Distinctively Baptist Essays on Baptist History
Distinctively Baptist Essays on Baptist History

Author: Walter B. Shurden

Publisher: Mercer University Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780865547704

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This collection of essays by different authors is presented as a tribute to Walter B. "Buddy" Shurden, (distinctively Baptist) church historian, teacher, preacher, author, Baptist apologist extraordinaire. The rationale of this celebration of the lifework and influence of Walter Shurden is well stated, for example, in editor Marc Jolley's preface: "[D]uring some of the initial forays of our most-recent and ongoing Fundamentalist-Moderate controversy, there were days when I thought about changing denominations. Shurden's works were instrumental in my remaining a Baptist, not because I could see how Baptists had always had controversies and survived--although that is true--but because he helped me understand that the reason I had been Baptist and would remain so was due to our Baptist distinctives, our freedoms. For so much more, but especially for that understanding, I am forever grateful." Many students, Baptists in the pews, some at the pulpit or lectern, even some who are not "distinctively Baptist" could testify in like terms regarding the ongoing work and influence of Walter B. Shurden. The essays in this collection of course address some of the primary concerns of Walter Shurden, augmenting that already significant lifework.

William Louis Poteat
William Louis Poteat

Author: Randal L. Hall

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-10-17

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 0813157684

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William Louis Poteat (1856-1938), the son of a conservative Baptist slaveholder, became one of the most outspoken southern liberals during his lifetime. He was a rarity in the South for openly teaching evolution beginning in the 1880s, and during his tenure as president of Wake Forest College (1905-1927) his advocacy of social Christianity stood in stark contrast to the zeal for practical training that swept through the New South's state universities. Exceptionally frank in his support of evolution, Poteat believed it represented God at work in nature. Despite repeated attacks in the early 1920s, Poteat stood his ground on this issue while a number of other professors at southern colleges were dismissed for teaching evolution. One of the few Baptists who stressed the social duties of Christians, Poteat led numerous campaigns during the Progressive era for reform on such issues as public education, child labor, race relations, and care of the mentally ill. His convictions were grounded in a respect for high culture and learning, a belief in the need for leadership, and a deep-seated faith in God. Poteat also embodied the struggle with the intellectual compromises that tortured contemporary social critics in the South. Though he took a liberal position on numerous issues, he was a staunch advocate for prohibition and became a strong supporter of eugenics, a position he adopted after following his beliefs in a natural hierarchy and absolute moral order to their ultimate conclusion. Randal Hall's revisionist biography presents a nuanced portrait of Poteat, shedding new light on southern intellectual life, religious development, higher education, and politics in the region during his lifetime.

Come Shouting to Zion
Come Shouting to Zion

Author: Sylvia R. Frey

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2000-11-09

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0807861588

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The conversion of African-born slaves and their descendants to Protestant Christianity marked one of the most important social and intellectual transformations in American history. Come Shouting to Zion is the first comprehensive exploration of the processes by which this remarkable transition occurred. Using an extraordinary array of archival sources, Sylvia Frey and Betty Wood chart the course of religious conversion from the transference of traditional African religions to the New World through the growth of Protestant Christianity in the American South and British Caribbean up to 1830. Come Shouting to Zion depicts religious transformation as a complex reciprocal movement involving black and white Christians. It highlights the role of African American preachers in the conversion process and demonstrates the extent to which African American women were responsible for developing distinctive ritual patterns of worship and divergent moral values within the black spiritual community. Finally, the book sheds light on the ways in which, by serving as a channel for the assimilation of Western culture into the slave quarters, Protestant Christianity helped transform Africans into African Americans.

The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 20
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 20

Author: Thomas Jefferson

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2024-03-12

Total Pages: 789

ISBN-13: 0691255210

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A definitive new volume of the retirement papers of Thomas Jefferson During the period covered by the 575 documents in this volume, Jefferson advises President James Monroe on what later becomes known as the “Monroe Doctrine.” He also approves of the Greek independence movement in correspondence with the scholar and political leader Adamantios Coray. Jefferson says that the “most dangerous blot” on the U.S. Constitution is the provision under which a vote by the states in the House of Representatives decides elections not settled by the Electoral College. With his allies in Virginia’s General Assembly, he succeeds in converting the University of Virginia’s loans from the state Literary Fund into an outright grant and obtains an additional $50,000 for books and scientific instruments. He seeks advice on regulating and equipping the institution, helps to obtain its architectural capitals, and designs its gymnasia. Jefferson describes coffee as “the favorite beverage of the civilised world” and advises a namesake child to “Adore God. reverence and cherish your parents. love your neighbor as yourself; and your country more than life. be just. be true. murmur not at the ways of Providence, and the life into which you have entered will be the passage to one of eternal and ineffable bliss.”

North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715–1885
North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715–1885

Author: Warren Eugene Milteer Jr.

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2020-07-01

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0807173789

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In North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715–1885, Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. examines the lives of free persons categorized by their communities as “negroes,” “mulattoes,” “mustees,” “Indians,” “mixed-bloods,” or simply “free people of color.” From the colonial period through Reconstruction, lawmakers passed legislation that curbed the rights and privileges of these non-enslaved residents, from prohibiting their testimony against whites to barring them from the ballot box. While such laws suggest that most white North Carolinians desired to limit the freedoms and civil liberties enjoyed by free people of color, Milteer reveals that the two groups often interacted—praying together, working the same land, and occasionally sharing households and starting families. Some free people of color also rose to prominence in their communities, becoming successful businesspeople and winning the respect of their white neighbors. Milteer’s innovative study moves beyond depictions of the American South as a region controlled by a strict racial hierarchy. He contends that although North Carolinians frequently sorted themselves into races imbued with legal and social entitlements—with whites placing themselves above persons of color—those efforts regularly clashed with their concurrent recognition of class, gender, kinship, and occupational distinctions. Whites often determined the position of free nonwhites by designating them as either valuable or expendable members of society. In early North Carolina, free people of color of certain statuses enjoyed access to institutions unavailable even to some whites. Prior to 1835, for instance, some free men of color possessed the right to vote while the law disenfranchised all women, white and nonwhite included. North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715–1885 demonstrates that conceptions of race were complex and fluid, defying easy characterization. Despite the reductive labels often assigned to them by whites, free people of color in the state emerged from an array of backgrounds, lived widely varied lives, and created distinct cultures—all of which, Milteer suggests, allowed them to adjust to and counter ever-evolving forms of racial discrimination.