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Holidays and missions are two things Christians and churches celebrate. We stand proudly on Memorial Day as we remember the sacrifice of soldiers. We listen to sermons on gratitude and praise God for His blessings on Thanksgiving. We watch videos about the legacy and impact of Lottie Moon and praise God for the fruitfulness of those on the mission field.
By now, many of us have heard of the holiday Juneteenth, though many Christians still don’t celebrate the day or recognize the fruitful mission work birthed out of the freedom of African American slaves. Though the liberation of the enslaved people is the only reason we need to celebrate Juneteenth, there is much to commemorate. I propose that we should also commemorate this day to recognize the missional fervor displayed by freed African Americans and the way they stewarded their freedom to continue a Christian legacy of fulfilling the Church’s mission.
What is Juneteenth?
In the midst of the Civil War, President Lincoln enacted the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which declared enslaved people in the Confederate states as free. Tragically, cities like Galveston, Texas utilized legal barriers to withhold the news of freedom from enslaved people. However, on June 19, 1865, the day is known today as Juneteenth, two months after the ending of the Civil War on April 9th, General Gordon Grainger brought the news of freedom to the enslaved people in Galveston. For years, freed black men and women and black enslaved people fought vigorously for the liberation of black people, and finally, they were free. To be clear, many social, economic, and legal barriers would come during Reconstruction and eventually Jim Crow that suppressed the full freedom of African ...
from Christianity Today Magazine
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