Baptists Need to Know Jack
We celebrate many early Baptist giants. Thomas Helwys. Roger Williams. John Leland. Adoniram and Anne Judson. Luther Rice. But there’s one we generally don’t know: Jack.
Douglas Wilson’s ‘Spiritual Takeover’ Plan Roils Idaho College Town
MOSCOW, Idaho (RNS) — For many local residents, this town is just about perfect. With only 30 percent identifying as "religious" one congregation has been planning a spiritual takeover of the town for years that will transform both its politics and its soul.
Harriet Tubman, in Movie and Real Life, Guided by Faith in Fight for Freedom
(RNS) — “God don’t mean people to own people.” That simple statement, uttered by Cynthia Erivo in the title role of "Harriet," a new movie about Harriet Tubman, reveals a truth long known by scholars of the woman dubbed “Moses.”
Time to Update Your Church’s History?
Around significant anniversaries, churches will often produce a write-up of their history. But what if we’ve left out some important details? Does your church need to reconsider the ugly parts of our history we may have left out?
The 1619 Project and the Fear of History
The “1619 Project” takes the arrival of the first enslaved people as a seminal event with which to reframe U.S. history, charting how there’s little that doesn’t somehow have the legacy of slavery at its foundation. But this reframing proved all too much for an
The 1619 Project
The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery and offers the section as a PDF.
Some White People Don’t Want to Hear About Slavery at Plantations Built By Slaves
Some of the negative online reviews posted online about guided tours of Southern plantations went viral after a former congressional candidate tweeted a screenshot of one.
From New York to Alabama, Blacks Worshipped in Own Spaces Before Slavery’s End
NEW YORK (RNS) — On a narrow street in Harlem sits the oldest black church in New York state, one of many black congregations that developed in the decades before slavery ended nationwide and that worked for its abolition.
Angela, a First African, Tells Her Story in Jamestown, but Her Faith Is a Mystery
JAMESTOWN, Va. (RNS) — Wearing a yellow headwrap, gray skirt and soiled apron, a woman who says she is “called by the name of Angela” stood by the James River and told her story, one of faith and courage, darkness and hope.
Angela Project Sparks Baptist Reflections on Slavery and Repair
African-American novelist and playwright James Baldwin said, “History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history. If we pretend otherwise, we literally are criminals.”