in counterterrorism efforts; and expanded surveillance abilities of law enforcement, including by tapping domestic and international phones. 

A month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress passed a 320-page law known as the USA Patriot Act of 2001. The act was intended to “deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes.” Beginning on Dec. 31, 2005, many provisions of the act were set to expire unless Congress reauthorized them. Out of the 16 sections, 13 were allowed to expire while three were reauthorized. After approval by Congress, President Bush signed an extension in 2006, and President Obama signed an extension in 2011. On June 1, 2015, the last three sections expired. 

In 2015, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act. The purpose of the law is to “reform the authorities of the Federal Government to require the production of certain business records, conduct electronic surveillance, use pen registers and trap and trace devices, and use other forms of information gathering for foreign intelligence, counterterrorism, and criminal purposes, and for other purposes.”

The law ended the bulk collection of metadata by agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA), ended the secret laws created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, and introduced a “Special Advocate” to represent public and privacy matters. The bill also re-extend to areas of the Patriot Act: the roving wiretap provision, which allows roving surveillance of people being investigated for involvement in terrorist activities, and the the “lone wolf” provision, which permits surveillance of non-U.S. persons engaged in international terrorism without requiring evidence linking those persons to an identifiable foreign power or terrorist organization.