Charles Jones

The passage of the First Amendment, ratified in 1791, was the end of a long struggle for Religious Freedom in America.

Why was the persecution of Baptists more intense in Virginia than other colonies? How did that persecution lead to religious liberty in America?

With few exceptions, Baptists across the colonies, especially those who had experienced persecution, supported the American Revolution. Reasons included persecution, other grievances including taxation without representation, and the tyranny exhibited by the British crown and royal governors. Baptists hoped to gain both political and religious freedom by supporting the war.

Baptists in the southern colonies experienced explosive growth during the First Great Awakening. They also began to experience increased persecution from the Anglican (state) Church in the decades before the American Revolution – persecution which convinced many Baptists of the importance of religious liberty and the fight for American independence.

CARTERSVILLE, Ga (BP) – At 6-foot-4, Ed Rhodes is used to people looking up to him. Yet, beyond his physical presence there is much more to this 82-year-old retired Baptist preacher from Cartersville, Ga. There’s a presence that transcends the barriers of race, age, politics, prejudice, socioeconomics, education and seemingly time itself.

NEW BERN, N.C. (BP) – Exploring the unusual circumstances surrounding his birth, retired Southern Baptist pastor Steve Simpson discovered an unexpected connection to the Holocaust.

The feast enjoyed by the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag people in 1621 is what most people think of as the first Thanksgiving. However, the first recorded English day of Thanksgiving in the New World actually took place at “Berkeley 100” in Virginia two years earlier.

DAYTON, Tenn. (BP) – The setting for the “Trial of the Century” was the small county-seat town of Dayton, 40 miles north of Chattanooga. Better known as the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” it took place July 10-21, 1925.

The Baptist Faith and Message, when adopted in 1925, was not intended to be the last word on SBC beliefs. Confessions of faith are periodically revised in response to changes in culture or theological challenges from without and within. Following its adoption, the subject of denominational beliefs was not revised for nearly 40 years.  

Sanford Miller Brown Jr. was a Baptist preacher’s son from Kansas City and a recent graduate of Missouri State University. He was beginning a career in business.