This week’s Georgia Baptist Christian Index reprints an extract from a sermon preached on August 21, 1863, a Confederate fast day, by Sylvanus Landrum, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Savannah. The sermon reiterates the right of the Southern states to secede and their righteousness in so doing in order to preserve the “security,…
On this last night of the year, free black Baptist congregations throughout the United States and Union-controlled areas of the South observe the January 1 anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation with a “watchnight” service of celebration and prayer for God-granted freedom. There is certainly much to celebrate. Tens of thousands of blacks have been emancipated…
Although white Baptists of the Confederacy revile U.S. President Abraham Lincoln as (variously) the “black president,” an infidel, heretic, barbarian and an evil abolitionist (among other disparaging labels), and some Baptists of the North lament the President’s seeming lack of interest in religion, Lincoln maintains an open door in regards to ministers of the Gospel.…