RICHMOND — The forthcoming issue of the Virginia Baptist Register includes the address delivered by Milburn Price at a music convocation sponsored by the Center for Baptist Heritage & Studies and held last May. Price, the recently retired dean of the School of Performing Arts at Samford University and a respected figure in the field of church music, offered an overview of Baptist congregational song in America with particular references to the contributions of Virginia Baptists from the past, including John Leland, Andrew Broaddus and Basil Manly Jr.
Also transcribed in the issue is a rare document entitled “Help for the Churches: A brief Treatise on the form and discipline of a Gospel Church.” Written by an unknown author and dedicated to the churches of Goshen Baptist Association, “Help for the Churches” was an early suggestion of church polity for Baptist churches. The manuscript only recently became known and was purchased for the collection of the Virginia Historical Society. E. Lee Shepard, director of manuscripts and archives at the Virginia Historical Society, prepared the document for publication and included an explanatory essay. It is believed that the polity statement dates from the times of the early beginnings of the Goshen, perhaps as early as the 1790s.
Fred Anderson, executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society, has contributed an article entitled “Letters Between Friends,” which incorporates 50 items of correspondence written by Jeremiah Bell Jeter and Daniel Witt across a span of the 1820s-1860s. The two men were pivotal figures in the life of Virginia Baptists in the 19th century. As young men in the early 1820s, they served as the first state missionaries of the Baptist General Association of Virginia. They rose in prominence and were involved in many of the Baptist organizations of the period. Their friendship began as they traveled as missionaries for two years and they maintained a steady correspondence throughout the balance of their lifetimes. The letters include references to personal matters, business concerns, “the Baptist wars” over Landmarkism and the Civil War.
Copies of the Register will be sent to annual members of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society. Copies also are available for $6 plus $2 for postage and handling and can be ordered from VBHS, P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173 or telephone (804) 289-8434.