Union forces continue pressing Atlanta’s defenders, approaching within viewing distance of Atlanta from atop surrounding hills.
For Atlantans, the situation is getting desperate.
Yet even in the midst of the throes of their nation’s fortunes rapidly sinking against the onslaught of abolitionist foes (some white Southern Baptists having even gone so far as to call abolitionism the “the Final Antichrist“), Southern Baptist newspapers, while routinely carrying a full weekly roster of war news and commentary, also continue making space to remind readers of the primacy of reading the Bible. Such is the case with a short piece in this week’s South Carolina Confederate Baptist.
Divine truth should be explained, illustrated and enforced, but not diluted. Preachers and Sunday school teachers should guard against diluting the truth, and thereby weakening its force. A gentleman once gave to a good man and woman a folio commentary to aid them in their daily worship. After they had tried it for some time, the husband said to the wife, “I think we did better before we had this great book. When we read the Bible itself only, it was like a glass of pure wine; but now its like a glass of wine in a pail of water.”
Black slavery remains a central part of Bible and commentaries in white Southern Baptist churches, with opposing views quickly silenced. God is the champion of white supremacy, and slavery is the lot of blacks.
Or so whites want to believe.
The reality is that illiterate slaves (teaching a slave to read being a crime in much of the Confederacy) understand the Bible better than educated white Baptists of the South. And even now, their biblical view of freedom for all is trumping (and thumping) the white supremacist’s Bible where it matters most: the battlefield.
Source: “Truth Diluted,” Confederate Baptist, July 20, 1864
