Historic RPCNA Church Building Destroyed in Selma, AL Tornado
Selma, Alabama, experienced a devastating tornado on Thursday. Selma is rich in history. One bit of history many may not know is that Selma is home to the only predominantly African American RPCNA congregation. In 1874, Rev. Lewis Johnston’s the first African American to be ordained in the RPCNA, went to Selma to establish a school as well as to preach to freedmen.
On Thursday, January 12, 2023, the building of the Selma Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (RPCNA), one of its historic congregations, lost their 19th century building to a tornado. The Selma congregation and the ministry out of this building has changed the course of Black history in the South and human history for so many. From Knox Academy to Claude Brown’s legacy, good kingdom work has been done in this place for well over a century.
Selma, Alabama, experienced a devastating tornado on Thursday. Selma is rich in history. One bit of history many may not know is that Selma is home to the only predominantly African American RPCNA congregation. In 1874, Rev. Lewis Johnston’s the first African American to be ordained in the RPCNA, went to Selma to establish a school as well as to preach to freedmen. The church was built in 1878, and it has stood for 145 years. On Thursday morning it was destroyed in the tornado. Please keep the people of Selma and the surrounding areas who were impacted by the tornado in your prayers.
Read more on the tornado’s destruction in Selma.
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Why Ayaan Hirsi Ali Became a Christian
Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Monday, December 4, 2023
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is concerned with how the West is dismantling its traditional cultural norms and with what it intends to replace them. Others have said similar things before. Philip Rieff and Sir Roger Scruton are two that come to mind. But the impression both of them leave is that, yes, they think God is a very good idea for grounding a civilized culture, but they are not entirely sure that he exists. What Ali has done is taken the obvious—and indeed necessary—next step: She sees the necessity of a sacred order and is not afraid to say so. It will be interesting to see if those others who have so astutely analyzed the sicknesses unto death that grip the West at the moment will follow her lead.Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim and now a former atheist, recently declared that she has converted to Christianity. This is a cause for great rejoicing.
It is also a fascinating sign of the times. Her published account of why she is a Christian is somewhat odd, given that it mentions Jesus only once. It is, however, unreasonable to expect a new convert to offer an elaborate account of the hypostatic union in the first days of faith. This is why churches catechize disciples: Conversion does not involve an infusion of comprehensive doctrinal knowledge. And whatever the lacunae in her statement, the genuineness of her profession is a matter for the pastor of whatever congregation of Christ’s church to which she attaches herself.
Here is what makes her public testimony a sign of the times: She states that she converted in part because she realized that a truly humanistic culture—and by that I mean a culture that treats human beings as persons, not as things—must rest upon some conception of the sacred order as set forth in Christianity, with its claim that all are made in the image of God. “Western civilization is under threat from three different but related forces,” she writes. These are resurgent authoritarianism in China and Russia, global Islamism, and “the viral spread of woke ideology.” She declares that she became a Christian in part because she recognized that “we can’t fight off these formidable forces” with modern secular tools; rather, we can only defeat these foes if we are united by a “desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition,” with its “ideas and institutions designed to safeguard human life, freedom and dignity.”
The last few years have seen a number of unexpected voices strike hard against the mores of our time, particularly in the realm of sexual ethics and its close relative, the ethics of embodiment. Mary Harrington has written against the dehumanizing tendencies that lurk just below the surface of a society that sees transgenderism and transhumanism as legitimate. Louise Perry has pointed out that, despite its own propaganda about itself, the sexual revolution is very bad news for women and for children. Conservative Christians have, of course, been saying such things for years.
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Sacred Meditation
Let us immerse ourselves in Scripture, committing it to memory, dwelling on it, and saturating our thoughts with the Word of God. Let us sing the psalms, filling our minds with praise. Let us revisit the weeks, months, years, and decades past, meditating on the countless instances of God’s faithfulness, filling our minds with thanksgiving.
You shall have no other gods before Me. – Exodus 20:3
When the Almighty declares that Israel shall have no other deities before Him, His command transcends the hallowed ground of Sinai, where He descended in awe-inspiring splendor. God is not merely the Lord of lofty peaks but also the Sovereign of the valleys. His dominion extends beyond these sacred walls to permeate every private recess of your existence. Inescapably, you abide in His presence, such that each errant thought, each misguided meditation, becomes an act of setting up profane idols ignorantly before Him.
Last week, we explored the mind’s propensity to enshrine false gods, those insidious deities that plant their banners in the fertile soil of our gray matter, infecting the neural pathways with venomous idolatry repugnant to God. Today, we peel back another layer to examine our meditations.
To the ancient Hebrew mind, thoughts were distinct from chosen meditations. The mind, unanchored, can drift aimlessly into error and heresy. Thus, in repenting for sins of the mind, our most potent defense is to remain tethered, anchored to God and His law, lest our wayward thoughts float adrift.
Biblical meditation, however, demands intentional action. Consider the diligence required to cultivate the finest lawn: weeds must be plucked, roots and all, lest they return. Likewise, we must continually uproot mental idols. Yet, plucking alone is insufficient; we must also sow seeds that nourish lush growth. Both actions – plucking and planting – are essential to achieving our desired ends.
Just as we addressed plucking mental idols last week, today we explore intentionally sowing thoughts that honor the Lord and prevent profane gods from infiltrating our minds. Unlike the empty promises of yoga gurus and new age shamans, Biblical meditation is not about emptying the mind but filling it – so abundantly, in fact, that no idolatrous weeds can take root or occupy sacred space.
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Two Kinds of Worship Music
Churches that understood corporate worship to be covenant renewal used music that modestly supported a fitting embodiment of doctrinally rich hymn lyrics and avoided music that simply “enervates men’s souls.” Sacramental worship, on the other hand, with its understanding of worship as felt experience of God, saw pop music as the perfect vehicle for their goals.
In a previous article, I argued that music (all art) embodies interpretation of reality—it embodies ideas beyond mere words. Scripture itself does this, not only telling us what we should believe, qualities that should describe us, and how we should live, but also showing us through artistic embodiment those things. Therefore, we Christians ought to always evaluate the embodied ideas within a work of art to determine whether or not they accord with sound doctrine (Titus 2:1).
Two Worship Theologies
This brings us to music used in worship. As I’ve argued, what worship songs do is more than just neutrally carry theological ideas expressed through words. If this were the case, then as long as the words were theologically correct, it would not matter what musical forms or performance style carries those words.
Side note: I hope you recognize here that even lyrics that are “technically” correct may already present an interpretation of biblical ideas that do not “accord with sound doctrine.” This is beyond the scope what I want to get to in this article, but just consider whether “reckless” or “sloppy wet kiss” accords with how Scripture expresses God’s love. These are not just neutral expressions of a correct biblical truth (God’s love), they embody a particular interpretation of what God’s love is like.
Music is not simply a neutral container for lyrical ideas—music embodies an interpretation of those ideas. So with worship songs, the music embodies both an interpretation of the particular words of the song and an interpretation of what is actually happening in the worship service.
So before I give some attention to the music itself, we need to briefly review the fact that Christians hold to more than one theology of worship.
For simplicity’s sake, I’ll focus on what I would say are the two most dominant theologies of worship among Christians today.1
Covenant-Renewal Worship
The first is what I’ll call Covenant-Renewal Worship. This is a theology of worship that considers the Lord’s Day corporate gathering to be one of covenant renewal in which God renews his covenant with his people through the gospel, and his people renew their covenant with him in responses of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and dedication. This kind of covenant renewal glorifies God because it highlights the work that he has done, and it forms his people to mature in how they live out the implications of that gospel covenant. Here’s how I describe it in Biblical Foundations of Corporate Worship:
Corporate worship is like renewing our gospel vows to Christ. Just like when we were first converted, God calls us to draw near to him. Just like at our conversion, we respond with confession of sin and acknowledgement that we have broken God’s laws. Just like when we were first saved, we hear words of pardon from God because of the sacrifice of Christ. Just like when we began our relationship with God, we eagerly listen to his instructions and commit to obey. We are not getting “re-saved” each week, but we are renewing our covenant vows to the Lord, and in so doing, we are rekindling our relationship with him and our commitment to him, and he with us.2
Worship services shaped by this theology follow the shape of the gospel:God reveals himself and calls his people to worship through his Word.
God’s people acknowledge and confess their need for forgiveness.
God provides atonement.
God speaks his Word.
God’s people respond with commitment.
God hosts a celebratory feast.Corporate worship that embodies this theology is dialogical, a conversation between God and his people. God always speaks first through his Word, and then his people respond appropriately to God’s revelation.
As Bryan Chapell has helpfully demonstrated in Christ-Centered Worship, and as I demonstrate in Changed from Glory into Glory: The Liturgical Story of the Christian Faith, covenant-renewal worship characterized believers in the early church and Protestants following the seventeenth-century Reformation. Though differences certainly exist between various groups stemming from the Reformation, their theology of covenant-renewal worship was fairly consistent. Another book that very helpfully explains this historic theology of worship is Jonathan Cruse’s What Happens When We Worship.
Songs within this covenant-renewal worship serve one of two functions: (1) Often psalms and hymns serve as God’s words to us, either directly quoting from or paraphrasing Scripture itself. (2) Psalms and hymns can also serve as our response to God’s revelation.
With both cases, choice of songs depends upon how the lyrical content fits within the dialogical, gospel-shaped covenant renewal service. Songs are not lumped together into a musical “set,” but rather interspersed with Scripture readings and prayers throughout the dialogical, gospel-shaped service.
The goal of covenant-renewal worship is discipleship—building up the body (1 Cor 14:26). Every aspect of the service is chosen, not for how it will give “authentic expression” to the worshipers or give them an experience of God’s presence (see below), but rather how it will build them up, maturing them by the Word of God.
The music itself is actually not very prominent in this theology of worship. Music is important—as I’ve discussed, it provides an interpretation of the theology of the lyrics and gives expression to that interpretation. But music is secondary. The music is selected and performed to modestly support the truth with sentiments that “accord to sound doctrine,” and an emphasis is given to reverence, self-control, sobriety, and dignity in how the songs are led, accompanied, and performed.
Contrary to caricatures, this kind of worship is deeply emotional, but the music is not intended to stimulate or arouse emotion; rather, deep affections of the soul are stirred by the Holy Spirit through his Word, and music simply gives language to appropriate responses to the Word. Emotion in covenant-renewal worship is not often immediate, visceral, or flashy—rather, it is felt deeply in the soul.3 In fact, particularly because of commands in Scripture (like Titus 2:1) that Christians are to be dignified and self-controlled, care is given to avoid music that would cause a worshiper to lose control. Christians with this theology recognized that although physical feelings are good, they must be controlled lest our “belly” (a Greek metaphor for bodily passions) be our god (Phil 3:19). Rather, since reverence, dignity, and self-control are qualities that accord with sound doctrine, music is chosen that will nurture and cultivate these qualities and the affections of the soul like compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience (Col 3:12) and love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:23). This theology takes note of the fact that qualities like intensity, passion, enthusiasm, exhilaration, or euphoria are never described in Scripture as qualities to pursue or stimulate, and they are never used to define the nature of spiritual maturity or the essence of worship.
Musical choices from this perspective are not about new vs. old or the canonization of one kind of music; rather, it is about choosing musical forms that best accord with a covenant-renewal theology of worship.
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