5 facts about John Leland
By / Jan 13

Saturday marks the 182nd anniversary of the death of John Leland, the most influential Baptist preacher of America’s Founding era.

Here are five facts you should know about this champion of religious liberty.

1. Leland was an active and productive pastor. From the age of 18 until his death at 86, he preached approximately 8,000 sermons, wrote numerous hymns, published about 30 pamphlets, and baptized 1,524 people. He also personally knew 962 pastors, out of which 303 he heard preach and 207 who visited him at his home.

2. Leland had an outsized influence on the establishment of religious liberty in America through his relationship with James Madison, the primary author of the U.S. Constitution. Leland, who was considered the “leader of the Virginia Baptists,” helped Madison get elected both as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and to the first Congress. Madison repaid Leland and the other Baptists by keeping his campaign promise to support a Bill of Rights that included the Establishment Clause.

3. For much of his early career Leland rarely spoke publicly about one of the key issues of his day—slavery. However, on returning to his home state of Massachusetts in 1791, he began to forcefully champion the emancipation of slaves. Leland thought the cause of freedom for Black Americans would be an opportunity for Christian youth:

If any of the slave-holders will neither give nor sell their slaves, here will be a great door opened for missionary labors. The pious youth, who are waiting for a gap, will now have a loud call to go and preach to the hard-hearted masters, and flatter them to give, and threaten them if they will not.

Although he continued to oppose slavery, Leland later in life began to denounce abolitionists as troublemakers. Many slaveholders, he said, “in heart are opposed to slavery, and would gladly set their slaves free, if they could be provided for.”

4. Leland once used a 1,234-pound block of cheese to spread the gospel. After helping Thomas Jefferson win the presidency, Leland decided to give the new chief executive a gift of cheese. According to Elihu Burritt, Leland asked everyone in his Cheshire, Massachusetts, congregation who owned a cow to donate a quart of milk (unless it was from a “Federalist cow”—a cow owned by a Federalist farmer—since that would “leaven the whole lump with a distasteful savour”). The milk was curded and molded using a large cider press. This Cheshire Mammoth Cheese—which measured four feet wide, and 15 inches thick—was too heavy to transport by wagon, so it had to be delivered by sleigh during winter.

As Leland wrote, “In November, 1801 I journeyed to the south, as far as Washington, in charge of a cheese, sent to President Jefferson. Notwithstanding my trust, I preached all the way there and on my return. I had large congregations; let in part by curiosity to hear the Mammoth Priest, as I was called.”

When he arrived in the capitol, Leland was invited to preach a message of religious liberty before Congress.

5. According to L. H. Butterfield, Leland was “dubious about seminaries and campaigns for [missionary] funds.” Although Leland, who was self-educated, was not opposed to secular education, he purportedly stuck “to the primitive Baptist principle that the power to evangelize is bestowed by divine rather than human means.” 

“In these things, however, I may be wrong,” Leland told a friend, “for I claim neither infallibility nor the spirit of prophecy. — May I, may you, may every one pray and search for himself, and believe, and act, and follow the clearest light.”

What you should know about the 2022 state ballot initiatives
By / Nov 11

During the recent midterm election, voters across the country voted on more than 100 ballot initiatives, several of which affect a number of social issues. Here are some of the main decisions on issues of special concern to ERLC.

Initiatives related to abortion

Five states had initiatives that were related to adding or removing restrictions on abortion.

California — Pro-abortion | Passed

Proposition 1 amends the state constitution to prohibit the state from interfering with or denying an individual’s reproductive freedom, which is defined to include a right to an abortion and a right to contraceptives.

Kentucky — Pro-life | Failed

Amendment 2 supported amending the Kentucky Constitution to state that nothing in the state constitution creates a right to abortion or requires government funding for abortion. This measure would have prohibited Kentucky courts from interpreting the state constitution in a way that requires protecting abortion or state funding for abortion.

Michigan — Pro-abortion | Passed

Michigan Proposal 3, the Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative, provides a state constitutional right to “reproductive freedom, which is defined as ‘the right to make and effectuate decisions about all matters relating to pregnancy, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion care, miscarriage management, and infertility care.’”

Montana — Pro-life | Pending

Montana LR-131, the Medical Care Requirements for Born-Alive Infants Measure, establishes that  “infants born alive at any stage of development are legal persons; require medical care to be provided to infants born alive after an induced labor, cesarean section, attempted abortion, or another method; and establish a $50,000 fine and/or 20 years in prison as the maximum penalty for violating the law.”

Vermont — Pro-abortion | Passed

Vermont Proposal 5, the Right to Personal Reproductive Autonomy Amendment, amends the Vermont Constitution to add language protecting the right to “personal reproductive autonomy” and prohibiting government infringement unless justified by a compelling state interest. This initiative further codifies protections for abortion in the state and could be interpreted by state courts to require state funding for abortions, gender transformation surgery, sterilizations (even of minors), and a range of other “reproductive” procedures.

Initiatives related to legalization of marijuana 

Five states had initiatives that would legalize recreational use of marijuana.

Arkansas — Failed 

Issue 4 would have legalized the possession and use of marijuana by adults 21 and older, and authorized the cultivation and sale of marijuana by licensed commercial facilities.

Maryland — Passed 

Question 4 legalized the use of marijuana by adults 21 and older.

Missouri — Passed 

Amendment 3 removes existing state prohibitions on marijuana and legalizes the purchase, possession, consumption, use, delivery, manufacture, and sale of marijuana for personal use for adults 21 and older. It also allows individuals with certain marijuana-related offenses to be released from prison, parole, or probation.

North Dakota — Failed 

Measure 2 would have legalized the production, processing, sale, and possession of marijuana by adults 21 and older.

South Dakota — Failed 

Measure 27 would have legalized the production, processing, sale, and possession of marijuana by adults 21 and older.

Initiatives related to sports betting

Only one state in this election had initiatives related to sports betting. 

California  — Failed 

Proposition 26 would have allowed in-person sports betting at tribal casinos and licensed racetracks. Proposition 27 would ​​have allowed tribes and gambling companies to offer online and mobile sports betting, and imposed a 10% tax on revenue.

Initiatives related to slavery and indentured servitude

Five states had ballot initiative that would change their state constitutions to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for crime. 

Alabama — Passed

The Alabama Recompiled Constitution Ratification Question made several changes, including “removing all racist language.” The removed language included: “That no form of slavery shall exist in this state; and there shall not be any involuntary servitude, otherwise than for the punishment of crime, of which the party shall have been duly convicted.”

Louisiana — Failed

Amendment 7 would have removed language from the state constitution that allows involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime; and added language to say that the section of the constitution prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude “does not apply to the otherwise lawful administration of criminal justice.” State Rep. Edmond Jordan, a Democrat from Baton Rouge and author of the amendment, reportedly asked voters to reject the measure because its wording on the ballot differed from his proposal.

Oregon — Passed

Measure 112 repealed language from the state constitution that allows the use of slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments and added language that authorizes an Oregon court or a probation or parole agency to order alternatives to incarceration for a convicted individual as part of their sentencing. 

Tennessee — Passed

Constitutional Amendment 3 amended the state constitution to remove language that allows the use of slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments and replace it with the statement, “Slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited.”

Vermont — Passed

Proposal 2 amends the state constitution to repeal language stating that persons can be held as servants, slaves, or apprentices with the person’s consent or “for the payments of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like” and adds “slavery and indentured servitude in any form are prohibited.” 

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.

What we can learn from the life of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
By / Feb 23

There are many reasons Frances Ellen Watkins Harper might have gone from humble schoolteacher to renowned lecturer, but the one that tugs at me most has to do with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

The tipping point 

The Fugitive Slave Act endangered not only runaway enslaved people seeking sanctuary in northern free states, but also free Black men and women who matched the descriptions of their enslaved counterparts. Maryland furthered this legislation by enacting a law that put any free Black person who entered the state in jeopardy of imprisonment or enslavement.1 A free man in Frances’s own city of Baltimore was kidnapped, sold into slavery, and eventually died before he could regain his freedom.2

One theory is that this is the knowledge that galvanized Frances and moved her private support of the Underground Railroad into the public spotlight.

Rather than recoil from the Fugitive Slave Act in fear, Frances spoke all over America—both in the North and the South—offering a rallying cry for change. She did not shrink or shirk but rose to the occasion with everything she could muster. In a letter to William Still, a fellow Black abolitionist, she wrote, “I have a right to do my share of the work. The humblest and feeblest of us can do something; and though I may be deficient in many of the conventionalisms of city life, and be considered as a person of good impulses, but unfinished, yet if there is common rough work to be done, call on me.”3

Frances’s tipping point might have looked a lot like one of mine.

My firstborn son was born the summer of 2016. My husband, Phillip, and I were in the middle of a cross-country move from Minnesota to Mississippi. The lease was up on our cute suburban duplex, and we were staying in a hotel until it was time to set off. Phillip had run out to grab us some food, and I was sitting in bed nursing Wynn and scrolling Facebook.

Philando Castile was killed that same day.

I scrolled in horror, processing the details of what had happened. He was shot by a police officer during a traffic stop in the very suburb Phillip and I had been living in for the past year. I immediately called Phillip to check on him, heart hammering in my ears, postpartum hormones rushing through my veins.

Philando Castile’s death was not the first such shooting of a Black man that I had ever heard of. It wasn’t the first one I had ever mourned. It wasn’t even the first one that had happened in a state where I resided.

But it was the first one that felt close. And I remember sitting on that bed, holding my brand-new baby boy, and thinking of how much everything had changed for me. I was now a mother of a little brown-skinned boy. My heart was not only out and about on the streets of Minneapolis in search of takeout, but in my arms.

I do not pretend to know the mind of Frances Harper (would that I did!), but I know what it feels like for something to hit closer to home than ever before. I know what it’s like for passion to spark and bleed out onto the page, and for the writing on the page to move one into the lectern. Bronze muse though I may never be, I have mused on so many of the words that Frances shared in myriad speeches, and I have felt the conviction of them deep in my own heart and life.

Frances did not work for fame and renown, but from a deep conviction that the work she was applying herself to was a worthwhile endeavor.

What Frances teaches us

Like more than one woman profiled in these pages, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was raised by a reverend and a teacher. She started working at fourteen and did not stop working until the day she died. She was married only four years before going back to supporting herself and her young daughter. And yet, if single motherhood was a challenge to the calling God placed on her life, Frances kept it to herself. She doggedly pursued her passions—lecturing, writing, and imagining.

Her poise, rhetorical skill, and passion earned her the nickname The Bronze Muse, a title that pointed to the fact that Frances was a master of the English language in speech, poetry, and prose. She realized that she was an ambassador for her entire ethnicity every time she mounted the stage, and she did her people proud, her own ability for intelligent and articulate arguments proof of her claims of equality. 

What I love about Frances is how thoroughly her poetic ability seeped into her rhetorical moments. She was every bit a poet in the lectern and every bit a principled orator in her poetry. Frances had a knack for uniting all parts of her skill in service for her cause.

I teach at a classical Christian school in Jackson, Mississippi. I’m excited to introduce Frances Ellen Watkins Harper to my students. We are very picky about the classical canon at my school, but we also realize that so many Black voices have been barred from that canon throughout history. Phillis Wheatley is the one Black poet the kids know—maybe Paul Laurence Dunbar, if they’re lucky, and later, Langston Hughes. But the canon should be full to bursting with a wide array of Black voices and a huge cross section of the Black experience.

Frances was not just a phenomenal speaker—she was a phenomenal writer. Her poetry and her storytelling abilities have stood the test of time, even when it seemed that time had forgotten them. In fact, just a few years ago, her first published book of poetry, Forest Leaves, was rediscovered. For one hundred and fifty years, we assumed that her words were lost forever. . . and yet they were found by a pesky PhD candidate who knew exactly where to look.

As much as I love playing hide-and-seek with the treasure trove of the influential Black women who have shaped us, it is my earnest hope that fifty years from now, a little Black girl who wants to grow up to be a writer doesn’t have to look far to find the work of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Perhaps she will have had to memorize Bible Defense of Slavery or The Slave Mother. Maybe her teacher will have assigned The Two Offers in a short story unit. Perhaps in a class that focuses on nineteenth-century literature, Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy—the first novel published by a Black woman—will be found in its rightful chronology after Austen and the Brontës.

I do know that my own children and my own students will know her name. And perhaps, now that you’ve read her words, you can share her brilliance as well.

However, if I have learned anything from Frances, it is that no matter how quiet the record of her brilliance has been kept, it cannot remain silent forever. I did not know about her . . . until I did. And now that I do, I know to be incredibly grateful for her example and influence. And I know that there are myriad women like her, just waiting to be discovered. They are hidden gems and diamonds in the rough now, but they were outspoken dynamos while they lived. And their lives shine as examples to us all.

Footnotes

  1. Elizabeth Ammons and Frances Ellen Watkins [Harper], “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)” Legacy 2, no. 2 (1985): 61-66. Accessed June 24, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25678939.
  2. Melba Joyce Boyd, Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E.W. Harper, 1825–1911 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1994), 40.
  3. Harper, A Brighter Coming Day, 47.

Excerpt from Carved in Ebony by Jasmine Holmes provided by Bethany House Publishers, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Copyright 2021. Used by permission.

“Chapter 4: Inspired by the Bronze Muse | Frances Ellen Watkins Harper,” from Carved in Ebony by Jasmine Holmes. pp. 70-71, 74-76, 79-80; 1,255 words (edited)

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. 

What do Christians need to know about child sex trafficking?
By / Feb 9

It’s tragic that we live in a world that includes human trafficking of any kind, but especially child sex trafficking. Children are some of the most vulnerable among us and should be cherished, protected, and nurtured. But the reality is that many are being abused and exploited by predators and are in need of help. Thankfully, God is raising up people and organizations dedicated to ending sex trafficking and supporting victims. Gretchen Smeltzer started Into the Light with these goals and shares below how Christians can join this mission.

Elizabeth Bristow: Gretchen, tell our readers more about Into the Light, a nonprofit organization you started in 2015 to end sex trafficking and bring hope to survivors. How did it begin? 

Gretchen Smeltzer: Into the Light began as God broke the hearts of followers of Jesus over the issue of child sex trafficking and then brought them together to a small town in Arkansas. None of us were survivors of sex trafficking or had previous experience working with trafficking victims. However, we were willing to learn how we could be effective in identifying victims and providing them with the support they needed to overcome this evil atrocity. 

We began by praying. Our founding board spent many nights on our knees together. We spent a great deal of time researching the need in our local community and state. After speaking with those in law enforcement who worked with victims, we learned residential care for victims was a great need. Believing God was leading us to open a home where survivors could begin the process of healing, we began communicating our vision to the public. God used this season to teach us what it looked like to provide trauma-informed care for victims. Then God revealed to us that we could connect with child trafficking victims in Juvenile Detention Centers. Through a partnership with Traffick911, we were able to launch prevention programs in four Arkansas Juvenile Detention Centers in 2016. Our prevention teams engaged weekly with trafficking victims who were hidden in plain sight under other charges.

God taught us that we could offer places of refuge by offering a listening ear, believing a child’s story, and communicating God’s unconditional love. Our prevention program connected with hundreds of victims in the Juvenile Detention Centers. By 2017, we could see that victims needed ongoing safe community, trauma-informed advocacy, and life-skills mentorship. Into the Light received a grant to provide long-term advocacy and mentorship to victims of trafficking. Each year, this program continues to grow. We have six full-time advocates who serve 16 counties in Arkansas. In 2021, our organization supported 165 victims. Our services include:

  • Crisis intervention 
  • Safety planning for newly identified victims of trafficking 
  • 24/7 crisis line to offer support to all of our current clients 
  • Court, legal, and law enforcement advocacy
  • Mental health needs
  • Transportation and housing assistance
  • Long-term mentorship to assist in building a life after trafficking

The basis of what we do at Into the Light is modeled after what God requires of us from Micah 6:8. We seek justice for victims, we share his mercy, and we seek to walk humbly with God in all that we do. 

EB: What do Christians need to know about the issue of child sex trafficking? 

GS: It is happening to children attending our churches, schools, and living in our neighborhoods. Readers may want to stop reading at this point because that is just way too scary to think about. Christians, please don’t! Who has more hope that God can bring beauty from ashes than followers of Jesus Christ? This is what our God does, right? Christians don’t need to live in fear of human trafficking. While it is dark, this is why Jesus came. Into the Light gets its name from John 1:5. The Light (Jesus Christ) shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Ending the trafficking of children is God’s heart. We can have great confidence in our God, our protector and defender — that he will equip believers to face the darkness no matter how dark or dangerous it may seem. While no one enjoys thinking about children being trafficked in their own community, we must. If no one thinks through this difficult issue and creates collaborative ways to end child trafficking, then it will continue.

EB: Like you said, many people are unaware that this horrendous issue happens in our own communities. Can you give our readers a snapshot of this reality? 

GS: It is important to understand that anyone can be a victim of trafficking. Trafficking happens to both girls and boys, however a higher percentage of trafficking is reported by females. Trafficking is the exploitation of vulnerabilities, and children are innately vulnerable. They are naïve and don’t always understand the manipulation, power, and control methods used by adults. Most of the time a child is sold for sex by someone they know. Traffickers are most frequently an older male or female whom the child thinks they can trust, a family member or close family friend, and/or an individual posing as a boyfriend/girlfriend. Children involved in social services and runaway and homeless youth pose the highest risks of being trafficked. When someone lacks basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter, traffickers can offer to meet these with the goal of exploiting a child for their financial gain. Common red flags for youth include:

  • Suddenly becoming detached from family and friends;
  • Contradicting personal information about their living and work locations and conditions;
  • Not being allowed to take adequate breaks for food or water while at work;
  • Recruited for a different work than they are currently doing or has a debt to an employer or recruiter that they cannot pay off; 
  • Noticeable change in their appearance or material goods without being able to explain where they received the resources to pay for the goods; 
  • Shows signs of physical or sexual abuse; appears fearful, anxious, depressed, overly submissive, and avoids eye contact;
  • Suffers from substance abuse problems or sexually transmitted diseases;
  • Sudden presence of or older “boyfriend,” “girlfriend,” or “friend.”

EB: How have you witnessed God bring beauty from ashes this last year through the work of Into the Light? Can you share some stories of success you’ve seen as an organization? 

GS: This last year, our partnerships deepened with law enforcement and social services. This has led to intervention for many children being trafficked. We have witnessed very brave children share their trafficking experience with law enforcement and prosecutors. We have seen survivors grow into young adults and overcome great trauma to pursue dreams and goals for their lives. 

A few months ago, I had the privilege of standing with a former client, now dear sister in Christ, who shared her story of being trafficked but then rescued from a hotel by one of our advocates and law enforcement. She bravely and confidently shared how God had been with her through all of her darkest moments and how he had been her light and was helping her overcome her past. Survivors do the hard work of battling every day to overcome what the enemy has stolen from them. Even though it is difficult at times, our advocates know it is such a privilege to walk alongside these brave children and young adults. Some days, there are great successes, and sometimes there are great struggles. But God is faithful in it all.

EB: What should our churches know about supporting victims of sex trafficking? 

GS: It’s important for churches to understand that victims of human trafficking often have complex trauma. This occurs when a person is victimized multiple times. Healing and wholeness will not happen overnight. As humans who are loving and supporting others, we often want people to heal and be changed quickly. Christians called to share God’s unconditional love and mercy with victims of human trafficking must know there are no quick fixes. However, God is faithful and will redeem what the enemy has stolen and teach us about his unconditional love and mercy along the way. And the Holy Spirit will give us wisdom and guidance on how to care for each person individually. 

EB: How would you encourage a pastor to help stir up the hearts of his flock to care for the vulnerable? 

GS: A pastor could focus on studying Psalm 10 and Micah 6:8, allowing the Spirit to lead him on what his church body needs to hear from these scriptures. I would encourage a pastor to lead his flock in a focused month of prayer for victims of human trafficking in their own community, nation, and world. Before the time of prayer, a pastor could educate the body of believers on the issue of human trafficking. The prayer time could be focused on asking God to reveal how human trafficking is happening in their own community, wisdom and clarity to see victims, and that God would give them the compassion and perseverance to show the love of Christ to victims. Through prayer, God will be faithful to stir the hearts of those in the body who are called to end human trafficking. 

Those in church leadership, counseling, and shepherding roles should all be trained on understanding and identifying human trafficking and how it happens in their community. Most likely they have already encountered a victim of human trafficking and were unaware. In the last nine years, I have been a part of two churches, both in small, Southern towns, and have met survivors or victims attending. Thankfully, there is wonderful training easily accessible online. Shared Hope International has a Faith in Action toolkit to help church leaders share about the need to address human trafficking and learn how to equip believers to impact their communities.

EB: For anyone who has been stirred to action to help victims in their communities, what are the next steps? 

GS: Pray and then look in your own community to see if there are any organizations or initiatives that are currently serving victims of human trafficking. Ask how you can support their efforts. Ask to meet with the volunteer coordinator or someone in leadership and share how God has stirred your heart. Then be willing to serve in any way. Lastly, be patient. It takes time to learn how to effectively support victims of trafficking. Allow those working with victims to slowly teach you. Don’t expect an opportunity to begin serving victims if you don’t have any previous experience. 

If you can’t find local programs that support victims, I would suggest praying about how you can partner with local social services to support victims. Reach out to the department of child and family services or juvenile services, and tell them you have a heart to serve victims of trafficking. Ask them what the needs are for trafficking victims in your community and how you could support them. God may even lead you to start a new initiative in your community to help love and support victims. 

EB: It would be easy for many of us to turn away from the horrors of sex trafficking. What’s at stake if we do? 

GS: To be completely honest, lives are at stake. Victims of human trafficking have a much lower life expectancy due to the dangerous nature of living such an oppressed life. Many victims of trafficking die from drug overdoses, suicide, diseases, and homicide. Ignoring the issue also continues to allow this to be a normal part of our culture. Unfortunately, it is acceptable to pay for sex in our culture. If there wasn’t a demand for sex or free labor, then traffickers would not sell and exploit victims. Trafficking happens because at its core, it is a business model. Traffickers exploit humans for their financial gain. 

We must not turn a blind eye because all people are created in God’s image. Most importantly, if Christians turn away from the horrors of trafficking we are being disobedient to what God has asked of us to seek justice, show mercy, and humbly walk with him. Not everyone is called to the frontlines, but all of us are called to love God and love our neighbor. We can all pray for victims to be seen and receive the support they need to overcome what they have been through. 

EB: How can Christians learn more about these issues?

G: You can start with researching about the issue online. There are many excellent resources. Sharedhope.org, Polarisproject.org, and www.dhs.gov/blue-campaign all have excellent free education online.

How reading compelled Frederick Douglass to join the abolition community
By / Jul 15

Looking at some examples might help us envision what a healthy interplay between media and community can look like. While there are many people I could highlight as models of faithful belonging and redemptive publishing, it would be hard to top Frederick Douglass and Dorothy Day. For both of them, reading books and newspapers transformed their lives, introducing them to new communities of discourse and action. Their reading led them to imagine new possibilities for joining with and working among the members of their own places. This membership, in turn, led them to speak publicly on behalf of their communities, challenging others to belong redemptively to their own neighbors and to address the pressing issues of their time. 

Douglass, reading, and abolition

In his autobiography, Douglass describes the arduous process by which he learned to read, first through the good graces of a naive slave mistress, and then by giving poor White boys bread in exchange for lessons. At the age of 12, he read “The Columbian Orator,” a classroom anthology of speeches and poems that includes an imagined dialogue between a master and his slave. The slave made such good arguments for his emancipation that the master granted his manumission. Douglass was, of course, drawn to these arguments: “They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance.” As Douglass goes on to explain, he didn’t even know the meaning of the word abolition — much less that there was a whole community of abolitionists agitating for the end of slavery — until he read a newspaper account of abolitionist activities. 

After his reading brought the abolition community to his consciousness and helped him articulate a case for emancipation, Douglass devoted his energies to educating his enslaved friends. Once he had “created in them a strong desire to learn how to read,” he held a Sabbath school and taught any enslaved people who were interested. Their school was eventually discovered and broken up by White masters; these men knew the grave danger that reading posed to the institution of slavery. As Douglass testifies, this learning community provided a rare opportunity for these downtrodden people to behave like “intellectual, moral, and accountable beings.” Eventually, Douglass escaped to the north, but instead of feeling free, he felt terribly lonely and vulnerable. He was particularly grateful for the aid of other free Black persons and abolitionists who helped him find a home in New Bedford. 

This community, and the support it provided for its vulnerable members, motivated Douglass to take a more active role in sustaining it. He describes an incident where a free Black person had a dispute with a fugitive and threatened to betray him; the entire community came together to send the traitor away and protect the fugitive. It is this camaraderie and solidarity that inspired Douglass to move into the public sphere and advocate for the abolition of slavery and the empowerment of free African Americans. He tells of his joy when he was able to pay for a subscription to the Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist paper. This paper, Douglass attests, “became my meat and my drink. My soul was set all on fire.” And it soon gave him an “idea of the principles, measures, and spirit of the anti-slavery reform.” At the urging of others, he began to speak at churches and abolitionist meetings, and his eloquence and testimony soon made him a popular speaker. 

Community and pointing to the gospel 

Douglass eventually separated himself from Garrison’s paper and speaking circuit and founded his own newspaper, the North Star. In the opening editorial, he situates the paper as a communal endeavor, arguing that the Black community “must be our own representatives and advocates, not exclusively, but peculiarly — not distinct from, but in connection with our white friends.” Thus it will not be committed to an ideology but to a community, which he names as “our long oppressed and plundered fellow countrymen”: “We shall cordially approve every measure and effort calculated to advance your sacred cause, and strenuously oppose any which in our opinion may tend to retard its progress.” Rather than being narrowly antislavery, it will also discuss issues such as “Temperance, Peace, Capital Punishment, Education. . . . While advocating your rights, the North Star will strive to throw light on your duties. [W]hile it will not fail to make known your virtues, it will not shun to discover your faults. To be faithful to our foes it must be faithful to ourselves, in all things.” This language of rights and duties is common in republican discourse, but it emphasizes that Douglass was committed not just to an ideology or an interest group but to the formation of a healthy community. 

Though he disagreed with Garrison about the best political strategy to achieve abolition, Douglass shared Garrison’s religious convictions. One version of the Liberator’s masthead depicts Christ in his role as liberator, proclaiming, “I come to break the bonds of the oppressor.” Similarly, the motto of Douglass’s North Star declares, “Right is of no sex—Truth is of no color—God is the Father of us all, and all we are brethren.” If Douglass belonged to his fellow oppressed countrymen (and women — he was an early supporter of the suffrage movement), he belonged equally to the biblical prophetic tradition. As his biographer David Blight puts it, “Douglass not only used the Hebrew prophets; he joined them.” Douglass consistently “rooted his own story and especially the story of African Americans in the oldest and most powerful stories of the Hebrew prophets.” 

Ultimately, Douglass strove to build a community keyed to the gospel rather than to political trends. He failed at times, getting drawn into heated and sometimes petty political disputes and caring more about wielding political power than about standing as a faithful witness, but the very existence of his papers helped people imagine a community of Christians committed to living out the gospel’s valuation of each person — regardless of their race — as a child of God. Papers like the North Star can help us see those neighbors whom we might otherwise overlook; they can help us imagine ourselves as members of a community that cares about the plight of the enslaved and others who are oppressed and that takes action to participate in God’s ongoing redemptive work. 

Adapted and published with permission from Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News, Chapter eight, “Belonging Outside the Public Sphere.”

5 facts about George Liele, America’s first Baptist missionary
By / Feb 5

Last year the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention voted to approve the first Sunday in February as the annual George Liele Church Planting, Evangelism and Missions Day. “My hope is that all Southern Baptist churches will share about the life and mission work of George Liele to inspire current and future generations to spread the Gospel around the world,” said Marshal Ausberry, leader of the SBC’s National African American Fellowship George. “Liele’s life shows that despite adverse circumstances God can still use us in a mighty way.”

Here are five facts you should know about the pioneering Baptist missionary:

  1. George Liele was born into slavery in colonial Virginia around 1750, but was moved to Georgia during his childhood. Although separated from his parents at an early age, Liele says he was told his father was the “only black person to know the Lord in a spiritual way in that country.” He says he also had a “natural fear of God from my youth” and that was often “checked in conscience with thoughts of death which barred me from many sins and bad company.” At the time, he says he knew of “no hope for salvation but only in performance of my good works.” Later, around 1773, he would express relief in finding that his only hope for salvation came “through the merits of my dying Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” 
  2. Out of a desire to “instruct the people of my own color in the word of God,” Liele began to minister to other African Americans around Savannah, Georgia. His ministerial gifts were recognized by “the white brethren” who invited him to preach at a quarterly meeting and licenced him as a probationer (i.e., a preacher’s trial period before receiving ordination). Liele was soon after given his freedom by his master, George Sharp, who served as a deacon in Liele’s church. Liele remained with Sharp’s family until Sharp’s death as a Tory officer during the revolutionary war when the British occupied Savannah.  
  3. Liele continued to hold worship services in Georgia until 1782, when the British evacuated Savannah. He then borrowed $700 from a British colonel called Kirkland to pay for his and his family’s passage to Jamaica. Liele worked for Kirkland for two years as an indentured servant to pay off the debt. Afterwards, he resumed his work as a minister by preaching to a small house church. Within a few years, though, his congregation grew to 350, and included both Black and White believers. Liele also assisted in the organization of other congregations and promoted free schools for slaves and free black Jamacians. 
  4. Liele’s success, says historian Doreen Morrison, resulted in him being “negatively ‘targeted’ by the Jamaican Assembly, supported by the plantation owners, who saw any gathering of groups of Africans as the recipe for a revolution.” Opposition to evangelizing slaves led to Liele being charged with “seditious preaching” in 1797. As The Baptist Quarterly (October 1964) noted,

    “Charged with preaching sedition, for which he was thrown in prison, loaded with irons, and his feet fastened in the stocks. Not even his wife or children were permitted to see him. At length he was tried for his life; but no evil could be proved against him, and he was honourably acquitted. (However, he was thereupon) thrown into gaol (jail) for the balance due to the builder of his chapel. He refused to take benefit of the insolvent Debtor’s Act, and remained in prison until he had fully paid all that was due.”

    Liele remained in prison for three years, five months, and ten days. In 1805 the Jamaican Assembly enacted a law forbidding all preaching to the slave population.
  5. After leaving prison, Liele became an itinerant preacher and shared the gospel throughout the island nation. In 1797 he settled in Spanish Town, the then capital of Jamaica, and planted the second Baptist church on the island, which was supported by funds from the US and UK. As the Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions says, “By 1814 his efforts had produced, either directly or indirectly, some 8,000 Baptists in Jamaica.” Although William Carey, who went to India in 1793, is often named as the first Baptist missionary, by that time “Liele had worked as a missionary for a decade, supporting himself and his family by farming and by transporting goods with a wagon and team.”

Family and freedom: Lessons from President Tyler’s legacy
By / Mar 30

His birthday came and went this week with little fanfare. John Tyler’s life dates back to the inaugural year of Washington’s presidency, and his own presidency commenced two decades prior to Lincoln’s. But unlike the first and 16th presidents, whose esteemed memories are marked by calendar and commemoration, the 10th U.S. president is little remembered, if not largely reviled. For many, his memory begins and ends with the catchy campaign slogan of 1840, “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.”

But the all-but-forgotten antebellum figure leaves behind living reasons to remember him today: two grandsons, along with the president’s 18th century home that’s still in the family’s care.

And imbedded in the Tyler family legacy are lessons for us on slavery and bondage and freedom and a home—schoolmasters reminding us of a bloody yesterday and pointing us toward a bright tomorrow.

Tyler’s ‘quiver’ full of children

Born on March 29, 1790, President John Tyler would have turned 226 on Tuesday, and April 6 will mark the 175th anniversary of his swearing-in to the Oval Office upon the sudden death of his predecessor, William Henry Harrison, who succumbed to pneumonia after just 31 days in office. “His Accidency,” as detractors dubbed the Virginian who replaced Harrison, fathered 15 biological children with two wives over the course of a 45-year span. He breathed his last on January 18, 1862, at age 71.

Yet, remarkably, Tyler grandsons Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr., 92, and Harrison Ruffin Tyler, 87, still walk among us today. Late-age procreation helps to explain: President Tyler fathered son Lyon at age 63 with a second wife 30 years his junior; in turn, Lyon fathered Lyon Jr. and Harrison in his 70s with a second wife 36 years younger. Like father, like son, one might conclude.

The two grandsons serve as living reminders that our history as a nation, blood stains and all, is not all that distant, and that our struggle for her soul is still very much alive. Home and family, the Tyler grandfather-grandson legacy further remind us, stretch beyond brick and mortar and bloodlines and mortality. They reach forward into eternity.

I was reminded of these things not long ago.

‘Conversations’ with grandfather Tyler

“Closed for a private event,” the apologetic voice explained. The news came as a disappointment. I had hoped to walk the weathered wood floors and roam the ornate rooms of President Tyler’s Sherwood Forest Plantation home just outside Williamsburg, Virginia, during a recent visit. Instead, a peek through the windows would be the closest I’d get to gracing the door of the 300-foot-long residence, the nation’s longest frame house. Nor would I find grandsons Lyon and Harrison seated on the front porch, waiting to greet this uninvited guest.

But as I ascended the front steps, I envisioned the brothers there—heirs of history eager to relay stories of their grandfather from a bygone era. Lyon and Harrison, of course, never knew their grandfather. They didn’t get to ask him about Washington and the founding, about Lincoln and emancipation. Yet they heard the stories from their father.

John Tyler was a man of presidential firsts—first to assume the presidency upon the death of the chief executive; first to marry while president (his first wife died in 1842); first to be subject to impeachment proceedings; and first to govern the nation without a party (the Whigs forsook him).

Tyler was also the first (and only) president to later become a sworn enemy of the United States with his election to the Confederate House of Representatives in 1861. And President Lincoln, a political rival, ensured Tyler became the first former president to receive no official recognition from the White House upon his death. Put another way, in the Union’s eyes Tyler was decidedly not, as Henry Lee eulogized of General Washington, “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

John Tyler was, in one sense, a man between the times.

Slavery and freedom, then and now

In the mid-19th century, slavery ripped the fragile fabric of the American experiment woven with the “self-evident” truth, expressed by Tyler’s one-time mentor Thomas Jefferson, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The “house divided” that Lincoln long lamented had not yet truly united. Freedom fashioned friends only among the fairer-skinned. Millions, meanwhile, stood on the outside looking in.

As I stood on Tyler’s Sherwood Forest doorstep, peering in, on that overcast March day, I thought about the slaves who labored on the 1,600-acre plantation, some of whom would one day find freedom. The price to secure that freedom meant, tragically, the blood of more than 600,000 slain.

My mind journeyed back further still. I thought about the children of Israel, enslaved for 400 years in Egyptian bondage before finding freedom from their chains. The blood of lambs, painted across their doors as a symbol of a Lamb to come, secured that freedom.

In the absence of a word from the Tyler grandsons, my mind hearkened back to the voice of Moses, relaying the Lord’s commission to the Israelites standing at the edge of the Promised Land. His was a command to “love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might,” a charge they were to pass down to “your son and your son’s son,” to teach “diligently to your children” (Deut. 6:1–9).

Family and freedom in Christ

Still standing at Tyler’s door, I thought, too, about the freedom to which Moses and the children of Israel pointed with that blood across the doorposts. That freedom was not bought by the blood of animals or common men. Nor was it a struggle between North and South, a Civil War of Tyler’s and Lincoln’s time. It was, instead, a cosmic war between the powers of heaven and hell, and the victor was and is the person of Jesus Christ.

He was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, he announced, “to proclaim liberty to the captives” and “to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18). This deliverer paid, with his own blood, the price for original sin common to all of us through Adam’s blood.

By his resurrection, he broke the bars of death and breaks our chains of sin, no longer to “receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.” He goes yet further, granting “the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ . . . and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:15–17).

What this Man called the Door opens to us, I remembered at Tyler’s door, is a freedom and a family, a Father and the fortune of his Son.

Jesus Christ was—and is—a Man between the times. More than that, he rules outside of them, seated supreme, inviting others inside.

The chains of our forefathers

I’ll leave it to others to write the history of the man called “His Accidency,” a man who stood between the times, at water’s edge, of slavery and freedom. But whatever the 10th president’s legacy, let us learn from the bloody final days of Tyler’s time and look forward to a day beyond Lincoln’s and our own, one in which wars shall cease and God alone shall grant a “just and lasting peace.” No more shackles, no “house divided.”

The living presence of two of the 10th president’s grandsons is, if anything, a reminder that our history is not all that distant after all; that our forefathers didn’t always get it right. Many of them carried troubled consciences over America’s “original sin” to their graves.

And, today, many find themselves, like President Tyler, a person without a party. Wars and factions may demand as much of us. But let none of us die a man or woman without a home. Each one of us can dwell as son or daughter in a Father’s house with “many rooms”—space aplenty for innumerable quivers full, like Tyler’s (John 14:1–4).

The future land of the free is the home of the forgiven and the Man truly called brave. Christ’s ascension to the highest of thrones was anything but accidental, and it required the death of no life but his own, of his own accord.

Retelling our story

Ours is a bloody history, to be sure, but one the next generations need to hear. Let none of us wear the chains of our past, but let’s not forget them, either. And let’s point those coming behind us to the freedom we’ve found.

We should tell them our national story, yes, but let’s not neglect our spiritual one: that we were once “slaves to sin” and that “the slave does not remain in the house forever,” but that “the son remains forever”—and sons now we are, set free by the truth in God’s Son (John 8:34–36). Let’s tell them we have, in Christ who “is faithful over God’s house as a son,” found freedom, a home (Heb. 3:6).

May fathers and grandfathers—mothers and grandmothers and all who have left their chains—be faithful to share that story with children and grandchildren everywhere. May our story become their story. And may none of them, none of us, die an outsider looking in.

There are, after all, no grandchildren in that “house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1). Only sons and daughters, adopted and set free—free indeed.

How can I get involved in fighting human trafficking?
By / Nov 10

The problem of human trafficking is overwhelming. Travis Wussow shares with Dan Darling how we can get involved in fighting this evil.