Today the United States and Confederate armies clash in Culpeper County, Virginia. In the early years of the American nation, this area was Baptist giant John Leland’s stomping grounds. In those days, Leland preached religious liberty for all and church state separation. Now, many Southern Baptists still cling to “religious liberty” language yet consider the…
The South Carolina Baptist Convention continues meeting in its annual session at Greenville’s Furman University. Reports from army chaplains and missionaries are a highlight of the meeting. All the highlighted letters and summarized reports from the field (partially noted below) offer glowing accounts of spiritual hunger among Confederate soldiers. Rev. J. G. Landrum writes: “The…
This month the Siloam Baptist Church of Greene County, Georgia meets and does something unusual for Baptist churches of the South during the war: they formally discuss the death of a soldier member. Baptists, long accustomed to not allowing the outside world to infiltrate worship services and business meetings, typically do not officially discuss in…