Amidst the ugliness of war, beautiful things yet happen. Baptist musician William Batchelder Bradbury (1816-1868) inspires Fanny Crosby (1820-1915) to write sacred music. Crosby writes her first hymn today, giving it to Bradbury as a gift. Bradbury has long been a Baptist, having joined the Charles Street Baptist Church in Boston, Massachusetts at age fifteen.…
Now blanketed by the chill of winter, anxiety courses through the veins of the Confederacy in the wake of many months of military setbacks. Government officials hope that the coming spring months will witness a curtailing of army desertions. Perhaps the revivals taking place in army camps will steel the South’s defenders to once again…
By the war years, white Baptists’ profession of belief in a literal Bible has become the norm throughout the South. As such, critics of a literal biblical interpretation, whether they be Christian or not, are often refuted and scoffed at by Southern Baptist divines. Many such critics are abolitionists, while others are learned individuals who…