Next week, on Friday, April 11, the University of Richmond inaugurates its ninth president, Edward Ayers, who is an historian by profession. Ever since its humble yet hopeful beginnings, the University of Richmond (as academy, seminary, college and, since 1920,…
A giving life
Iris Brammer loved people. She also loved books and she especially enjoyed bringing people and books together. Maybe such passion helps explain why the public library in Narrows, Va., bears her name. She worked in the Narrows library in Southwest…
On her own
Virginia Pilcher Provence, pushing 90 at the time, went on her own to the Baptist World Alliance's Centennial Congress in Birmingham, England, in the summer of 2005. She investigated and learned that dorm rooms were available at a college. She…
Gathering of the tribes
The opening session of the New Baptist Covenant was like being in church — a very large Baptist church with a huge congregation. African-American Baptists were dressed in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes with those fantastic church hats. The younger generation of…
Axioms of religion
Exactly a century ago this year, in 1908, Edgar Young Mullins, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, published his landmark interpretation of Baptist faith and principles which he entitled The Axioms of Religion. Baptists in the pews and Baptists…
Free to profess
Last week, on Wednesday, Jan. 16, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom turned 222 years young. It was enacted by the Virginia General Assembly on that date in 1786. Virginia had just passed through a paradigm shift, moving from a…
What remains
The souvenir booklet from the dedication of the building was fittingly lavish for a church edifice which rivaled any house of worship in America. Exactly a century ago, in 1908, the Second Baptist Church of St. Louis, Mo., then the…
Third letter to Zachary
Dear Zachary: Ten years ago your grandfather wrote you a letter soon after your birth. You probably have never read that letter, but I trust your parents put it with some keepsakes and someday you may want to read it….
Adventures of a church planter
Jeremiah Bell Jeter was in a dilemma. After several years of a highly successful pastorate at the prestigious First Baptist Church of Richmond, “the music demon” visited the church. In today's language, it was “the worship wars.” And it all…