It was like a ghost town. The ancient parade fields were still there just as they looked in 1878, lined with the original antiquated officers housing. They were mansions, mostly empty, but well maintained.

Fort Meade, South Dakota, as it appeared in 1888. Bear Butte is in background.

Now called Fort Meade, it is used occasionally by the South Dakota National Guard as a training site. I was the chaplain, with the rank of Captain, for the Officers’ Candidate School there that summer for the western region of the United States Army National Guard. The officer candidates were Second Lieutenant university students, preparing to be Army officers. All strangers, we converged for a mission to make officers out of them. They numbered at about 100.

When the Fourth of July came, they displayed their mettle. They could have gone to Mount Rushmore or even to Rapid City to go drinking without getting caught. Interestingly, they all re-enacted a deadly Civil War battle on the parade field to get a feel for what war was like during the Civil War (1861-1865). It was sobering. I facilitated with my role as a Civil War chaplain. They knelt on the ground, bayonets in hand, as I conducted a worship service on the field before the battle ensued.

In those days, when soldiers came to your house to conscript you for battle, it was a death warrant. You did not return. There were rare exceptions. For the most part, it was a departure forever from your family. If you refused, they killed you on the spot. National security was at stake for the North and the South.

Because rifles were not accurate in the 1800s, soldiers were not to shoot until they saw the whites of the eyes of those they shot. Or else, they wasted bullets, and while it could take a minute to reload, they could be shot while the other side encroached upon them. Timing was everything. They looked into the eyes of those they killed. Sometimes it was one’s friend, brother, uncle, or worse, one’s father, or grandfather.

When each battle was over, hundreds or thousands would cover the fields, wounded, moaning for days until they died. Doctors were scarce, but saved who they could. It did not take much to die in battle during the Civil War. A mere gunshot wound in the leg is all it took in many cases. If you could not walk off the battlefield at the end of the battle, you died. You were left lying on the ground, suffering for days perhaps, until you died, if no soldiers were available to assist you.

Officers and chaplains walked the fields speaking to the wounded and praying with them as they died in unbearable pain. Listening to the choruses of deep groans of hundreds of soldiers lying across vast fields was horrifying. Officers and chaplains relayed soldiers’ messages to their mothers, wives, and next of kin if they could.

Today, we kill people whom we never see, who could be miles away. Then we get in our vehicles and drive away or fly away. For me, the re-enactment was a spiritual experience. I was honored to minister to the candidates on the field when we taught them that the price of freedom is usually separation, pain, and death.

When we receive the Spirit of the Lord, we’re free from having to prove ourselves to others. You are then free to be the person God created you to be.

Image: Ivana Cajina

Friends, we have received the Spirit of grace through Christ who was crucified and resurrected. When we carry the hope of Heaven in our heart and let go of our tight grip, we have on ourselves—we receive true freedom in Christ!

Pastor Cletus

Used with permission.

On Monday, June 4, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 in favor of Colorado cake artist Jack Phillips in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Image: Marcie Douglass

Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Kristen Waggoner said this about the June 4 ruling:

Jack serves all customers; he simply declines to express messages or celebrate events that violate his deeply held beliefs. Creative professionals who serve all people should be free to create art consistent with their convictions without the threat of government punishment. Government hostility toward people of faith has no place in our society, yet the state of Colorado was openly antagonistic toward Jack’s religious beliefs about marriage. The court was right to condemn that. Tolerance and respect for good-faith differences of opinion are essential in a society like ours. This decision makes clear that the government must respect Jack’s beliefs about marriage.

For the full press release: http://www.adfmedia.org/News/PRDetail/8700

As would be expected from a Christian musician who combines depth of experience with theological training, Michael Card balances devotional and scholarly insights. Motivated by his experiences among African American churches and their moving tendency to address Jesus as Master, Card uses both personal anecdotes and stories from the history of American slavery as a lens through which to take the reader on a journey through the old and new testament worlds of slavery, and particularly to draw out the new testament theme of Christian life being deliverance from one slavery, that of the world, into the freedom that comes only from setting apart Jesus as a new Master. The book is divided into three main parts, each of which engages the reader at the level of the imagination to allow stories of African American slavery to help illuminate Biblical contexts. The first and shortest articulates the beginning of Card’s aforementioned journey, namely among African American communities, and the inspiration from the early church that, in the words of Ignatius, a ‘better freedom’ comes only through setting apart Christ as Lord. He also describes something of the three contexts of Old Testament, New Testament and African American slavery. The first is dealt with somewhat swiftly (and one suspects potentially idealistically) and is not really mentioned after this brief treatment. The latter two he sees as similarly brutal and demeaning, and it is the New Testament witness, illustrated with African American stories, that he focuses on in the rest of the book.

The second, much lengthier, part of the book deals with the life and teaching of the apostle Paul and his emphasis on Christian discipleship as characterised by being a ‘slave of Christ’. Card’s focus on the theme is illuminating and the reader is struck by the sheer extent of such teaching and references to slavery throughout Paul’s life and writings. Of particular note is his insight that the Pauline words used to describe three of the greatest gifts of grace, namely justification, redemption and reconciliation, all come to us from the world of slavery. Being a slave of Christ, however, is not like the slavery to the world that oppresses people in captivity, but Christian disciples are freed from such an old life and freed to a discipleship that involves pleasing our Master, healing divisions through our common identity, and a life of service. Card admirably does not shy away from difficult questions and points out that although Paul was not ostensibly an abolitionist, this was because his main emphasis was that all Christians, slave or free, were to find their identity not in their literal freedom, or lack of it, but rather in their common identity of having Jesus as Master. Nevertheless, if they could, they should take their opportunity for freedom.