Thursday March 1st, 2018

I arrived at the Mississippi Baptist Historical Commission at 8:00 a.m.  I resumed digitizing oral histories and began with part 2 of the Baptists and the American Experience recordings pertaining to the bicentennial.  The second part of the Baptists and the American Experience sereis contained discussion from James B. Colgate whom was the Professor of the History of Christianity of the Colgate Rcohester Bexley Hall Trosier Divinity School.  He discussed how Baptists from from obscurity during the American Revolution.  The third part of the Baptists and the American Experience series contains the discussions of three professors.  The first professor, Dr. C.C. Gowen, was a Professor of Church History at Wesley Theological Seminary.  Like others, Dr. Gowen touches upon the role of Baptists during the American Revolution.  The next discussion was very informative for me.  It was from Dr. Denton Lotts whom whom was a Baptist Missionary and Fraternal Representative to Eastern Europe.  In his discussion, Dr. Lotts moves past the Revolutionary era of American History and towards both the 19th and 20th Century.  Dr. Lotts mentions Christian missionary William Carey and his relevance to bringing people to not just the Baptist Christian denomination but Christianity as a whole.  William Carey College, which is in the same town as the University of Southern Mississippi (Hattiesburg), is named after this man.  I took a break for lunch at 12:33 p.m. and returned at 1:03 p.m. Dr. Lotts mentions that "there is a tension seen in Baptist missions and this tension can be seen from two Baptist men since World War II, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Reverend Billy Graham" (MBHC, 1976).  I found this coincidental since they were mentioned in the previous audio cassette and because both Black History Month just ended and the Reverend Billy Graham is being buried tomorrow.  In describing Billy Graham, Dr. Lotts said that Billy Graham represented 'world evangelization' and helped people of the world better understand churches and Christianity as a whole (MBHC, 1976).  Martin Luther King Jr., on the other hand, "reminded Americans, Black and White, that just to fight for equality at home means nothing if we live in a world of squalor and indignity where people's rights are being denied throughout the whole world" (MBHC, 1976).  I left the Mississippi Baptist Historical Commission at 4:30 p.m.