We Confess! The Civil War, the South, and the Church – Q&A 2

How do you respond to people who see the title of your book and protest, “It’s time to put the past behind us! It’s time to go forward”? Doesn’t We Confess drag up issues best left alone?

It is time to go forward. But we can’t put the past behind us if we’re still chained to it. My experiences inside a denominational structure made very clear to me that we are still chained to attitudes and behaviors our ancestors could not bring themselves to face. And that’s not just true for Southern Baptists.

The state of our nation indicates as much. The state of a nation reveals much about the state of the church within it. When the people of God are moving in sync with him, it profoundly affects a nation for good. So whatever bothers you most about our nation, whatever you see as badly askew, it’s almost surely badly askew in the church, as well.

If we’ll take an honest look at the church in the US – and especially that part of the church that prides itself on its devotion to Jesus – we’ll see that something has aborted every revival since the Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s. Something is holding us back from the unity, the character and the power of God.

We Confess uncovers the stuff from our past that needs to be redeemed so we can go forward together in newness of life and power.