Sign up for our free newsletter:

Troubling hope

I am a charter subscriber to Christian History and never miss a single word of each issue. I found the latest issue," Bound for Canaan," most disturbing and most encouraging. What a record of God's grace and a rebuke to hypocrisy.

Alan Allegra
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

While reading "Bound for Canaan," my thoughts were best described by Phillis Wheatley's poem ("A Gallery of Freedom"). Speaking in "group terms," and not of individuals, the black man was villainously ripped from his homeland and forced to live as a sub-human within a confessing white "Christian" country. Under these most hellish conditions, and with the help of very few whites, he found grace, redemption, and a personal relationship with his Lord and Savior.

Walter E. Fisher
Hartford City, Indiana

It is encouraging that the hidden strengths of this "invisible church" are now being made available to the church today. We have much to learn about how to hold to the faith in an overtly hostile society. Continue to encourage us from the chronicles of these "hush harbors." Perhaps this will help bring to an end Sunday being the most segregated hour of the week if we know that others have made contributions to the faith in this nation's early history.

Michael Mills
Garland, Texas

More campus radicals
As you probably know, several colleges were founded as abolitionist action centers. For instance, Wheaton was a station on the underground railway, and Oberlin College had strong abolitionist roots, as did Lane in Galesburg, Illinois.

Wayne Detzler
Charlotte, North Carolina

Con and Pro
You did little more than regurgitate the politically correct bias of so many in our society today. There is a great volume of historical data and first-person accounts that repudiate the main thesis of this issue, yet you failed to even allude to this.

Dr. and Mrs. David A. Black
Oxford, North Carolina

The article "Defeating the Conspiracy" is excellent. Bringing together the many phases of the black dilemma in those turbulent years had to be a difficult balancing act. Moreover, the magazine is to be complimented for taking on a very difficult topic, and doing it well.

James R. McCosh
Cadillac, Michigan

The first First Baptist
The article "Baptist Power" lists Bryan Street African Baptist Church as the first black Baptist church in America, erected 1794. First Baptist, Williamsburg, was organized entirely by and for African-Americans nearly 20 years earlier. By oral tradition, the Williamsburg congregation was formally organized by 1776, it can be documented by 1781, with official recognition by the regional Baptist association (Dover) in 1793. First Baptist was referred to by the Dover records as the "African Church in Williamsburg."

John W. Turner, Ph.D
Williamsburg, Virginia

Questions, Questions
I had my wife buy me the CD-ROM as a birthday present so that I can read the issues I missed. That leads me to the following questions.

1. Why have you not yet done an issue on Jan Hus?
   
   
2. The CD-ROM says that issue 9 was a book. What was the topic? Is it available?
   
   
3. Are you planning an issue devoted to Christian mysticism?
   
   

Ron Stormer
Via the Internet

1. Jan Hus is coming in 2000.
   
   
2. Issue 9 was an overview of the early church and is out of print.
   
   
3. No plans on mysticism—unless we get enough requests!
   
   

—eds

Order the Back Issue for this article
	Issue 63: A Severe Salvation Order one copy for $5.00, or buy in bulk and save! Click here to order now!

				Subscribe to Christian History & Biography RISK-FREE! Name Street Address   City/State/Zip E-mail Address   No credit card required. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. Offer valid in U.S. only. Click here for International orders. If you decide you want to keep Christian History & Biography coming, honor your invoice for just $19.95 and receive three more issues, a full year in all. If not, simply write "cancel" across the invoice and return it. The trial issues are yours to keep, regardless. Give a gift subscription | Buy past issues