Eric Reece
As a child, I was watching my grandfather plow with his mule. He would plow a row and holler, “gee,” or “haw,” and turn and plow another.
I asked my father why Papa plowed with a mule when he had a tractor? My father said, “He had a foot in both worlds.”
I didn’t understand it then – but as I have gotten older, I realized more and more what it means to have feet in both worlds. I imagine my grandfather plowed with the mule instead of the tractor because he enjoyed it. He plowed many rows with an old mule before he could afford a tractor. Those days were hard, but looking back it was a lot easier than repairing a stubborn carburetor.
I may have inherited some of my grandfather's quality of standing with a foot in both worlds. Whenever I hear or read about a historical discovery – especially related to local or American church history – one foot slides in the past as I am taken back to the time of the event.
I celebrate a recent find in the American Baptist Church archives. Volunteer Jennifer Cromack was going through some boxes when she found a slim box among 18th- and 19th-century journals.
Opening it, she found a 5-foot-long scroll. It was a handwritten document entitled, “A Resolution and Protest Against Slavery.” It was signed by 116 New England Baptist ministers in Boston in 1847.
The document was last seen in 1902 and presumed lost forever. Over the years, searches at Harvard and Brown Universities ended up empty.
Why is this scroll important? The Baptist ministers took a stand against slavery 14 years before the start of the Civil War. This was after the Baptist Church had split over slavery in 1845. The Northern Baptist evidently became the American Baptist Church USA and the Southern Baptist became the largest protestant church in the country.
These ministers took a stand. Many saw the evil of slavery as just a southern problem. These men stood for right and justice. They had to do something, so they came together and voiced their belief why they, “disapprove and abhor the system of American slavery.”
The document states about slavery, “With such a system we can have no sympathy. After a careful observation of its character and effects and making every deduction with the largest charity can require, we are constrained to regard it as an outrage upon the rights and happiness of our fellow men, for which there is no valid justification or apology. Under these circumstances we can no longer be silent.. We owe something to the oppressed as well as to the oppressor, and justice demands the fulfillment of that obligation. Truth and Humanity and Public Virtue, have claims upon us which we cannot dishonor.”
Edmund Burke was said to have penned the words, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Eric Reece is the faith columnist for The Graham Star. He is pastor of Robbinsville United Methodist Church and can be reached via email, ereece@wnccumc.net.