Comprised of many Christians of differing denominations who are thrown together in military service, the Confederate Army at times harbors within its ranks a variety of religious tensions. One particular religious practice is a flash point of controversy: communion. Each denomination’s way of doing communion is a bit different, and Baptists are no exception (other…
Candles burn late into the night, signifying the coming of a new era in American history: “freedom’s eve,” the beginning of the exodus story of African slaves. Northern free blacks and abolitionists, as well as thousands of freedmen in Union-controlled areas of the South, unable to sleep in anticipation of the morrow’s Emancipation Proclamation, gather…
Southern Baptist foreign mission and Indian mission efforts have fallen by the wayside, spiritual casualties of the war. In their place is a now-intense focus on mission work among the Confederacy’s white men serving in the army. Believing they are called of God to save the army in order to save the nation, Baptist leaders…