The Alabama Baptist State Convention (white), meeting this month in Marion, discusses, among other matters, the state of race relations in post-war Alabama. Delegates pretend that nothing has changed, resolving to treat their former slaves no differently now that they are legally free. On the other hand, unlike their overt Confederate Christian nationalism voiced during…
During the antebellum and Civil War years most, but not all, Southern Baptist ministers harbored loyalties for the Confederacy. Of those who were Unionists, sympathies with the Union remained buried, or at least subdued. James Ryland Kendrick is one such example. Born in Poultney, Virginia in 1821, he graduated from Hamilton Seminary (New York) and…
Six months following the conclusion of the war, many Baptist churches in the South are just now resuming congregational life with some sense of normalcy. Some do not reopen until this month, while others continue adjusting to the realities of freedom for black members. This month the Oak Grove Baptist Church of Arkansas finally reopens…