In and around the yard of a pacifist Baptist church, the bloodiest one day battle in American history unfolds today: the Battle of Antietam. Built in 1852 by German Baptist farmers, the Dunker Church on a hill near Sharpsburg, Maryland houses a peace-loving congregation of six to eight farm families. There is nothing peaceful about…
California Republican Cornelius Cole, reflecting on U.S. President Abraham Lincoln‘s frequent use of humor, relates the following story told by Lincoln, a former Baptist: “That in early times there were only three churches in Springfield, the Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist, all orthodox, when suddenly there came along a smart young Universalist minister and began to…
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…