Author: Jean McDaniel

Dec. 16, 1769.  Jesse Mercer, hymnist and preacher, was born in Halifax County, NC.  Mercer University in Georgia was named after him.  As a delegate to Georgia’s constitutional convention in 1798, he helped to defeat a proposal that would have made ministers ineligible to hold public office in Georgia. The convention’s delegates also gave Mercer the responsibility for writing the section of Georgia’s constitution guaranteeing religious liberty to the state’s citizens. Mercer made a run for the state senate in 1816 but was unsuccessful. From 1817 to 1835 Mercer also served four times as a delegate to the Triennial Convention which supported foreign missions. ABHS has many volumes by and about Jesse Mercer and Mercer University.  ABHS’s offices and archives are on the Mercer University Atlanta campus.

Dec. 15 1836  The first Baptist church in Australia, Bathhurst Church in New South Wales, was constituted by John Saunders.  At an anniversary celebration they give thanks to those pioneer preachers who saw the need to bring the Gospel to this town of 5000 people with its 50 pubs. They gathered around them a core group to establish a church within a year of meeting in the old courthouse. Bathurst was the gateway to the west and it was from these beginnings that the Gospel began spreading further afield in the surrounding area and then further westward. ABHS has Yearbooks from the New South Wales and Queensland Baptist churches.

December 12, 1829.  William Staughton, pioneer in the areas of missions and education, died in Washington, DC.   Staughton was a Baptist clergyman, educator, and music composer. He was also a Chaplain of the United States Senate and the first President of Columbian College from 1821-1827, which is the original name and oldest division (1821) of The George Washington University.  He accepted a position as President of the Literary and Theological Institution of Georgetown College in Georgetown, Kentucky in September 1829. However, while making the journey to the College, Staughton died on December 12, 1829. He was originally buried in the District of Columbia’s Episcopal cemetery, but his body was later moved to Philadelphia’s Sansom Street Church Cemetery.  ABHS has the personal papers of Staughton and some of the records of Sansom Street Church.

Early Bird registration ends on January 1, 2018 for “The Legacy of Walter Rauschenbusch”  conference which will take place April 9-11, 2018, on Mercer University’s Cecil B. Day Graduate and Professional Campus in Atlanta. Detailed information is available. Download a registration form.

This campus is home to the American Baptist Historical Society, which holds the most extensive collection of Rauschenbusch family papers.  ABHS is one of the conference sponsors, and will host a reception and display on the first night of the conference.

Conference speakers include Gary Dorrien, Christopher Evans, Andrea Strubind, Roger Prentice, Adam Bond, Wendy Deichmann, and Dominik Gautier.

Registration closes March 25.

 

 

Dec. 7, 1951   The first Baptist Women’s Day of Prayer was held.  This has become an annual event of the Baptist World Alliance.  “The Baptist World Alliance is a global movement of Baptists sharing a common confession of faith in Jesus Christ bonded together by God’s love to support, encourage and strengthen one another while proclaiming and living the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit before a lost and hurting world.”  The Day of Prayer is designed to encourage and celebrate unity in Christ among Baptist women of the world and work towards peace, reconciliation, justice and development through prayer, witness and service. ABHS has the historical records of BWA.

Dec. 6, 1776  The Virginia Assembly, led by Thomas Jefferson, passed a law denying funds for the Episcopal Church. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was written into the state’s law and disestablished the Church of England in Virginia and guaranteed freedom of religion to people of all religious faiths, including Christians of all denominations, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus.   The statute was a notable precursor of the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Virginia Assembly dates from the establishment of the House of Burgesses at Jamestown in 1619. It became the General Assembly in 1776 with the ratification of the Virginia Constitution.  ABHS has books and pamphlets on the struggle for religious freedom in colonial times.

Dec. 1 1630 Roger Williams and his wife, Mary, boarded the ship Lyon to sail to the New World.  Williams had come to a position as a separatist, believing the Church of England to be corrupt and false.  He believed that “soul liberty” or freedom of conscience is a gift from God, and thought freedom of religion a natural right which demanded that church and state be separated.  This also put him opposed to the rule of the Congregationalists (Puritans) in Massachusetts.  In the spring of 1636, Williams and a number of his followers from Salem began a new settlement on land that Williams had bought from Massasoit in present-day Rumford, Rhode Island. ABHS has many books about Roger Williams and several items written by him including Christenings Make Not Christians written in 1645.

Nov. 29, 1908:  Adam Clayton Powell Jr.  was born in New Haven, CT.  A preacher and congressman, he is also known for his civil rights work.  Powell was the first person of African-American descent to be elected from New York to Congress and the fourth in the 20^th century. He grew up in the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem where his father was the pastor, and graduated from Colgate University in 1930.  ABHS has Powell’ss autobiography and other of his writings as well as many books and magazine articles about him.

Nov. 28, 1629:  John Bunyan was born in Elstow, England.  Bunyon was an English writer and Puritan preacher best remembered as the author of the Christian allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress. In addition to The Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan wrote nearly sixty titles, many of them expanded sermons. He spend 12 years in prison because he would not stop preaching a ‘nonconformist’ gospel.   ABHS has many copies of this work, the earliest dating from 1676.   The theme of the fall-Winter 2014 issue of the American Baptist Quarterly is “John Bunyan and the Baptist Academy.”

November 27, 1844:  Henrietta Hall Shuck, the first Baptist American woman missionary to China, died at the age of 27 in Hong Kong.  She and her husband, John Lewis, sailed for China in 1835, when she was just 17 years old.  She started the first Christian school for Chinese children in China.  She encouraged girls to come to her school, in fact she allowed boys to come only if they brought a girl also.  ABHS has a biographical file on Henrietta as well as several magazine articles reporting on her activities.

Nov. 24, 1910:  John E. Clough died in Rochester, NY.  Sent by the American Baptist foreign Mission Society to the Telegues of South India, he served for 46 years.  ABHS holds published and unpublished manuscripts of his, as well as correspondence, diaries, photographs, scrapbooks and biographical information.  His second wife was Emma Rauschenbusch.  ABHS has the missionary letters of John Clough from 1864-1918 and of Emma Rauschenbusch from 1920-1940.

“The Legacy of Walter Rauschenbusch” will take place April 9-11, 2018, on Mercer University’s Cecil B. Day Graduate and Professional Campus in Atlanta. Detailed information is available. Download a registration form.

This campus is home to the American Baptist Historical Society, which holds the most extensive collection of Rauschenbusch family papers.  ABHS is one of the conference sponsors, and will host a reception and display on the first night of the conference.

Conference speakers include Gary Dorrien, Christopher Evans, Andrea Strubind, Roger Prentice, Adam Bond, Wendy Deichmann, and Dominik Gautier.

Registration fees increase after “early bird” registration ends on Jan 1, 2018.  Registration closes March 25.

 

Nov. 19, 1774:  Isaac Backus returned to Middleborough, MA, where he had been pastor of the Baptist church since 1751. Ordained in 1748, Backus became a Baptist in 1751 when he became pastor of the church.  He was a leading proponent of religious freedom leading up to the ratification of the Constitution.   He was also one of the founders of the college that became Brown University, the first Baptist school of higher learning.  ABHS has many of Backus’ writings and information about him.

Nov. 18, 1961:  Isabel Crawford,died in Winona, NY.   She was a missionary with the Kiowa people in the Oklahoma Territory. Crawford, who had lost most of her hearing due to an illness, communicated with the Kiowa using Plains Indian sign language. She lived among the Kiowa for about eleven years, sharing their lives and helping them build their first church and, when she died, she was buried in their cemetery. ABHS has a collection of her papers and photographs.

Videos from the “Let It Not Happen Again” discussion are now available on YouTube.  The first part is an introduction; in part 2 Yosh Nakagawa tells the story of his experiences in the internment camp; in part 3 Jeffrey Haggray challenges us with 4 ways we can “Let It Not Happen Again”.

Please Visit ABHS’s YouTube channel.

Nov. 15, 1961:  The Progressive National Baptist Convention was organized in Cincinnati.  ABHS has many books and newspaper articles about the history of the Progressive Baptists, as well as the Progressive News and the Convention minutes.

 

Nov. 11:  Veteran’s Day. Baptists have been ministering to veterans from the time of the Revolutionary War, when David Jones was a military chaplain and the Civil War, when Joanna Moore taught veterans to read and write.  WW I and WWII, the Vietnam War and more recent conflicts have seen Baptist chaplains and Baptist soldiers.  ABHS has the personal correspondence and diaries of David Jones and a Letterbook with two sets of letters (1865) and goodbye notes from soldiers of the 56^th US Colored Infantry in Helena Arkansas (from the collection of Joanna P. Moore).

 

Nov. 9, 1800.  Mary Webb organized the first missionary society called Boston Female Society for Missionary Purposes.  Women’s Missionary organizations started schools, training centers, community centers and other mission programs.  They also recruited and trained women missionaries to staff these programs.  Women’s Baptist Home Mission Society of the East, which was organized in Boston in 1877, was one of these. ABHS has minutes of the Home Mission Societies and their publications like Tidings.