For the next four years there will be many emphases upon the 150th anniversary of the Civil War; and unlike the Centennial in the 1960s, the emphasis often will include emancipation.
The Centennial was marketed as a celebration and it primarily touted the military aspect as well as the states right theme as the primary cause of the war. The Centennial also fell at the time of the Civil Rights movement in the South. The celebration drew very little interest among blacks.
Fred Anderson
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The Sesquicentennial is being promoted as a commemoration; and by giving attention to emancipation, the observance promises to be more inclusive. Contemporary scholarship emphasizes slavery as the paramount cause of the war. In graduate school, I took a course on the causes of the Civil War and quickly learned that there was a long list, depending upon one’s historical perspective.
Slavery, “the peculiar institution,” must be considered as the primary factor and its curse has affected nearly every aspect of American life even to this day.
Baptists would do well to examine “the War” and emancipation and to recall slavery, because all three shaped, defined and created the Baptist ethos. The effect is evident every Sunday morning which, because of history, culture and demographics, remains the most segregated time in America.
The first blacks came to Virginia in 1619. They lived in a colony dominated by Mother England, the colonial government and an Established Church, the Anglican. A century later Baptists began to arrive and soon became a threat to the Established Church. By then, slavery had been firmly established. Many owners gave over the religious instruction of their slaves to the Baptists. There were several natural attractions between enslaved Africans and the Baptists, including the degree of freedom — albeit limited — found for an individual within a Baptist church, the 18th-century worship style with its whoops and hollers and spirited music all of which annoyed the refined Anglicans, and the somewhat egalitarian attitude of the Baptists who themselves were a despised minority.
There was a golden time in the late 1700s when some Virginia Baptists were openly anti-slavery, especially as it applied to hereditary slavery. David Barrow, an important preacher in Southampton, Va., took an abolitionist stand. John Leland, the great statesman, penned a resolution condemning slavery, which in 1790 was passed by the General Committee of Virginia Baptists. Calling slavery “a horrid evil,” Leland declared it “a violent deprivation of the rights of nature and inconsistent with a republican government.”
The 1963 March on Washington for civil rights featured blacks marching alongside white Christians and Jews. But some social observers note the dream of the “beloved community” still is far from reality, and the legacy of the Civil War continues to shape American life. (RNS file photo)
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In 1797 the Dover Baptist Association actually urged Baptists “to unite with the Abolition society, proposing a petition to the General Assembly, for gradual emancipation.” In the 1820s numerous Virginia Baptists supported the American Colonization Society in the efforts to relocate free and emancipated blacks to Liberia in Africa.
In 1835 the Baptist Union of England sent two men to visit among the Baptists in the United States and Canada. They visited Richmond and attended the meetings of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, as well as the national Baptist body called the Triennial Convention. The visitors wrote an account of their impressions. “The churches of Virginia are numerous, opulent and prosperous,” wrote the Englishmen, “with very much that must be deeply deplored as incident to a slave state (a term which we devoutly hope and frankly believe will not be applicable a few years hence).”
By the early 19th century, the golden time had tarnished and an elaborate defense — including biblical — was made for slavery. The waters became muddy when the Triennial Convention decided not to appoint a slave owner as a missionary. White Southerners felt betrayed and the break in fellowship gave rise to the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845.
While most Baptist churches had mixed congregations, there were a few separate and independent black Baptist churches in Virginia prior to the War and a number of outstanding black preachers. After the Nat Turner insurrection, Virginia law provided that a white minister must preside over a black congregation. The die was cast.
And then there was the War. From 1861-65 much of the conflict was fought on Virginia soil. Congregations were depleted. For all practical purposes Richmond College, the Baptist school, died. Several ministers were imprisoned. Church buildings were damaged or destroyed. The mission boards were interrupted in their work.
At war’s end and emancipation’s beginning, the South — in land, economy and wealth — lay devastated. Garnett Ryland in his definitive history of Virginia Baptists noted that “the General Association [of Virginia] was the first body in the whole South to begin the work of religious reconstruction” and cited its resolution of June 1865: “That whatever may have been our past views, aims or efforts regarding the issues which have divided the Northern and Southern States, we deem it our duty as patriots and Christians to accept the order of Providence, yield … ‘to the powers that be’ and to cultivate such a spirit … and conduct as shall best promote the peace and prosperity of the country … and to enter with zeal and activity upon the discharge of the responsibilities [of our] new social and civic relations.”
With the new order, blacks began to withdraw from mixed congregations and to constitute new churches, district associations and even a state association. The white Baptists of the Middle District Baptist Association south of Richmond were perplexed. A committee to consider the withdrawal of the Midlothian African Church wanted the black church to remain in the association but realized that every case was on an individual basis.
“In some places, [blacks] are suspicious and bitter … in other places, purer feelings prevail.” The association urged its member churches to offer Sunday schools for the newly-freed blacks and “to cultivate toward this race a spirit of kindness.”
It took another century before black and white Baptists extended hands of fellowship. In the 1930s Virginia Woman’s Missionary Union led the way in inter-racial cooperation. In 1970 African-American churches began to reunite with the BGAV. On Nov. 11, 1975, an unprecedented joint meeting was held between white and black Virginia Baptists, including representatives from four statewide associations. The theme was “The New Humanity in Christ.”
What is the future of the past? Does it require perpetuation? Can it inform and inspire, prepare and prompt? Are 150 years enough to truly enable “a new humanity?”
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies, located on the campus of the University of Richmond. He may be contacted at [email protected] or at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.