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Reflections on Scripture and culture. <a href="https://edmongallagher.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">edmongallagher.substack.com</a>

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July 13, 2026

Christians against Christmas

When I was young, Christmas happened the night before. We were a Christmas Eve family. Christmas Day—after the rush of discovering what Santa Claus had left us—was pretty boring, until the year that my dad realized, probably when I was an adolescent, that the local movie theater was open on the day. A new Gallagher tradition was born! We did not go to church on Christmas Day. That would be silly; Christmas had nothing to do with church. Christmas was a time for overeating and overspending—or, to put a more positive spin on it, Christmas was for families and for generosity. Back to Christmas Eve. When my parents got off work on December 24, we would load up the car with presents and head over to my Granny’s house, bustling with family and food. Granny had cooked her chili with spaghetti noodles—no, not like <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_chili">Cincinnati chili</a>, not that many noodles. It was still soup, to be eaten in a bowl. And it was wonderful. There were various other treats, the usual suspects, I’m sure, but the only thing I remember is Granny’s chili. After supper, we would open presents. Participants included my parents with me and my sister, and my aunt Lea with her three kids, and my aunt Anna Lou, and Granny. Sometimes perhaps a cousin’s boyfriend or girlfriend would come around. Afterwards, we went home and prepared for Santa’s visit, who would deliver the final presents of the season. This traditional Christmas at Granny’s house continued, I think, until she moved into an apartment that couldn’t fit everyone. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.I married into a Christmas Day family, and Jodi and I have done a pretty good job of combining our respective traditions, of making Christmas Eve and Christmas Day special. Having a lot of kids helps. But Jodi refuses to go to the movies on a holiday. One of the big things that’s different from my youth is that we are much more explicit about celebrating the birth of Jesus. That’s not really the right way of saying it, but it’ll do for now. We even go to church on Christmas Eve. Indeed, we attend a Christmas Eve service at the Sherrod Ave. Church of Christ in Florence, Alabama. Just let that sink in for a moment. There’s a Church of Christ in Alabama—a very traditional Church of Christ, an acapella Church of Christ with all-male leadership—that hosts a Christmas Eve service. Times have changed. I grew up in a Church of Christ in western Kentucky that did not say much about Christmas. This was a congregation that was not hardcore traditional; this congregation did not get a steady diet of preaching against the sins of the denominations, and we didn’t hear about the evils of Christmas. But, as far as I recall, we didn’t hear about the birth of Jesus either, not in December, anyway. Maybe in April or October. There was an understanding that Christmas was a good holiday for families; there was no need to tell people that Christmas should not be celebrated religiously because no one in the congregation had any thought of making Christmas a religious holiday. Coming around to ChristmasIn this way, the church where I grew up shared a tradition common to many people in Churches of Christ, though things were beginning to change even then. In the year I was born, there was an article printed in the Gospel Advocate called “What about Christmas?” (December 20, 1979, p. 780) by a fellow named Ross W. Dye, who at the time lived in Anaheim, California. Dye said he was grateful that people around the world honored Jesus at Christmas time, and he thought churches ought to teach about the birth of Jesus, even in December. But a few weeks later, the Gospel Advocate printed a response to Dye’s article by a Collinsville, Virginia preacher named A. Lowell Altizer (“What About ‘What About Christmas’?” January 21, 1980, p. 109), who expressed concern that talking about the birth of Jesus in December would confuse people about the intentions of the Churches of Christ, with the result that outsiders would lump Churches of Christ in with the denominations. “Why not teach and sing about the birth of Christ in mid-summer instead of December?” Altizer asked. “I am persuaded,” said Altizer, “that any action that makes us look like a denomination or a partaker of their error ought to be avoided.” But it seems that Altizer was fighting a losing battle.The next Christmas, the Firm Foundation ran an editorial by Reuel Lemmons (“Christmas,” December 23, 1980, p. 818), largely positive toward Christmas, even as a religious holiday. “Personally, we are glad that the world, bent on carnage and drunk on hedonism takes time out to acknowledge that God has sent his Son into the world.”This viewpoint was becoming common in the Firm Foundation. In 1977, Cecil Hook wrote “In Defense of Christmas,” (January 25, p. 56) a remarkable article, arguing that imperfect Christianity is much better than secularism, and that Christmas (and Bible teaching in public schools) does a great service in preparing people to receive undenominational Christianity.In protesting the religious over-emphasis centering around the alleged birth date of Jesus, many disciples have been crusading to “keep Christ out of Christmas.” And the crusade is becoming effective. Christmas is becoming increasingly secular. Religious sentiment in the songs of Christmas is being heard less. “Santa Claus is coming to town” is replacing “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!” I regret this change even though I recognize no religious observance of Christmas. I regret it because we are losing something. Something is better than nothing. Secularism is nothing. The year prior to Hook’s article, the Firm Foundation ran an article by <a target="_blank" href="https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/sun-city-az/johnny-waddey-5857023">John Waddey</a> (“Christians and Christmas,” December 14, 1976, p. 792) that was less positive about the religious observance of Christmas—which is, Waddey says, unbiblical—but recognized quite a bit of the Christmas celebration that was perfectly acceptable for Christians.But no New Testament writing instructs us to observe a holy day for Christ’s birth. To so observe the day is to go beyond what is written. According to Christ such religious practices are vain worship for they are the precepts of men (Matt. 15:9). God gave his church only one special day, the first day of the week.…What shall we do? We live in a world that makes December 25 a national holiday. We obviously cannot participate in the religious observances connected with this day. But neither can we “go out of the world” (1 Cor. 5:9, 10). It is the author’s view that we can observe the legal, civil, social holiday as such, just as we would any other; for example, Labor Day, Independence Day or Thanksgiving Day. It appears to him that Christians could: * Take the day off with pay; * Accept a Christmas bonus; * Receive a Christmas gift;* Eat a Christmas feast of turkey and cranberries; * Give presents to his family and friends; * And enjoy the holiday festivities without sin or compromise so long as he did not make it a special religious observance. Waddey ends his article by stressing that if participation in the celebration of Christmas makes you feel guilty, then you should not do it. But then he warns: “Do not, however, try to force your scruples on other brethren.” He then points to Romans 14. Also in 1976, the same year as Waddey’s article, Guy N. Woods published a collection of Questions and Answers (Henderson: Freed-Hardeman College) that he had addressed over the years at the Freed-Hardeman lectureship. (A decade later, he would publish a second volume.) One of the questions concerns Christmas. What does the word ‘Christmas’ mean? When did the observance of the birthday of Christ on December 25, begin? Is it wrong for Christians to engage in any of the usual activities associated with Christmas such as putting up Christmas trees, decorating lights, and exchanging gifts? (p. 203)The answer Woods provides is the same as what Waddey had said. Christians should not observe Christmas as a religious holiday, but it is fine to celebrate it as a family holiday. …many people consider it as no more than a holiday around which many family, social and national traditions have gathered, and there is in it for them no religious implications. I grew up in a home where these views prevailed and though the season contributed much to my happiness and enjoyment, I was never under the impression that we were observing Christ’s birthday. Christmas, when thus regarded, is simply an occasion when gifts are exchanged, families get together, and hearts are warmed by the happy festivities. I have always felt that children, not privileged to experience the innocent joys of the holiday season, are being deprived of rich blessings rightfully theirs. (p. 203)Woods grew up in a home apparently much like my own, at least in terms of the celebration of Christmas. I am glad to know that in 1976—or before then—he publicly declared that there is no problem with a faithful Christian participating in the usual aspects of the family celebration of Christmas. Then again, the question was asked. What was this questioner thinking? Why would he need to be reassured by Guy N. Woods that it’s okay to put up a tree in your house in December and to hang lights from your gutters? Christian Opposition to ChristmasThe positive evaluation of Christmas given by Woods may have proven controversial in his own time and certainly so in the previous generation, even for the paper that Woods eventually came to edit. In 1938, the Gospel Advocate published a sermon outline by Clarence C. Morgan of Odessa, Texas (“Should We Observe Christmas?” December 15, 1938, p. 1168).The text of the sermon was Galatians 4:10–11, “Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.”Today many of God’s people insist on observing days and seasons contrary to Christianity or the teachings of Christ. The only difference in the sins of the Galatian Christians and Christians today is that the Galatians were going back to the law of Moses and observing things that once had God’s approval and were of his commands, but had been abrogated, while Christians today are going back to the dark ages and paganism and observing days and seasons that never did have God’s approval in any age. Morgan goes on to say that Roman Catholicism is the mother of “Christmas.” The word “Christmas” is a Satanic abbreviation for “Christ-Mass.” … The observance of “Christ-Mass” is not only Romanistic but it is clearly going beyond what is written and is adding to God’s word. No Christian should observe “Christ-Mass” in any way. Note that phrase, “in any way.” What does Morgan mean that a Christian should not observe Christmas “in any way”? The article continues by describing Santa Claus as evil and the Christmas Tree as pagan and condemned by Jeremiah 10:1–5, a passage mocking the practice of chopping down a tree and turning it into an idol. Morgan declared: “Christians should leave all such alone.” I guess when Clarence Morgan preached in 1938 that a Christian should not observe Christmas “in any way,” he meant it. What about the earlier decades? How did churches in the Restoration Movement handle Christmas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? I don’t know, but if they ignored the holiday or preached against it, they would not at all have been unique. There is a long history of Christian opposition to Christmas, especially in the few centuries after the start of the Protestant Reformation. (See <a target="_blank" href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Christmas_in_the_Crosshairs/yi_KDAAAQBAJ?hl=en">Bowler 2017</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Oxford_Handbook_of_Christmas/nf7-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en">Larsen 2020</a>.)A recent <a target="_blank" href="https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/34256/chapter-abstract/290411641?redirectedFrom=fulltext">academic essay</a> in the Oxford Handbook of Christmas (2020) explains the reasoning for this opposition: “Those opposed to Christmas [in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries] objected to any religious observance that was not explicitly commanded in the Bible (the so-called regulative principle) and which was seen as a vestige of popery” (p. 168). <a target="_blank" href="https://johnmarkhicks.com/2008/05/30/stone-campbell-hermeneutics-iv-regulative-principle-and-churches-of-christ/">Sounds familiar</a>. The main opponents here: English Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians. In fact, Christmas Day became a public holiday in Scotland only in 1958. A different <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41337151?seq=1">academic article</a>, this one by Carl Philipp Emanuel Nothaft (published 2011), further explores attacks on Christmas by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestants. Here’s a bit of the conclusion: In the end, it was the lack of scriptural foundation and the perceived historical links to Roman idolatry, which led to Christmas’s temporary demise in mid-century Puritan England and the North American colonies. At the same time, however, the kind of criticism voiced in the works of Rudolph Hospinian, Thomas Mocket and others could not have been made as forcefully without the chronological evidence that had been previously assembled by continental scholars such as Beroaldus, Wolf, Scaliger. Thanks to their profound antiquarian learning and occasional sparks of ingenuity, they had shown that the joyful celebration of Christ’s birthday during midwinter—a highly popular tradition that had gone virtually unchallenged for nearly a millennium—was historically baseless and even counter to the available sources. (p. 521)Two points I found especially interesting in this article: * Heinrich Wolf in 1585 was the first author—among those surveyed by Nothaft—to use the argument that I have often heard against December 25 as being the true birthday of Jesus, that is, that the shepherds would not have been with their flocks in the field in the middle of winter, and he quotes the first-century Roman writer <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columella">Columella</a> (De re rustica 7.3) as evidence. I couldn’t find an online copy of Wolf’s work, but the snippet view is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Chronologia_siue_De_Tempore_Et_Eivs_Mvta/OavV0AEACAAJ?hl=en">here</a>.* It was Rudolph Hospinian (1547–1626) who first made the suggestion that early Christians adopted December 25 as the birthday of Jesus because they were trying to Christianize the pagan festival of Saturnalia. He does this in his work called <a target="_blank" href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HW9FAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA110#v=onepage&q&f=false">Festa Christianorum</a> (Zurich: Wolphius, 1593), and Nothaft translates a statement appearing on p. 110v thus: “those who first instituted the feast in this month of December did not do it, because they believed that the Lord was then born, but in order to convert the Saturnalian feast, which was celebrated at Rome at that time, into this feast [sc. Christmas].” Already before Hospinian, <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydore_Vergil">Polydore Vergil</a> had noticed similarities between Christmas and the Roman Saturnalia. Hospinian was followed by <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Casaubon">Isaac Casaubon</a>. Such opposition to Christmas by Christians seems to have waned through the course of the nineteenth century. More-or-less. Of course, there were still opponents, as we’ve already seen. According to <a target="_blank" href="https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/34256/chapter-abstract/290408935?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Timothy Larsen</a>,<a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers">The Society of Friends</a> was one of the Protestant bodies that most strongly objected to Christmas. This stance was articulated in an article by John Bellows, ‘Why I Ought Not To Keep “Christmas”’, written in 1879, but often reprinted in quaker periodicals, even into the twentieth century. Bellows argued that Friends had a duty to refrain from feasting and to keep their businesses open on December 25. To do otherwise would be to further superstition, idolatry, and apostasy—and even, he hinted darkly, the cause of the Antichrist. The Society of Friends, however, was numerically small. The significant forces of opposition to Christmas came from the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists. (Larsen, p. 37)As Larsen documents, these groups increasingly became comfortable with the trappings of Christmas, which were becoming more prominent (and wholesome?) in society at large. “The crucial difference was that these denominations did not offer a Christmas worship service” (p. 38). Larsen ends his essay: “With the vast majority of Reformed and Dissenting Protestants now enthusiastically on board, a domestic focus on family and children, Santa Claus, Christmas trees, shopping, new carols, Christmas cards, a renewed commitment to generosity and charity in a modern context, and more, Christmas reached the end of the nineteenth century significantly bigger and stronger than it was at its start.” This image of the late nineteenth-century dissenters becoming more comfortable with Christmas is confirmed by another author (Holmes again), who quotes an anonymous writer in 1898 to this effect. Christmas amongst modern Nonconformists is a bright and joyous time in most of our places of worship, as well as in our home circles. We are getting rid of the idea that it is a superstitious festival, and therefore a hurtful custom of our homes with holly and mistletoe as a device or snare of the Evil One. Christmas services abound in our midst, and in many places are made the occasion of felicitous reunions and of common gatherings of different denominations for united praise and prayer. (<a target="_blank" href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044043837129&seq=369&q1=puritan">here</a>, p. 369 of the file; quoted in Holmes)So by the turn of the twentieth century, much of the Christian opposition to Christmas had given way to embracing the season as a time to focus on families and especially children. Not everyone had come around. We’ve seen that in Churches of Christ there was still the viewpoint that Christians should not celebrate Christmas even as a family holiday, though this seems to have waned by the second half of the twentieth century, and—anecdotally—it seems that by the end of the twentieth century many Churches of Christ were willing at least to capitalize on Christmas as a golden opportunity to talk about Jesus, even his birth. Still <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ucg.org/good-news/good-news-magazine-november-december-2006/top-10-reasons-why-i-dont-celebrate-christmas">not everyone is convinced</a> even now, whether in the Churches of Christ or not. More next time.Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://edmongallagher.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">edmongallagher.substack.com</a>

June 30, 2026

The Apostle Who Lived

But now the time has come to go away. I go to die, and you to live; but which of us goes to the better lot, is known to none but God.—<a target="_blank" href="https://archive.org/details/euthyphroapology0001plat/page/144/mode/2up">Socrates</a>To live is Christ and to die is gain.—PaulOne time Peter got put in prison in Jerusalem during the time of Passover. The story is told in Acts 12. The year was probably AD 44. The text says that it was King Herod who put him in prison. Now, there are various Herods mentioned in the New Testament. This Herod in Acts 12 is not the most famous Herod, the one who killed the babies of Bethlehem (Matt 2:16). That was Herod the Great, the first in the line of Herods. Our Herod in Acts 12 is called Herod Agrippa, and he is the grandson of Herod the Great. Later on in Acts, Paul will meet another king whom the biblical text calls Agrippa (Acts 25–26), who is the son of the Herod Agrippa in Acts 12. Historians call the father Herod Agrippa I and the son Herod Agrippa II.Herod Agrippa I put Peter in prison with the plan to execute him after Passover and the days of unleavened bread (Acts 12:4). But on the night before the scheduled execution, an angel showed up in the prison and set Peter free. God sent an angel to save Peter’s life, to rescue him from certain death. Our God can do things like that. Once Peter was out of the prison, he went to the house of Mary, mother of John Mark, where the church had gathered to pray on Peter’s behalf. You remember what happened next. Peter knocked on the door and announced that he had been released. Rhoda the servant was so excited to tell everyone that she forgot to let Peter in. Nobody believed Rhoda; they thought it must have been his angel (Acts 12:15), whatever that means. When Peter finally got into the house, he reported about his escape and left.Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.We know what year all this happened because of the next event narrated in the chapter: Herod Agrippa I died. According to Josephus, Agrippa I died in the year AD 44. (Of course, Josephus does not use our dating system; see the report of Agrippa’s reign at Antiquities 19.351–52.) The story Luke tells about this death contains the memorable and potentially confusing wording that the king “was eaten by worms and breathed his last” (Acts 12:23). We sometimes say that once a person has died, he becomes worm food, but Acts says that the worms were eating Agrippa before he died. Of course, that sometimes happens. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus described something similar about Queen Pheretima in Libya in the sixth century BC: “she died a horrible death, her body seething with worms while she was still alive” (4.205). According to Luke, the judgment of God came upon this King Herod for his arrogance, illustrated in his futile attempt to kill one of the Lord’s apostles.Acts 12 is a story of liberation. It shows us the power of God, who is able to rescue from death. This story encourages us as readers to recognize that a hopeless situation is brimming with hope as long as we trust in the God who loves us and can cause everything to work out for our benefit (Rom 8:28).This story is not the only time that Peter had seen the Lord rescue someone from death. During his ministry in Galilee, Jesus sometimes raised up people who had already died. One time there was a synagogue leader named Jairus who approached Jesus asking for help for his sick daughter. By the time Jesus got to Jairus’ house, the report was already circulating about the girl’s death. Jesus’ response to this report? “Do not fear, only believe” (Mark 5:36). Jesus went into the girl’s room and simply said, “Talitha cum” (5:41)—and she got up! Peter was there, he heard those words from Jesus’ mouth, he saw the girl rise and eat. Do you remember who else was in that room at the time? Aside from the girl’s parents, it was only Peter, James, and John.We sometimes see this trio of apostles granted special privileges, not enjoyed by the other apostles. These were the three on the mount of transfiguration, who witnessed Jesus glowing and talking with Moses and Elijah (Mark 9:2–8). Later, in what seems like the moment of Jesus’ greatest need, it was Peter and James and John with him in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 15:32–42). While all twelve apostles had their mission from Jesus, it seems like the Big Three were an especially important group with an unusually intimate relationship with Jesus.Peter, the rock (John 1:42).James and John, the sons of thunder (Mark 3:17).No doubt Jesus had big plans for these three special apostles, some sort of special project.The Gospels record some stories that involve just James and John without Peter. It was these two brothers who suggested to Jesus that they could call fire down from heaven against some rude Samaritans. Sons of thunder. Jesus rolled his eyes (Luke 9:51–55). It was also James and John (Mark 10:35–40)—or, actually, their mother (Matt 20:20–28)—who asked for the best seats in the kingdom of God, on the right and left of the Messiah. This time, Jesus did not roll his eyes but asked a question: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” (Mark 10:38). James and John answered confidently, “yes, we can do that!” Did they know what they were talking about? We can be sure that they did not know the full import of their words. Jesus actually told them, “You do not know what you are asking” (10:38). But did they realize that the cup Jesus mentioned, and the baptism, had to do with suffering? I’m not sure, maybe. They may have thought that they were proclaiming their readiness to serve on the front lines in the coming war, to put themselves in dangerous situations for the kingdom of God. They probably did not realize that there would be no battle against Rome or any earthly foe. But they may have thought that they had signed up for some degree of suffering. And Jesus told them that they were right about that. “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized” (10:39). Jesus would endure suffering, and so would James and John.Acts 12 does not start with King Herod putting Peter in prison. It starts with Herod imprisoning James, the brother of John. In prison is one of the sons of thunder, one of the Big Three apostles. There is no rescue plan from God, no miraculous escape. Instead, Herod “had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword” (Acts 12:2). Peter would be saved by a miracle, but not James. Why the one and not the other? Luke does not tell us.When Peter was imprisoned, Christians gathered to pray in the house of one of their members. They asked God to spare the life of this beloved leader. Do you think that the church did the same for James? When James was taken by the authorities, do you think the Christians prayed for him, too? What did they pray? Of course, we don’t know the words of their prayer, but let me offer a suggestion by reminding you about an incident that James witnessed.One of those occasions when the Big Three were alone with Jesus was in Gethsemane. The way Mark tells the story (perhaps based on the memories of Peter; see Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.15.1–2), the apostles were having trouble staying awake. It was late at night. Even if they hadn’t fallen asleep, I’m not sure they were close enough to overhear what Jesus prayed, but somehow people found out what the Lord prayed in the garden, because it’s reported in all three of the Synoptic Gospels (Matt 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42): “Let this cup pass from me; yet not what I will, but your will be done.”Do you think it’s possible that—assuming the church gathered to pray for James after his arrest—they reflected on Jesus’ prayer in the garden? James had probably told them many times about what he witnessed that night, about his shame at falling asleep in that hour, about how he wished he had realized at the time the significance of the events he was experiencing, and about Jesus’ prayer. James had probably said that when it came to his own hour of death, he hoped he would face death in the same way Jesus did. Do you think it’s possible that the church prayed for James just as Jesus prayed in the garden, so that they asked God to let this cup pass from the apostle, if it be God’s will—and if it be not God’s will, but if rather God will that James should drink the cup to the dregs, perhaps the church prayed that James would show himself worthy of imitating Jesus through a brave and noble death.We usually recoil from death, try to prevent it by every means possible, even though we all know that it’s coming. Sometimes we encounter people who seem to stare at death and—far from recoiling at it—endeavor to die in a particular fashion. There’s a moment in the novel Dracula when Arthur Holmwood (by now, Lord Godalming) is asked to give his beloved Lucy Westenra a transfusion of blood (ch. 10). Poor Lucy has been experiencing a repeated and mysterious loss of blood. Only Abraham Van Helsing seems to have any idea of how the blood was leaving her body, and what those two tiny pinprick holes on the side of her neck might have to do with it. At any rate, she needs blood immediately, and Van Helsing asks Arthur to supply the blood. Arthur answers, “If you only knew how gladly I would die for her.”We can think of other examples. I believe that not every state has a designated state hero, but the state hero of Connecticut is a man named <a target="_blank" href="https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-culture/nathan-hale-yale-jersey-vinyl/?utm_source=iterable&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=dispatch-culture&utm_content=115700">Nathan Hale</a>. At age 21, he was arrested by the British as an American spy during the early period of the Revolutionary War. When he was hanged on September 22, 1776, his last words were reported as, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”There are plenty of examples of noble deaths in religion as well. Near the end of the second century AD, the Christian author Tertullian wrote in his Apology (ch. 50), “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church,” meaning that Christians endure death in so noble a fashion that it actually attracts people to this illegal religion. The writer of Hebrews mentioned people who accepted death in this way: “Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection” (Heb 11:35). The author here is probably thinking of the Maccabean martyrs, who had experienced terrible suffering and death about two centuries before Jesus was killed. We know the story of these martyrs from the apocryphal book of 2 Maccabees, probably written in the second century BC. The wicked king Antiochus Epiphanes tried to force Jews to abandon their law, threatened death if they didn’t eat pork. Of course, some gave in, abandoned their faith to preserve their earthly lives. But 2 Maccabees 7 describes a family of seven brothers and their mother who “were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection.” Each brother, and their mother, made a speech, declaring their resolve to endure the worst suffering the Greek tyrant could offer—and the chapter describes some pretty awful punishments. They basically said, like Arthur Holmwood, “If you only knew how gladly we would die for our God,” or like Nathan Hale, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my Lord.”I am not sure how James faced his death. Did he make a speech? Did he face it bravely? Luke does not say. The fourth-century church historian Eusebius told a story about James going to his death, a story in which James did make a speech, bravely declaring the name of Christ, such a moving speech that the soldier guarding him gained the courage to reveal that he himself was also a Christian, and the two marched out together and were both executed (Ecclesiastical History 2.9). Should we trust that story? Is that close to the way it happened? Did James cower in fear before the executioner, or did he welcome the chance to prove his faith in the way that martyrs before and after him did?To ask the question is to encounter an obvious answer. Surely this son of thunder did not shrink in fear. I bet that at the moment of his death, James remembered having been on the mountain, one of the privileged few, amazed at the bright light emanating from his Lord, standing there with Moses and Elijah. I’m sure as he walked toward the executioner, James remembered the instructions of Jesus, if you would be my disciple, you will take up your cross (Mark 8:34). I bet he remembered his younger and more impetuous self, and that once (or was it more than once?) he had the audacity to ask for the best seats in the kingdom. And I bet he remembered how Jesus answered this request with a question about drinking a cup and about a kind of baptism—a question to which he had confidently asserted, “Yes! I will drink that cup! I will receive that baptism!” Walking toward the executioner, he finally realized the significance of those words, and Jesus’ reply, “You will drink that cup. You will receive that baptism.” Luke does not tell us how James felt in that moment, but I bet he remembered the words of Jesus and saw his death as an opportunity to fully imitate his master, to be a true disciple of Jesus, to glorify God. “If you only knew how gladly I would die for him.”That makes me wonder how Peter felt to be rescued.I’ve never been in combat, never been in a war zone, never been a part of the military. I understand from TV and movies that soldiers sometimes experience something called <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_guilt">survivor guilt</a>. Out of the many great World War II movies, one of the greatest is called <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_Years_of_Our_Lives">The Best Years of Our Lives</a> (1946), starring Fredric March and others. It tells the story of some WWII veterans who return from war and have trouble adjusting to “normal” life, in part because it seemed so pointless after what they had just experienced, in part because of the physical toll the war took on them, and in large measure because they wonder why they survived to live this easy and comfortable life while so many of their friends had died in battle. Why was I chosen to live? You might think about the last scene of Saving Private Ryan: “<a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tresRj5LGM">Tell me I’m a good man</a>.” Near the end of Les Miserables, Marius sings these words:Oh my friends, my friends forgive meThat I live and you are goneThere’s a grief that can’t be spokenThere’s a pain goes on and on.—From the song “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.”And in the Japanese novel Silence, written by Shūsaku Endō (1966), the priest Rodrigues envies his dead friend, Garupe, who had drowned. “Behind his eyelids like a hallucination floated the head of Garupe sinking down into the sea. How he envied his companion! Yes, how he envied Garupe freed from anguish such as this!” (ch. 8).How did Peter feel about the miraculous rescue he enjoyed after witnessing his dear friend and fellow apostle, co-member of the Big Three, die such a cruel and noble death? Peter had no doubt joined with others and prayed for James, prayed for his release, prayed for God’s will to be done no matter what. James was given an opportunity denied Peter by that angel. Did Peter feel guilty for living?The <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address">most famous speech in American history</a> contains this passage.It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.For present purposes I am not so interested in “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” but I quote Lincoln for what he says about the purpose of living after so many have died. “It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.” The apostle James was given the opportunity—and seized it!—to so nobly advance the kingdom of God. Peter was not given that same opportunity in Acts 12. What should he do? Be dedicated to the unfinished work.We are in the position of Peter. God has allowed us to live to this point. What do we do with that? Be dedicated to the unfinished work until we are granted the privilege of honoring God through our deaths. James enjoyed that privilege in Acts 12. Peter would have to wait. For now, his great task was to honor God with his life.According to a popular report, George Washington once said to a young lieutenant colonel who had dreams of dying for the patriot cause during the Revolutionary War: “<a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmnDhbCd3N4">Dying is easy, young man; living is harder</a>.” James had the privilege of honoring God through his death. Peter now had the burden of honoring God through his life. We share that burden. Until that day when God permits us to imitate James, he calls on us to imitate the apostle who lived.Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://edmongallagher.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">edmongallagher.substack.com</a>

June 19, 2026

Juneteenth, A Holiday for White Americans, Obviously

The iniquities of the wicked ensnare them,and they are caught in the toils of their sin. (Proverbs 5:22)I have actually heard people say that Juneteenth is a holiday for only one segment of the population. But what I can’t figure out is why we would not expect Black people to celebrate? Obviously it’s a holiday for white people—or, let’s put it this way: it must be a time of celebration for those people who look back on the nineteenth-century American South and, because of their skin color, wonder whether, had they lived then and there, they would have been slave owners. Thank God we are no longer confronted with such sin! With all the potential for moral corruption around us in the 21st century, thank God he has removed that particular cause of depravity!Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.When we think about American slavery one of the things we should think about is how the slave society dulled the moral sense of the slavemasters. Slavery exerted a corrupting influence on the slavemasters. I know that the slavemaster is not the first victim of slavery to which our mind turns, and you might think it’s silly—or worse than silly—to reflect on the evils of slavery for the enslaver. I get that. There’s <a target="_blank" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0632986/">an episode of </a><a target="_blank" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0632986/">Little House on the Prairie</a> in which a boy is being abused by his alcoholic father. The men of Walnut Grove get together to talk about how to help the boy, and someone says (I think it’s Doc Baker) that they should probably try to help the father. Charles Ingles responds: “I don’t care about the father, I care only about the boy.” Do you understand why Charles feels that way? That’s the way a lot of people are going to feel about slavery: Who cares about the travails of the slavemaster?! We only care about the slaves!There are a couple of reasons I want to think about the slavemasters.* Had I been born 200 years ago, I would not have been one of the slaves. * There were a lot of opponents of slavery in nineteenth-century America who wrote about the problems of slavery for slaveowners. In his <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_of_the_Life_of_Frederick_Douglass">first autobiography</a> (1845), Frederick Douglass wrote about his master’s wife: “Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me” (ch. 7).Sin hurts the sinner As Augustine wrote in the Confessions (3.8.16) at the end of the fourth century, talking about people who know not God: “even when they sin against you, they act wickedly against their own souls. Their iniquity speaks falsehoods to them, whether by corrupting or perverting their own nature, which you created and ordained, or by making immoderate use of licit things, or by so burning with desire for illicit things that they use them contrary to nature” (trans. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Confessions/VsyIDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">Williams 2019</a>: 39).“They act wickedly against their own souls.” That’s the theme I want to highlight in this essay, and mostly I’m going to do that by lining up quotations that demonstrate the point, quotations about the general idea—sin hurts the sinner—and then also about the specific instance under consideration here, slaveholding. First, the general idea, and it’s one that Socrates mentioned in his final speech—before being sentenced to drink the hemlock—in reference to his accuser, Meletus (and Anytus): “I think he does himself a much greater injury by doing what he is doing now—killing a man unjustly” (Plato, Apology 30d; see the discussion by <a target="_blank" href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Death_of_Socrates/NNjFwAEACAAJ?hl=en">Emily Wilson</a>, pp. 46–51). The Proverbs are filled with this sort of reflection.yet they lie in wait—to kill themselves!and set an ambush—for their own lives! (Proverbs 1:18)Those who are kind reward themselves,but the cruel do themselves harm.The wicked earn no real gain,but those who sow righteousness get a true reward. (Proverbs 11:17–18)As righteousness tendeth to life:so he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death. (Proverbs 11:19)The deuterocanoical book of Wisdom, written just before the time of Jesus, mentions that “One is punished by the very things by which one sins” (Wisdom 11:16), and the other deuterocanonical wisdom book, this one called Sirach, says similarly: “One who sins does wrong to himself” (Sirach 19:4). It was not just Jews and Christians who saw this truth; the pre-classical Greek poet Hesiod asserted: “A man contrives evil for himself when he contrives evil for someone else, and an evil plan is most evil for the planner” (Works and Days 265–66; trans. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674997202">Most</a>, pp. 108–9). One more example, much more recent, written in America about 15 years before slavery was federally prohibited, but this example is not about slavery. It’s from the novel The Scarlet Letter (1850, ch. 14), in which a man named Roger Chillingworth has been wronged, and so he plots his revenge, and it turns out that the biggest victim of his revenge is himself. “In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil’s office.” A devil’s officeSlaveowning in the nineteenth-century American South was a devil’s office, and it turned humans into devils.Living in a slave society himself, Augustine recognized the dangers of sin, and the madness of ignoring the perils of, for instance, hating an enemy. “As if there were any greater danger from a human enemy than from the very hatred that one feels toward him! As if one did more serious harm to someone else by persecuting him than to one’s own heart by stoking one’s hostility!” (Confessions 1.18.29). In a work written after the American Revolutionary War but before the drafting of the US Constitution, Thomas Jefferson had diagnosed this problem. There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people [i.e., white Americans] produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. (<a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_State_of_Virginia">Notes on the State of Virginia</a>, 1785, Query 18)Jefferson goes on to continue describing how easy it is for the slavemaster to abuse his slave and thus train his child to do the same. The child who is thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amor%20patriae">amor patriae</a> of the other. These are amazing sentences from Jefferson in 1785, and with the benefit of hindsight of another nearly two and half centuries of American history, they are tragic. Jefferson’s discussion continues for a few more sentences, and those sentences are well worth reading in this book—his only published book—easily accessible online. But note in the last sentence quoted above that he imagines that with all the harm to the slave entailed in the practice of American slavery, he observes that it is the slavemasters who are turned into immoral despots. You might imagine what the author of the Declaration of Independence thought about immoral despots. In an 1847 letter, <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Wayland">Francis Wayland</a>, an opponent of slavery, quotes this passage from Jefferson and adds the comment a bit later: “It is in accordance with the general law, that those who enslave the bodies of others, become in turn the slaves of their own passions” (see <a target="_blank" href="https://archive.org/details/domesticslaveryc00full/page/120/mode/2up">here</a>, pp. 119–20). The English writer Charles Dickens, visiting America in 1842, published a series of <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Notes">Notes</a>, near the end of which he describes the logical outcome of the training of a slavemaster (text <a target="_blank" href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/675/675-h/675-h.htm">here</a>, near the end of ch. 17):Do we not know that the man who has been born and bred among its [= slavery’s] wrongs; who has seen in his childhood husbands obliged at the word of command to flog their wives; women, indecently compelled to hold up their own garments that men might lay the heavier stripes on their legs, driven and harried by brutal overseers in their time of travail, and becoming mothers on the field of toil, under the very lash itself; who has read in youth, and seen his virgin sisters read, descriptions of runaway men and women, and their disfigured persons [as Dickens had quoted earlier in his chapter], which could not be published elsewhere, of so much stock upon a farm, or at a show of beasts;—do we not know that that man, whenever his wrath is kindled up, will be a brutal savage?According to Jefferson, enslaving another person renders you an immoral despot. Yes, I know, he himself was a slavemaster, and among his slaves were some of his own biological children. That does not make his observation wrong; I think it gives a powerful illustration of it. According to Dickens, the slavemaster trains himself to become a brutal savage. According to the historian <a target="_blank" href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Life_of_Alexander_Campbell/o4yRzgEACAAJ?hl=en">Douglas Foster</a> (p. 55), it is for this reason that Alexander Campbell, the nineteenth-century religious reformer in Virginia, opposed slavery. What I’m saying is, I’m glad I won’t have to stand before God and answer questions about my record as a slavemaster. But we can continue. We have heard from some white people, including a slaveowner, Jefferson, but now we turn to some slaves, or some former (runaway) slaves. (Douglass was still legally a slave when he published his autobiography, as his freedom was not purchased until 1846.) Going back to the first autobiography of Frederick Douglass, who escaped from bondage when he was about age 20, he includes some descriptions of the moral corruption that enslavement wrought on his enslavers. When he was a young boy, he met with a kind woman, the wife of his master, who had not grown up around slaves and so at first treated little Frederick well, like a fellow human being. Such treatment did not last. But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon. (ch. 6)Who said that about how <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton">power corrupts</a>? At first, this kind mistress taught young Douglass to read, before she realized that it was against the law to educate a slave.It is due, however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did not adopt this course of treatment immediately [= preventing him from learning]. She at first lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness. It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as though I were a brute. (ch. 7)“She at first lacked the depravity.” Would that she had never acquired it! Another escaped slave, this one a female named Harriet Jacobs, wrote in <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_in_the_Life_of_a_Slave_Girl">her autobiography of 1861</a> about her former owner and his wife. (All of the following quotations from Jacobs’ book are from ch. 9.) Had it not been for slavery, he would have been a better man, and his wife a happier woman. And again. I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. According to Jacobs, when the white daughters learn that their own fathers have fathered children with their slave women, children who are now their own slaves, these daughters themselves select a slave man and bear its child.In such cases the infant is smothered, or sent where it is never seen by any who know its history. But if the white parent is the father, instead of the mother, the offspring are unblushingly reared for the market. If they are girls, I have indicated plainly enough what will be their inevitable destiny. Jacobs says about the effects of slaveholding:It makes white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. … Yet few slaveholders seem to be aware of the widespread moral ruin occasioned by this wicked system. Their talk is of blighted cotton crops—not of the blight on their children’s souls.She says, if you go to a southern plantation and call yourself “a negro trader”: “Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.”I believe her. And I believe Lord Acton; that’s the guy who said that famous statement that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I have witnessed the corrupting influence of power and money. And I believe the Lord, who told the apostle Paul: “my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Sin hurts the sinner. Enslaving someone turns you into a savage brute and an immoral despot and trains you in depravity. Ought I not to celebrate the eradication of this particular evil? A divine office?Or, maybe not. What if we’re looking at this all wrong? Maybe enslaving others is good for you, good for your soul. Maybe it provides training not in depravity but righteousness. After all, having children to care for is good for you; helps you be unselfish. That’s <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN_XqtZJQmk">an argument I’ve made before</a> and would make again. I’ve experienced it. So … shouldn’t it be the same with enslaving others. Are slavemasters sorta like parents, and the slaves sorta like children? I feel like I’ve got a lot of work to do to convince you of this, and it’s going to be difficult, because I find the idea ludicrous. But not everyone has found it ludicrous. Some pro-slavery apologists in the nineteenth-century American South made this very argument. For example, <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Harper_(South_Carolina_politician)">William Harper</a>, a South Carolinian, in 1835 wrote that enslaving others improves one’s moral character, just like parenting children.He who has been accustomed not only to command, but to protect others; to provide for their wants and relieve their distresses, will, if his nature be not unusually perverse, acquire an habitual and humane interest in the objects of his care. (text <a target="_blank" href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Anniversary_Oration/3xUAAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1">here</a>, pp. 13–14) Whereas Thomas Jefferson (in his Notes, Query 18, part of which I quoted earlier) and others had alleged that enslaving others makes one lazy (Jefferson: “For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him”), Harper rejects this idea (pp. 14–15). Can Harper be right? Perhaps there is a superficial plausibility to his argument. Whether or not we should agree with Harper, I submit, is made clearer by his other statement in the same speech saying that we should recognize that the claim that all people are made equal is an exaggeration (I quoted this statement from Harper in an essay I wrote on slavery in the New Testament, which you can find <a target="_blank" href="https://www.hcu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/BSS-2021-For-the-Glory-of-God.pdf">here</a>; for the quote, see p. 85.) To return again to Jefferson and that Query 18 in his Notes on the State of Virginia, published 9 years after the Declaration, he does not seem to think he was exaggerating when he wrote about the self-evident nature of the claim that “all men are created equal.” In his Notes of 1785, he wonders: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?” Since Jefferson has been talking about slaves, when he now says that “these liberties are of the gift of God”—a phrase that reminds us of the Declaration of Independence—he is obviously including the slaves in this evaluation. He goes on to express foreboding about what God will do to America for the sin of slavery. <a target="_blank" href="https://edmongallagher.substack.com/p/the-new-birth-of-freedom">He was prescient</a>. No; rather, a devil’s officeHarper was wrong, obviously wrong, absurdly wrong. The best one can say for Harper is that he is hopelessly, willfully naive, wrong perhaps in a similar way to Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “<a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden">The White Man’s Burden</a>.” (See Jonah Goldberg’s comments <a target="_blank" href="https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/gfile/the-ties-that-blind/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=The+Ties+That+Blind&utm_campaign=The+Ties+That+Blind&vgo_ee=JXnBZfHqJBAbunGMzUkcuAS3%2FDtqqPorJBcfYuLag22MJQ%3D%3D%3As6INBh6iCN5xLE9NAMFrMC7sV2C5ZNMy">here</a>.)We best return to Frederick Douglass, this time to his <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_to_the_Slave_Is_the_Fourth_of_July%3F">Fourth of July oration</a> from 1852—note the year; the 13th Amendment is still thirteen years away; the Civil War is still almost a decade away. And the economic system of slavery is more than ever entrenched in the southern United States. During the course of this speech, Douglass again finds reason to discourse on the dangers of slavery to the slaveholder.Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad[;] it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions, crush and destroy it forever!A century later, some Black civil rights activists recognized the same dynamic at play in their day. See, for instance, the <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin%E2%80%93Buckley_debate">famous 1965 debate</a> at Cambridge between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley.At the 24:20 mark, James Baldwin comments: “Now I suggest, that of all the terrible things that can happen to a human being, that is one of the worst”—in reference to poor white people glorying in their whiteness. “I suggest that what has happened to white southerners is in some ways after all much worse than what has happened to Negroes there.” He immediately brings up <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Clark_(sheriff)">Sheriff Clark</a> in Selma, Alabama, who is the subject of his comment at the 25:20 mark. “Something awful must have happened to a human being to be able to put a cattle prod against a woman’s breasts, for example. What happens to the woman is ghastly; what happens to the man who does it is in some ways much, much worse.”Also in 1965, The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published, unfortunately posthumously, which contains this comment. But I want to tell you something. This pattern, this “system” that the white man created, of teaching Negroes to hide the truth from him behind a façade of grinning, ‘yessir-bossing,” foot-shuffling and head-scratching—that system has done the American white man more harm than an invading army would do to him. (from the chapter “Icarus,” p. 279)I think he’s right, and so does Wendell Berry, who excerpted that comment from Malcolm X and used it as the first epigraph in his 1970 book The Hidden Wound, a short book that explores the effects of slavery and racism on Berry’s own family. (See <a target="_blank" href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/race-anti-fragility">this commemorative essay</a> on the book.)What would I have done?Had I lived in the early 1800s in the same town I live now (Florence, Alabama), what temptations to depravity would I face? Of course, not all white people owned slaves; some were opposed to the peculiar institution, some just couldn’t afford it. Not rich enough to become a savage brute. What a blessing! In his <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_Birmingham_Jail">Letter from a Birmingham Jail</a> Martin Luther King asserted that “I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time [of Hitler], I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.” I agree with him: King would have acted in that way. His life proves it. I am less confident about myself. The epistle of James in the New Testament instructs readers to rejoice in the trials they face (James 1:2). Perhaps we should also be thankful for trials we haven’t faced.Sometimes you’ll hear people say that they would love to have been alive to see Jesus teach on the mountainside or multiply the fish and loaves. Peter witnessed the Transfiguration; and Peter denied Jesus three times. Would you like to have witnessed Jesus ride into town on a donkey? Would you like to have been one of the crowd shouting, “Hosanna to the coming king”? Would you like to have been in the temple, seeing Jesus answer questions, shutting up his opponents? That same crowd gathered at the governor’s house on Friday morning. The trial they then faced is described in Mark 15:6–14. They ended up calling for the crucifixion of their Creator. Absurd but true. Pilate was surprised at the crowd. I’m glad that when I stand before God I won’t have to answer questions about what I did on that Good Friday. Most of the players did not acquit themselves well. We should be thankful for the trials we don’t face. I recognize that these examples ought to drive us to wonder about the trials we do face, and how we are handling them. Those are good questions to ask, but they are not the point of this reflection. Here I am thinking about a trial I have not faced. Sin sometimes sneaks up on you—like PeterSin sometimes overwhelms you—like the crowd before Pilate. Sin dulls your senses. That’s what Frederick Douglass described in his Fourth of July oration. In a speech given two decades later, celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation, Douglass announced: “We are all liberated by this proclamation. Everybody is liberated. The white man is liberated, the black man is liberated….” (“The Proclamation and a Negro Army,” March 1863, at p. 307 of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Portable_Frederick_Douglass/OKLoDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">The Portable Frederick Douglass</a>).The two and a half centuries of American slavery provided plenty of evidence for “man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil’s office.” Many people were overwhelmed by this sin, captured by it, corrupted. Juneteenth reminds me to rejoice that I was not among them. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://edmongallagher.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">edmongallagher.substack.com</a>

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