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…
Southern Baptist periodicals waste few opportunities to criticize abolitionist efforts to provide education and social relief services for former slaves. Blacks, after all, are an inferior race incapable of intelligence. Their God-willed lot in life is bondage in the service of whites. Today’s Kentucky Baptist Western Recorder succinctly sums up the sneering contempt that most…