In the South, state Baptist convention meetings, this year characterized by expressions of Confederate nationalism, generate news coverage for weeks beyond state boundaries, in news periodicals religious and secular. Today’s Richmond (VA) Daily Dispatch offers a spirited summary of the patriotism of Alabama Baptist leaders as voiced in the recent state meeting of Alabama Baptists.…
The same week that Confederate president Jefferson Davis decrees that churches and individuals in the Confederacy observe a day of fasting and prayer, North Carolina Baptists’ Biblical Recorder newspaper prints a letter to the editor warning about entangling church and Confederacy. Entitled “Appointing Chaplains by the Civil Authority,” the letter-writer declares: “No subject more intimately…
Today is a day set apart for “Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer” as decreed by “his Excellency the President of the Confederate States.” Many Southern Baptist divines, caught up in the Christian nationalist fervor that permeates the Confederacy, happily comply with Davis’ decree. One such prominent Baptist is Henry Holcombe Tucker of Georgia, professor of Belles-Lettres…