Today marks the 50th Anniversary of one of the most important speeches in American history, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech given on the Washington Mall on August 28, 1963. It marked a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement and it had such galvanizing power because it called America back… Continue Reading
Category Archives: History
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (11 Dec. 1918 – 3 Aug. 2008), Russian dissident under Communist rule, novelist (won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970), and historian who shone a light on Communist oppression through the Gulags, died five years ago today. In 1983, Solzhenitsyn gave an address on the occasion of winning the Templeton Prize for… Continue Reading
Quotes From the Founding Fathers
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happines. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor… Continue Reading
This Life Is Not All There Is: Thoughts From a Cemetery in New Orleans
We stayed in New Orleans for a couple of extra days and on Thursday, Erika said that she wanted to visit one of the cemeteries in New Orleans that had the above ground tombs and mausoleums. We ended up in the Garden District and stumbled upon Lafayette Cemetery, No. 1. While walking through, we found… Continue Reading
“Jim Crow Is Dead, Jesus Christ Is Alive,” and Other SBC 2012 Observations
That was a quote via Russell Moore on Twitter today after Fred Luter was unanimously and with extended standing ovation elected as the first African American president of the Southern Baptist Convention. As Dr. Moore went on to say, the descendent of slaves is now the head of a denomination that was started over the… Continue Reading
What They Omitted From the Declaration of Independence
“We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” ~ Thomas Jefferson This was Jefferson’s view, and the view of many others, on the institution of slavery in the early days of America. On the one… Continue Reading
The SBC Founded on the Wrong Side of History
I am working on a book that deals with the history of white evangelicals in the South in regard to racial division and how many of the underlying issues that led them to be racists are still with us today, just manifesting in different forms. These forms are still very destructive and dramatically effect our… Continue Reading
Christmas Eve Truce of 1914: Peace, for a Night
Following is a fascinating story as told by Private Frederick W. Heath and reprinted by Alan Nothnagle of how World War One stopped on Christmas Eve almost 100 years ago and there was "Peace on Earth," at least for one night, in the trenches of France where the Germans, French, and British had been previously slaughtering… Continue Reading
The Apology of Aristides, Fasting, and the Lifestyles of Early Christians
At LIFE Group this past Friday night, we were sitting outside by the fire and talking about prayer and fasting and how the discipline of fasting has a two-fold objective, which is to put away distractions and dependencies to bring us to God and then to give ourselves away to others. Gabe Posey, a member… Continue Reading
Sarah Palin Is a Genius. Admit It.
Sarah Palin has everyone right where she wants them, critics and supporters alike. She is a sheer genius. She is on this bus tour of historical sites in the Northeast and, at first glance, you would think that she didn't know much about history. Case in point: Okay, that looks bad. The history teacher… Continue Reading