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Spiritual Surgery: 4 Ways to Cooperate with God

By
Kim Brightness
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spiritual surgery

The Doctor Will See You Now

Life is filled with time spent in the Waiting Room, where we’re sick from disappointments, missed lessons, and waiting for our “time” for change. And, while many of us use this time to wait for circumstances and situations to change, it’s really about us! We are next in line for a transplant – a new mindset (Philippians 2:5), a new outlook, a clean heart (Psalm 51:10), and a new spirit.

When life announces, “The Doctor will see you now”, what do we do?

We start fumbling through our bag of mixed emotions.  We want the enlarged territory, we want good success, we want greatness – but we’re also sick with fear: “Will it hurt?” “How long will it take?” “I’m afraid of change.”

What Are You Here For?

waiting on godWe’ve all been there.  I’m sitting next to you in the Waiting Room right now. As teammates and co-workers for Christ, God wants His team to prosper physically, financially, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually – so the whole Body can be effective and efficient in bringing Him honor.

We’re in the best place we could be, in process for God to transform and heal some places in our lives that have been bumped, bruised, or flat out broken. The Great Physician is standing by to put us back together fresh and new.

But, there’s something we have to do in the process.

We’ve got to COOPERATE with the transformation and healing we so desire.

Take a look at Adam.

In Genesis 2:21, when God began to make woman, it says that God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and Adam slept. He didn’t fight the sleep. Adam didn’t peek. Adam graciously rested in God, and trusted God to provide what (who) he needed and how.

So, here’s a brief list of play calls to help you cooperate with your spiritual surgery. Ready?

Before You Hop on the Table for Spiritual Surgery, remember:

1. Lie there and be still; Stay in position.

Have you ever witnessed a mother give birth while sitting upright in a chair? Or, how about open heart surgery taking place while the patient lies on his stomach? Pretty hard for either procedure to be a success, right?

Positioning aligns your entire being to receive an expected outcome. Positioning is paramount to your purpose and can make or break your process [Tweet that]. When we are out of place, when we rebel against the posture that will bring us success, we sabotage the greatness that we’re destined for – all because we won’t get into position and stay there.

2. Go limp and trust the Doctor; Don’t resist the anesthesia.

Are you afraid you’re going to miss something (FOMO)? Do you have a spiritual medical degree and want to make sure the procedure goes well? Team, just fall asleep!

Truth is, you cannot know, control, or fix everything – but God can [Tweet that]. If you could, you wouldn’t be on the operating table in dire need of a new heart, mind, or attitude. When we take our hands off the situation and trust God at work, our masterpiece life will emerge.

3. Be quiet; Quit telling everybody everything you see, hear, and feel.

Our mouths can be our worse enemy, and an even worse enemy of transformation and healing. Constant negative talk, self-doubt, expressions of fear – our mouths can create or reinforce the very death traps that God is actually working to rescue us from.

You can be in perfect alignment and position on the operating table, but delay or never receive your transplant because you won’t stop talking – you’re disrupting the process, disturbing the peace, disrespecting the order that your process calls for. Get into a place of quiet – don’t say so much, and if you have to talk, talk to the Doctor.

4. Stop watching the clock; Trust that time works for the Team.

Am I done yet? Can I see it? Can I go now? We often spend so much time watching the clock and thinking about ourselves, we forget that God is watching everyone’s clock to benefit each other!

We are one Team, and there is no change, transformation, healing, or success planned for us in isolation. Perhaps your perceived delay is to allow the person who will give you the job time to be promoted themselves – so they are in the position to bless you. Perhaps “he” or “she” is not here yet because God is taking time to work some things out of you that would scare Mr. or Ms. Right away. The clock tick-tocks for us all – not just for one.

So, What’s the Play Call?

Team, it’s amazing how bad we want success, abundance, to win – but the consistent hold up to all of these super fabulous things is our unwillingness to surrender and cooperate with God.

Trust that you’re in good hands with the Great Physician (Proverbs 3:5-6).

Let’s sleep, shall we?

Your Greatness Takes Elbow Grease

By
Alecia M. White
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purpose

Your Hard Work Toward Purpose is Worth the Weight

It was Saturday and I had my music going while I was cleaning my kitchen. You all know that’s officially how you clean, with the music blaring. Anyhoo, I’d washed the dishes, wiped off the stove, swept, and mopped. I turned off the music and the light and walked out of the kitchen when I decided to go back. You see, I have a glass top stove and after cooking on it so many times, it gets a build-up. Wiping the stove off with a soapy towel doesn’t fix it, you have to use a special cleaner and scrub it off.

Well, it typically takes me weeks to decide to do this because it takes me the longest. I pile the cleaner on, let it sit, then scrub it off. The issue is that I literally have to use “elbow grease” to get the stove to be clear of any burn residue and it irritates me. As I said, I usually opt to just wipe it off really well and ignore the brown scorch marks that stare back at me.

Why? My reason is simple – I just don’t feel like it. It takes too much extra effort and sometimes, it doesn’t get spotless the first time and I have to reapply and scrub again. It’s a little discouraging to scrub and scrub only to have it seem as if it’ll never come clean.

When I actually take the time and determine that I am going to get it clean, my hard work pays off. I’m typically a little extra tired and my arm is a little sore, but it’s worth it.

So, What’s the Play Call?

My thought today is simple, put in the work. Yes, it will take more time and effort and you will get tired, but if God called you to it, He will most definitely see you through until the end.

Giving up is an option, but you won’t see your hard work pay off. The work God has called you to will take more, it’s going to take “elbow grease”. I know it seems like the residue of your last loss or disappointment won’t wipe clean, but try again!

Here are a few things to keep in mind when trying to get to a spotless finish:

  1. Be patient with yourself. This process will, at times, feel tedious and we are often harder on ourselves when things do not go as smoothly as we plan. “But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” James 1:4
  2. Rely on God for strength. Walking in your purpose is a lot like cleaning my stove, in that it takes additional energy that you may or may not have. Let God replenish you. “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.”
  3. Don’t quit. If you would just see this thing through to its end, the results will be worth it. I mean, they have to be, this is God’s plan, not yours. “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” Galatians 6:9
  4. All you need to do is begin. Know that if God placed it within you to start, He will finish it. “Being confident in this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Philippians 1:6

Whatever you do, don’t walk away from that stove before cleaning it completely. The purpose you have over your life is to be seen through until the end.

The Equality Act and Religious Freedom: What Do Americans Actually Think?

By
Christianity Today
-
Equality Act

Once every week or two, I get a press release about the Equality Act. The theme is consistent: This bill is popular. Americans love it. They want it passed yesterday.

That’s a big claim. If correct, it means American views on religious liberty, sexuality, and gender, and their intersection in nondiscrimination laws have undergone a swift and stark shift. It means Christians and members of other religions who hew to a more traditional view of sex are not merely in the cultural minority but facing massive legal changes to their worship, business, and educational lives. But if the reality is more complicated—and, spoiler alert, I think it is—we may have stumbled into a serious national misunderstanding about an important and contentious issue.

The Equality Act in its present form has been under congressional consideration for half a decade. It’s passed the House twice, never the Senate. President Biden called for its passage in his April speech to Congress, but since then the bill has stagnated while legislative attention goes to major spending packages instead. Still, this isn’t longshot legislation, and it will likely be reintroduced in the next Congress if it doesn’t pass this one.

What happens if this becomes law? The bill’s headline purpose is to “prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation,” and it mainly works by amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Some of the Equality Act’s provisions would be welcomed across the political spectrum, but four parts have raised grave concern regarding religious liberty.

One is the bill’s expansion of the definition of “public accommodation.” The 1964 law defined this as hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and some entertainment venues. The Equality Act adds “any establishment that provides a good, service, or program,” a definition broad enough to potentially include houses of worship. Massachusetts passed a similar law several years ago, and …

Continue reading…

Church Closings Topped Church Openings in 2019. Then Came the Pandemic.

By
Christianity Today
-
church closings

US Protestant churches endured a difficult 2020, including starting the year with fewer congregations.

In 2019, approximately 3,000 Protestant churches were started in the US, but 4,500 Protestant churches closed, according to estimates from Nashville-based Lifeway Research.

The evangelical research organization analyzed congregational information from 34 denominations and groups representing 60 percent of US Protestant churches to arrive at the church plant and closure numbers for 2019.

The current closure gap indicates a shift from Lifeway Research’s previous analysis. For 2014, an estimated 4,000 Protestant churches were planted, while 3,700 closed in a year.

“Over the last decade, most denominations have increased the attention they are giving to revive existing congregations that are struggling,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “This has been more than a fad. This has been a response to a real, growing need to revitalize unhealthy congregations.”

Church planting experts say the decline in new churches was expected but is still troubling.

“While planting a church is still one of the most exciting things a pastor can do, over the past few years, I’ve noticed a growing hesitancy to plant, which is why these numbers don’t surprise me,” said Daniel Im, co-author of Planting Missional Churches and lead pastor of Beulah Alliance Church in Edmonton, Alberta. “Starting a church from scratch is not as it used to be, especially with the rise in Boomer pastors retiring and needing to find a successor.”

For Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, the numbers provide a clarifying reminder …

Continue reading…

Discrimination or ‘Do No Harm’: Christian Doctors Gear Up for Transgender Debates

By
Christianity Today
-

As cultural conflicts around transgender identity grow more intense, Christian doctors see a need to be more sensitive to the plights and preferences of people experiencing gender dysphoria while also holding firm to personal and professional convictions around biological sex.

That’s what the Christian Medical and Dental Associations (CMDA) says in an updated statement on transgender identification that leaders hope will inform its 20,000 members as well as the general public.

That balance might be difficult to maintain, though, if federal health officials take the position that declining certain treatments for transgender patients can be considered a form of discrimination based on sex.

Last week, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that antidiscrimination protections under the Affordable Care Act include sexual orientation and gender identity. The current administration’s stance revives a contested interpretation under President Barack Obama.

Though the HHS announcement said the department would comply with religious freedom protections in its enforcement under this interpretation, the decision raises the stakes for two current lawsuits over conscience protections for religious hospitals and doctors who do not perform certain procedures for faith reasons—and it is expected to spur further legal challenges.

“We do know that this is happening. Our fear, as an organization, is we had a temporary reprieve under the Trump administration,” said Dr. Jeffrey Barrows, CMDA’s senior vice president of bioethics and public policy. “We are very concerned and expect that we’ll have an increase in lawsuits and threats against our members and other Christian health …

Continue reading…

Seasons Change: 4 Things to Do When You’ve Outgrown Them

By
Kim Brightness
-
seasons change

Seasons Change. It’s Time to Go.

You all had a good run – that season, job, person, place, or thing. Or, maybe it was a bad run. Either way, the weather has changed, tides have turned, and it’s time for you to move on.

Sometimes, we don’t want the seasons to change. We’re comfortable. We’ve got things all figured out – and here comes God shaking things up, right?

Well, whether you’re excited, sad, or nervous about the shift, here are 4 ways to prepare yourself for the end of a thing and welcome God’s new thing!

1. Welcome the change of seasons with thanksgiving and gratitude.

Teammate, you’re not ending this season the same way you entered it. Oh no, you’ve made some mistakes, learned some lessons, and grown a little wiser – and for that, let your heart be thankful and filled with gratitude.

Thank God for the mistakes you made – you’ll never have to make them again. Give thanks for the opportunity for God to use you and grow you through the season. Allow a grateful heart to keep away any feelings of fear, regret, and uncertainty – realizing that God reveals Himself from faith-to-faith (Romans 1:17).

2. Tie up any loose ends – with excellence.

Whenever you’re exiting a season, be it a job, relationship, relocation – make sure there are no “loose ends” that need to be tied. Deliver on every promise. Give back what needs to be returned, and in Jesus’ name – never take what’s not supposed to go with you.

Don’t fall into the “entitlement” trap of all the years you’ve spent, and take what does not belong to you. The last thing you want to do is defile your future journey by carrying old season stuff into your next promised land.

3. Walk away by faith, and not by sight.

If God brought you to the last season – person, place, or thing – He’ll bring you to the next season. Don’t go trying to force any situations or manipulate circumstances into what you think should be your “next”. Sure, you’re walking wiser and stronger, but you’re still walking by faith (2 Corinthians 5:7) – even when you walk away. Keep God in the driver’s seat and follow His lead.

4. Stop playing. Let go, for real.

No play-play letting go, Teammates. If God is moving and shifting you from a place that no longer serves you – keeping your pinky finger on the pulse of what’s going on “back there” will stunt your progress forward. You can’t dwell on the past and effectively move forward (Philippians 3:13-14).

A lot of us claim we’ve “let go” or we’ve “moved on”, but we’ve carved out a secret place in our hearts and minds where that person, place, or season still has its claws dug deep in our spirits. Release it! Release them! Sometimes it takes deleting social media connections, browser bookmarks, old phone numbers, and contacts. Whatever and however God would have you to move on – do it, for real.

So, What’s the Play Call?

Congratulations, Team, on your graduation to the next level or season. The time is now to put away childish things and become the man or woman God has purposed you to be (1 Corinthians 13:11).

You’ve outgrown the milk bottle, now sink those teeth into some meat LOL! You won’t choke, God is faithful to lead and guide you now as He did back then.

Trust Him.

RESPECT Trailer: Find Out What It Means to Aretha Franklin

By
Kim Brightness
-

RESPECT Movie: It Starts in the Church and Ends in the Church

respect movieThey say good things come to those who wait. The MGM Aretha Franklin biopic, RESPECT, has certainly done its fair share of waiting.

After almost a year delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, RESPECT, starring Jennifer Hudson as the Queen of Soul herself, hits the theatres in August 2021.

Following the rise of Aretha Franklin’s career from a child singing in her father’s church’s choir to her international superstardom, RESPECT is the remarkable true story of the music icon’s journey to find her voice.

RESPECT Trailer Debut

Yesterday, Team Jesus Magazine, along with other media outlets, had the honor of watching the unveiling of the new, official RESPECT trailer with the amazing Jennifer Hudson and RESPECT Director, Liesl Tommy.

“This is a movie of a woman with the most brilliant voice in the world… trying to find her voice“, said Tommy, who was intentional about not only presenting Aretha Franklin’s icon or legend status, but most importantly her story as a human being. Liesl Tommy makes her feature film debut with RESPECT. Tommy is the first Black woman ever nominated for a Tony Award® for Best Direction of a Play in 2016 for Eclipsed, and is an Associate Artist at the Berkeley Rep and an Artist Trustee with the Sundance Institute’s Board of Trustees.

After being handpicked by Aretha Franklin to portray her in a biopic, Jennifer Hudson immersed herself in the experience and the training. On learning how to play the piano for the role, Hudson joked, “Aretha sent me back to music school!” Yet, Franklin’s musical influence wasn’t the only thing Jennifer Hudson learned, as she shared, “Aretha Franklin taught me more about life while schooling me on how to play her life.”

Find out what respect really means when RESPECT hits the theaters August 13, 2021!

About RESPECT Movie

respect movie respect movie respect movie

respect movie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cast: Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, Marlon Wayans, Audra McDonald, Marc Maron, Tituss Burgess, Saycon Sengbloh, Hailey Kilgore, Tate Donovan, Heather Headley, Skye Dakota Turner, and Mary J. Blige

DIRECTOR: Liesl Tommy

WRITTEN BY: Tracey Scott Wilson

PRODUCERS: Scott Bernstein, Harvey Mason Jr.

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Stacy Sher, Sue Baden-Powell, Aaron L. Gilbert, and Jason Cloth

Instagram: @RespectMovie

Twitter: @RespectMovie

Facebook: @RespectFilm

3 Reasons Not to Quiet Your Bold, Loud Gifts from God

By
Alecia M. White
-
gifts from god

So, I have this bell attached to my keyring. I bought it at Dollar Tree. I only got it because it says, “Ring for coffee!” and coffee is my favorite. Anyhoo, as you can probably imagine, it’s pretty loud when I walk because the keys rattle, well, now they jingle.

During Christmas time, people at the grocery store would look at me because, I’m sure, it sounded like the Salvation Army donation bell. They were probably trying to figure out why the bell person was following them through the store. Honestly, I don’t enjoy drawing attention to myself so I decided I’d soon get rid of it.

As I was leaving work one day, a lady from my building jokingly yelled out, “Is that Santa?” before seeing that it was me. After explaining that Santa had not visited our building, but rather, it was my loud dollar store bell, she told me it was pretty cool and convinced me not to get rid of it. So, I’m still walking around jingling loud keys, going into all the grocery stores. 

Honor Your Loud Gifts from God

Well, my bell situation got me thinking about how we sometimes decide to quiet ourselves because we feel we’re “too loud”. Often, we don’t like to draw attention to ourselves, so we try to hide what makes us stand out in a crowd.

The thing about that is, God gifted us in ways that the world needs to see and hear. When you allow Him to lead you, the way that you stand out will bring Him glory.

So, What’s the Play Call?

I know it can feel like your gifts from God are as loud as that Salvation Army bell, but use them anyway. It can seem inconvenient to be the one who is always different but remember that differences are what make the world go round. You were created to be a world-changer and a difference-maker. Here are a few things to remember when you’d rather get rid of your bell:

  1. We are to be set apart. Yep, God planned for us to be that way. “And the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people, as he hath promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all his commandments;” Deuteronomy 26:18
  1. God specifically chose you for what you are gifted to do. “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.” John 15:16 KJV
  1. God intended for others to notice your differences. If you’re anything like me, you try to disappear into the background, but that isn’t how it’s supposed to be. We are to be the light that others notice so that they notice our God. “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.” Matthews 5:14

So team, don’t ever get rid of your “bell”. It is a direct connection to the blessings that God wants to bestow upon you. Go ahead and be the light, the salt, the peculiar one. 

 

Prayer Under the Microscope: How Much Does Prayer Weigh?

By
Christianity Today
-
prayer

Praying can be easy. A prayer can be a thought, a word, a heavenward plea from someone in need, a few lines said spontaneously or recited from a book, or even just a groan. Understanding what a prayer does after it leaves your lips is a little more difficult. Christian theologians have long debated how prayer works, and what it means to say it “works.”

So have scientists.

Psychologist Kevin L. Ladd, a professor at Indiana University South Bend, recently examined some of the extensive recent research on prayer for the John Templeton Foundation. Looking at more than 40 psychological studies finished in the past few years on the impact of prayer on intimate relationships, Ladd found there is some evidence of positive correlations between prayer and improved relationships. “It may,” he writes, “be useful to encourage people to engage some forms of prayer as coping tools.”

But in study after study, Ladd, author of The Psychology of Prayer: A Scientific Approach, also found that researchers hadn’t thought very carefully about what prayer is. In a sense, they kept pointing their telescopes in the wrong direction.

Ladd spoke to CT about the limits of prayer research.

Why is it hard to study prayer scientifically?

prayer requestsIf you’re not familiar with the practice of prayer and why people pray, it’s very easy to look at it as though somebody is making a definitive statement or doing something over which they would claim to have full control. The twist with prayer is that you can be saying things that sound very active and assertive about what you want to happen in the world and also at the same moment you are relinquishing control. You’re saying, “I am surrendering this concern.”

The metaphysical core of prayer—what God does—is not accessible to science. That’s out of the ballpark. But what we can study effectively as scientists is how people act as a result of prayer. What drives them to prayer? What do they do when they pray? And after, how do they behave?

If I pray for my neighbor, are you saying you could study the effects of that prayer on me but not on my neighbor?

Yes. This goes right into the idea of “thoughts and prayers,” which has been attacked so much. If I direct thoughts and prayers to my neighbor, I can’t see what the prayer itself is doing, but I can see what I do.

If I’m praying for my neighbor, does that change my behavior toward that neighbor? Maybe, as the old saying goes, “My heart is to God and my hand is to work.” We can see if those two things go together. One person prays for…

Continue reading…

The Ten Commandments: Which One Sets the Tone for Right and Wrong?

By
Keiston France
-
bible verses

What is the first of the Ten Commandments?

It might seem like an odd question, but it’s not! Jews and Christians give different answers. The reason is that what we know as the ten commandments is in the original Hebrew, “The Ten Statements.” And, since the Hebrew is the original, we begin with the first statement on which all religions agree upon:

“I am the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” – Exodus 20:2

This statement is so important that none of the other commandments make sense without it. First, it asserts that God is giving these commandments, not Moses or any other human being. Second, God is the one that delivered you from slavery. Again, no human being did this, not even Moses. Therefore, you have an obligation to God, and what is that obligation? That you live by the following nine commandments. This is the beginning of what is known as ethical monotheism, the greatest world-changing innovation of the Hebrew Bible.

Ethical Monotheism means that the one God (Monotheism) is the source of ethics or morality. Morality, an objective code of right and wrong, does not emanate from human opinion, it emanates from God which transcends human opinion.

The other meaning of ethical monotheism is that what God most wants from us is that we treat other human beings morally. None of the ten commandments concerns what humans must do “for” God. Pre-ten commandment religions all believe that people must do a lot “for” their gods, for example, feed them, and even sacrifice people to them. But now, thanks to the ten commandments, mankind learned that God wants to be good to our fellow human beings.

Even the commandments concerning not having false gods and not carrying God’s name in vain are ultimately about morality. The thing we can do “for” God is to treat all mankind decently. Every parent can relate to the fact that they have joy when they see their children act lovingly towards one another, and feel indescribable pain when they see their children hurt one another. So, God who is likened to our Father in Heaven cares most about how we treat other human beings all of whom are His creation.

The Ten Commandments Highlight Freedom

prayers for pastorsThe third critical teaching of the first statement, “I am the Lord your God who took you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” is the importance and the meaning of freedom!

Note that God is not saying in this introduction to the ten commandments that He created the world. It surely would have made a lot of sense for God to introduce the ten commandments with this statement, “I am the Lord your God who created the world.” That is, after all, pretty impressive and would make sense! “I created the world, you better listen to Me.”

But no, the one thing that God declares is that He took the children of Israel out of slavery and into freedom. That’s how much God hates slavery, and how important God considers freedom. Ironically, The Founders of America based their entire view of America on this belief that God wants us to be free. That is why the most iconic symbol of the American Revolution, “The Liberty Bell,” has only one sentence inscribed on it, a verse from the Hebrew Bible. “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”

But there is one other equally important lesson about freedom mentioned by the opening statement of the ten commandments – what freedom means. The Giver of the Ten Commandments is in effect saying, “I took you out of slavery and into freedom, and these ten commandments are the way to make a free society. You cannot be a free people if you do whatever you want. Freedom comes from moral self-control. There is no other way to achieve it.”

And fourth, by telling us that He liberated the Hebrew slaves, God made clear that He cares deeply about human beings. It is impressive to create the world, but what most matters is not only is there a Creator but that the creator cares about His creation. All of that is in the one statement with which the ten commandments begin. Think about it.

So, What’s The Play Call?

  1. Are you living your life according to the Ten Commandments?
  2. Is God your ONLY source in life?
  3. Are you fully aware of your own freedom?

 

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They Changed Their Minds about Slavery and Left a Bible Record

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Two businessmen’s unusual conversion in 1700s South Carolina led them to liberate the people they put in bondage. At first glance, William Turpin and his business partner, Thomas Wadsworth, appeared to be like most other prestigious and powerful white men in late 18th-century South Carolina. They were successful Charleston merchants, had business interests across the state, got involved in state politics, and enslaved numerous human beings. Nothing about them seemed out of the ordinary. But, quietly, these two men changed their minds about slavery. They became committed abolitionists and worked to free dozens of enslaved people across South Carolina. When most wealthy, white Carolinians were increasingly committed to slavery and defending it as a Christian institution, Turpin and Wadsworth were compelled by their convictions to break the shackles they had placed on dozens of men and women. In an era when the Bible was edited so that enslaved people wouldn’t get the idea that God cared about their freedom, Turpin left a secret record of emancipation in a copy of the Scriptures, which is now in the South Carolina State Museum. Perhaps it’s not surprising that this story of faith and freedom is mostly unknown. The two men were, after all, working not to attract attention. Neither had deep roots in Charleston or close familial ties to its storied white “planter” dynasties. Turpin’s family was originally from Rhode Island, and Wadsworth was a native of Massachusetts who moved to South Carolina only shortly after the American Revolution. Both had public careers and served in the South Carolina Legislature, but their political profiles were not particularly high. Neither of them appeared to give any of their legislative colleagues the sense that they were developing strong, countercultural opinions on one of the most ...Continue reading...

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