The congregation at First Baptist Church in Columbia, Mo., recently held a worship service devoted to confessing and lamenting the church’s historical connection to slavery. The October service was part a year-long observance of the church’s bicentennial, which will be…
‘The Prayers of Both Could Not Be Answered’: The history of slavery at Wake Forest University and the Baptist church
On Oct. 23, faculty at Wake Forest University gathered to offer a film screening and panel discussion hosted by the institution’s Slavery, Race and Memory Project, an academic committee dedicated to the “examination of the history of slavery and its…
Black gospel music has messages hidden in the grooves
Note: This is the third in a five-part series on the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program made possible by generous funding from the Prichard Family Foundation. Most puzzles and riddles are simply good fun, but sometimes they provide important…
A surprising window into Black Jesus
Architect and art historian Hadley Arnold knew she was in for some surprises when she began transforming an 1830 Rhode Island church into a second home; but she certainly didn’t expect to discover one of America’s most significant works of…
Rethinking Rufus
Four and a half years of living in Fort Worth was long enough for me to gain a greater appreciation of how much the Burleson family name is revered in Texas. I already knew this to be true in North…
When is a ‘prominent’ memorial not as ‘major’ as advertised?
A “prominent” marker on the campus of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary acknowledging the sins of the institution’s slaveholding founders is smaller than a nearby banner bearing the image of current seminary President Al Mohler, the Louisville Courier-Journal reports. The 20-by-30-inch…
14 dangerous words
Never underestimate the power of words or a string of words. A news story about the Florida Board of Education — not a local school board but the state board — adopting new standards for teaching American history for children…
Duggar in-law preaches that slavery was abolished after Blacks ‘humbled themselves’
A Baptist church in Texas has issued a clarification after the father-in-law of the pastor preached that Black slaves “humbled themselves” and prayed, turning “from their wicked ways,” which led to their freedom through “several white presidents.” Mike Keller, who…
Brogdon urges forthright approach to ‘problematic’ biblical texts
While Lewis Brogdon doesn’t describe the Bible as fragile, he wants to help people interpret its content with care. That is one of the reasons Brogdon, associate professor preaching and Black church studies at Baptist Seminary of Kentucky, wrote a…