Mt. Zion: Being In The Neighborhood

by Lilly West, 2023 Undergraduate Summer Research Fellow in Lived Theology

I’ve got another Yes, Lord (in my soul)” Mt. Zion’s choir sings. In the same way that the church’s historic 105 Ridge Street building holds echoes of a century of worship, praise reverberates in the sanctuary of the new edifice at 105 Lankford Street. Theirs is a resilient adoration. 

As Reverend Dr. Edwards noted in an interview in 1986, five years into his ministry at Mt. Zion, they are a “survival church.”[1] My research this summer has been a project of storytelling, attempting to bear witness to an intersection of communities “sing[ing] better songs with [their] lives.”[2] The harmonies and disharmonies that I have encountered swell around me, holding despair, pain, and, ultimately, “triumph and calm confidence.”[3]

Early on a Tuesday morning, I walked into Mt. Zion’s church office to interview the Reverend Dr. Alvin Edwards. Characterized by most who know him as a busy man whose love for his congregation and his city orders his schedule, he graciously agreed to sit with me for a sizeable portion of his morning. Within those few hours, in the spirit of calm confidence, Reverend Edwards shared his experience of God’s faithfulness in Mt. Zion’s survival. 

When he stepped into his ministry at Mt. Zion in 1981, Reverend Edwards stepped into a story and a history that preceded himself. “When I came, my focus was probably more healing than anything else,” he notes, since the church was very divided in the wake of pastoral transition. I asked about his relationship with Reverend Hamilton, who served Mt. Zion from 1960 to 1980. “To be honest,” he started, “I did not meet him until years later at the 125th Anniversary when I invited all living former pastors to come preach.” 

I had assumed that Reverend Hamilton, who led the church during Charlottesville’s urban renewal initiative, which razed the Vinegar Hill neighborhood surrounding the historic church building, had shaped Reverend Edwards’ vision for the future of the church, particularly its move to the Lankford location. However, as Reverend Edwards describes it, the congregation directed his energies for the first 20 years of his ministry. Upon his arrival to Mt. Zion, he felt a tense air, “so thick you could cut it.” Church membership, as he understood it, dwindled and the average age rose. In the early days of his leadership, faithful church members invited him into the church’s recent history. “I began to hear the stories about Vinegar Hill and how they razed the community, how it dispersed all the African American people, their families, their businesses; to see how the city of Charlottesville really cheated Zion Union Baptist Church. That destroyed,” he reflects and starts again, “that decimated the Black community.”

Prior to Charlottesville’s urban renewal, many members of Mt. Zion lived in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood, easily within walking distance of the church. With the demolition of the neighborhood, residents were forced to relocate, which resulted in many moving to the 10th & Page, Ridge Street, and Belmont neighborhoods. Physical distance, as well the absence of a centralized communal space, dimmed the liveliness of the community. The land set to be “renewed” remained untouched for decades. Confusion and grief shattered the Black community. For Mt. Zion’s purposes, community engagement became a completely new project, and relocated members now had to commute for worship on Sundays. Mt. Zion’s new problem? No parking lot. 

So, it would come as no surprise that when Reverend Edwards asked the congregation in 1981 their hopes for the church’s future, he noticed that the church was in desperate need of space, something he had little of in the historic building. Thus, the land for the new church building at First and Lankford was purchased within the first few years of his pastorate. He told his congregation and the broader city of Charlottesville, “I want to put our church back into the neighborhood.”[4]

Beyond moving the congregation’s physical presence “into the neighborhood,” Reverend Edwards himself entered into the realm of city leadership. For him, politics and religion cannot be divorced, especially in his role as a pastor. “There is a separation in the sense that you can’t legislate righteousness,” he offers; however, “do[ing] what’s best for [the] community,” which he understands to be his responsibility, means that he must involve himself in the workings of the city. Repeatedly, he tells me, “[m]y faith makes me look at the total person, the head, the heart and the soul.” To see someone as a “total being” should direct the Christian longing for justice and participation in spaces where there are opportunities for growth towards a more just, nurturing, safe community. To this end, Reverend Edwards had involved himself in leadership spaces such as the Monticello Area Community Action Agency, Alliance for Interfaith Ministries, Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority, Charlottesville Albemarle Boys and Girls Club, Charlottesville City Council, and Back to School Bash.[5] “I want to keep working,” he looks at me and shakes his head, “I don’t want to rust out in life, I want to wear out.” 

The church should be a place where the desire for the health of the “total being” abounds. Yet, as Reverend Edwards solemnly addresses, “the church as the body of Christ is polarized.” Our differences, he argues, prevent us from working together for the flourishing of our shared community. He, alongside the Charlottesville Clergy Collective, “a group of faith and allied  community leaders” and his “brainchild”[6]  pray for solidarity in the fight for justice and righteousness. 

What can that solidarity look like in our racially separated church communities? Well, for one, the White church has to shift its understanding of solidarity. “If White churches expect Black churches to act like them, it’ll never happen,” Reverend Edwards notes, “because the Black church has been the one to have to fight and defend who we are historically, because the White church hasn’t stepped up to do it, especially the ‘body of Christ’.” Growth in this area will start with truth telling. “I think some of the white pastors and their members need to start speaking out against the wrongs that they see and stop burying their heads in the sand,” he cries out, “if we don’t turn it around we are getting ready to lose another generation of people because we haven’t ministered to them in a way that their lives have been transformed. Because we are scared. We are comfortable where we are. It ought not to be that way.” 

His prayer for the body of Christ is that God would “liberate all of us from our prejudices, from our biases.” There is a richer future available to the Christian community. God invites us into an active, lived faith. This faith points to God’s inauguration of the eternal Kingdom, where God’s love in us transcends the brokenness of this earth. The more I read, the more I feel that proximity, “being in the neighborhood,” as Reverend Edwards described, is central to this future reality. Our brightest conceptions of racial reconciliation and the renewal of our church bodies are glimpses of a future not yet accessible to us.[7] Until that time, God has protected and steadied communities like Mt. Zion, communities that desire to “make kingdom kids, kingdom churches, to make God’s kingdom here on earth as in heaven.” Ultimately, I hope that God stirs us to work that grows “far more organic, meaningful, and authentic relationships than any of us can think of and project in the abstract from the alienated and still unredressed ground on which we currently stand.”[8]

This summer, I’ve been blessed to sit and reflect at the intersection of communities, Mt. Zion, the Music Resource Center, and Church of the Good Shepherd, which I have been able to research. It has been a summer of resonant worship, and songs have echoed within me and refashioned my soul. Maybe I’ve sung “Got Another Yes Lord” too many times,  but I think that God continually places sustained, partnered work in front of us. My summer ends calmly confident in prayer for “another yes.” 


[1] Charlottesville Daily Progress, (12/24/1986).

[2] Charles Marsh, Welcoming Justice, “The Power of True Conversion” (78)

[3]  W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (222) 

[4] Charlottesville Daily Progress, (12/24/1986). 

[5] https://ministeringtoministers.org/awards/the-rev-dr-alvin-edwards/

 Reverend Edwards states that one of his dreams would be to see communities of believers work together to help every child reach grade reading level. The potential for human and community flourishing from this effort would be transformative. 

[6] https://www.cvilleclergycollective.org/about.html

[7] Harvey, Jennifer. Dear White Christians. (100)

[8]  Harvey, Jennifer. Dear White Christians. (100)


Learn more about the Lilly’s Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in Lived Theology here.

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

The Harmonious History of Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church

by Lilly West, 2023 Undergraduate Summer Research Fellow in Lived Theology

Student performing in the sanctuary of 105 Ridge Street. Photo courtesy of The Music Resource Center

On the second of June in 2003, the Charlottesville Daily Progress reported that real estate developer Gabe Silverman purchased the former Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church building at 105 Ridge Street for $500,000.  He noted that his plan for the future of this building would be to find a user “complementary to the history the church has in it.”[1] Known for his “generous spirit” and his professional posture of “subtle sacredness,” Silverman’s various projects around Charlottesville’s downtown center began to “knit together a new version of the town” where “people got a taste for what it meant to thrive as a town [and] as a community.”[2]

Ultimately, the building was sold to the Music Resource Center (MRC). The mission of the MRC is to serve as a “safe, diverse, and creative community” which “foster[s] the youth of Charlottesville through music.”[3] To this end, the MRC provides after-school programs in a variety of creative, musical arts for 6th-12th grade students. 

Reverend Edwards of Mt. Zion responded to the new mission of his church’s historic space by saying that “Mt. Zion has a good history of music,” and indicated that the center would fulfill his hopes for the building. “I respect the historical fact about what it’s been and what it’s meant to the community,” he shared, “but for me, as long as it serves the needs of the people of this community, I’m okay with it.”[4]  

Considering the inhabitants of 105 Ridge Street, I have been reflecting on the role of physical space in community formation and vitality. As one Charlottesville Daily Progress reporter noted, there is a harmony to the reimagined space, woven together by “new music in the historic setting [and] young people [as] part of an old tradition.” The songs this building sings with its life ring with love for its surrounding community, and there is this sense that “the beauty of music sinks into the very bones of the building quietly reverberating to inspire new generations.”[5]

Vine Deloria’s God is Red invites his audience to reconsider how we understand the role of space and time in religious community. “Space must in a certain sense precede time as a consideration for thought,” he argues, because “if time becomes our primary consideration we never seem to arrive at the reality of our existence in places but instead are always directed to experiential and abstract interpretations rather than the experiences themselves.”[6] How does our dialogue of “already” and “not yet” erase our lived experience? How do I understand the shaping role of 105 Ridge Street both in the stories I encounter and in God’s redemptive story? 

I brought my questions to the current inhabitants of the building. Ike Anderson, Membership and Community Coordinator for the MRC, shared his unique story both as a member of the team at the center and as a former student served by the after school programs. Ike[7] experienced the MRC’s transition to its current residence in 2003 during his senior year of high school. A photo of Ike cutting the ribbon at the church entrance hangs in the entry hallway to the sanctuary. This physical space, he explained, is so much more than it appears. Centered between Westhaven, Friendship Court, and Prospect Avenue, the building is within walking distance of the communities the MRC serves. The sanctuary, with its “unbelievable acoustics,” serves as a performance space for young artists[8]. Stepping into the basement which is now transformed into recording and dance studios, Ike describes his place of work as a “music utopia” and his dance studio as a home. “Nothing knows me like that room,” he says through a smile of appreciation. 

Robert Cunningham and April Murrie, the pastoral team for Church of the Good Shepherd, tell me their story. Invited to plant Church of the Good Shepherd, they searched for worship space along abstract conceptions of proximity, walkability, general accessibility, and socioeconomic and ethnic diversity. Stumbling onto the space at the MRC, which is not in use on Sunday’s, they began a conversational process with Dr. Edwards of Mt. Zion and members of the Good Shepherd congregation with expert knowledge of Charlottesville’s racial history. Recalling one of their early meetings with the MRC, April Murrie remembers MRC leadership exclaiming “how excited the Edwards’s would be for there to be a church worshiping in the space.” Through prayerful deliberation and assurance that they were being faithful to the parties involved, they leased the sanctuary space for worship on Sunday’s. Both Cunningham and Murrie attest to Good Shepherd’s posture as “guests in the space, blessed by the reverberations of worship that were sung there for generations before [them].” Mt. Zion has built up a “robust missional presence” in the city, which Good Shepherd steps into to “come alongside” with humility and excitement. They share that, while they are unsure how long they will take up residence in this space, their experience stepping into this rich, interwoven history has been formative and will frame the life of their church. 

The life of this church building has not only been shaped by the passion of human activity within, but it also has shaped the lives of multiple congregations, communities, and individuals in return. Here’s where I’ll reach for “relatedness” from Ivone Gebara. Gebara suggests that God is relatedness, as seen through Creation’s web of “interdependen[t] life systems.”[9] This related reality “cannot deny all earlier moments and former phases.”[10] In fact, like music sinks into the frame of 105 Ridge Street, “our human experience is, in fact, to place ourselves within the tradition of our ancestors, of those whose bodies vibrated as ours do” in the physical, lived experience of space and history[11].  


[1] Charlottesville Daily Progress, 6/2/2003. 

[2] https://www.cvilletomorrow.org/gabe-silverman-architect-developer/

[3] https://musicresourcecenter.org/about/mission/

[4] Charlottesville Daily Progress, 9/7/2003. 

[5] Charlottesville Daily Progress, 9/15/2003. 

[6] Vine Deloria, God is Red (73). 

[7] Ike requested that I call him Ike because “Mr. Anderson is from the Matrix.” 

[8] Fritz Berry, Charlottesville Daily Progress, 9/7/2003. 

[9] Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water (28). 

[10] Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water (48). 

[11] Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water (50). 


Learn more about the Lilly’s Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in Lived Theology here.

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

Mt. Zion’s Liberated, Self-Forgetful Joy

by Lilly West, 2023 Undergraduate Summer Research Fellow in Lived Theology

“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35) 

Jesus’s words echo through Mt. Zion’s sanctuary on the Reverend’s voice. A chorus of amen’s sound from the congregation. Another minister stands at the pulpit and breaks into song. 

“Resting on my feet,” as Reverend Edwards calls it, in the sanctuary of Mt. Zion, I am surrounded by laughter and expressions of joy, shouts of praise from the congregants around the room. The expression of unified community creates an atmosphere of self-forgetfulness to the end that, enlivened by cheery smiles and worship, standing becomes restful.

I return home, sit on the couch, and lean into James Cone and Malcolm X. Once again, a certain self-forgetfulness takes over. Cries for liberation and shouts of pain and suffering ring out. This unified community bands together in strength through the concrete and eschatological promise of Jesus as the “eternal event of Liberation in the divine person who makes freedom a constituent of human existence.”[1]

This community scribbles in smudged pencil on the back of a 1935 Mt. Zion choral program the words: 

“Sometimes I feel discouraged,
And think my works all vain,
But Jesus comes and helps me,
And revives my soul again.
Sometime[s] I feel discouraged,
And know not where to roam,
I heard of a place called heaven,
And I’m trying to make heaven my home.[2]



These past few weeks invited me to dwell on that last line, “trying to make heaven my home.” In one sense, I hear a reminder that Christ followers are called to live with a constant awareness of our promised reality of eternal liberation. But, I fear stopping there dilutes this ethic of liberation. That awareness surely bids us to live into that reality, to resist every system of oppression and exploitation, every lived experience of sin. I am not sure what form this resistance takes, but I have confidence it is not an “ethic of the status quo”[3] which condones the brokenness of our world. Our God of the oppressed is a liberator. His good creation will be fully redeemed. I think, or at least I hope, we, as Christ’s body, get to participate in the process of liberation in the murky state of “already” and “not yet.” Jesus “inaugurat[ed] [the] liberation of our social existence, creating new levels of human relationship in society.” As his body, do we not also liberate? 

However, in another sense, I hear that liberating truth and am not sure what to do with it. The realities and histories of oppression and exploitation are not accessible to me in the same way that they are for Cone, Malcolm X, and the author of the note on Mt. Zion’s choral program. I am not even sure it would be appropriate for me to apply Cone in the context of Mt. Zion’s liberated, self-forgetful joy. As the pastoral team at Church of the Good Shepherd models, the Christian position is to be deferential to a story that precedes us. 

Cone writes that all he can do is “bear witness to [his] story, to tell it and live it, as the story grips [his] life and pulls [him] out of nothingness into being.”[4] Listening in loving humility “invite[s] [us] to move out of the subjectivity of [Our] Own Story into another realm of thinking and acting.”[5] Our witness and our fight, by which the world will know us, must be humble, liberating love.[6]


[1] Cone, James H. God of the Oppressed. 34-35

[2] Adaptation of Hide Thou Me

[3] Cone, James H. God of the Oppressed. 199

[4] Cone, James H. God of the Oppressed. 102-103

[5] Cone, James H. God of the Oppressed. 102-103

[6] Perkins, John. Welcoming Justice. 128

Learn more about the Lilly’s Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in Lived Theology here.

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

History of Charlottesville’s Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church

by Lilly West, 2023 Undergraduate Summer Research Fellow in Lived Theology

“Father bless this membership to follow and do those things that encourage people to love one another as You loved us…Thank you for what you are going to do; thank you Father for being a wall of fire and protection around this new congregation, the families, the children, and those involved in the development of this local body of Christ. 

Then, Lord, disturb Good Shepherd when they become too pleased with themselves; disturb them: 

when their dreams have come true and when they dream too little; 

when they arrive safely and when they have lost our thirst for the waters of life; 

when they have fallen in love with life and have ceased to dream of eternity; 

when they allow their vision of the new Heaven to become dim.

Then after you disturb them, let Your Word and their lights shine in such a way that they lift up Your Son so He can draw men, women, boys, and girls to You Father.” 

You have just read an excerpt from Reverend Alvin Edwards’ launch day blessing and prayer over Charlottesville’s nascent Anglican church plant Church of the Good Shepherd, one of many blessings he has prayed over the 105 Ridge Street worship space. Except, Dr. Edwards does not pastor the congregation of Good Shepherd. He has served as pastor of Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church since July 1, 1981. 

Mt. Zion traces its history back to 1863, when, in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, Black congregants of Charlottesville Baptist Church successfully petitioned for their own worship space and purchased the Delevan Hotel on Main Street[1]. Virginian law[2] (1832) mandated the presence of a White minister in Black worship spaces, so the new Black church body of Delevan Baptist Church was shepherded by local White ministers. Some members, dissatisfied with this condition, branched away from the original church body in 1867 under the leadership of “horseback preacher” Reverend Spottswood Jones, recorded as the first Black pastor in Charlottesville[3]. This community became the Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church.

 

The Black church body met “from house to house” until Samuel White, noted as a “consecrated Christian man,” volunteered his home as a permanent meeting place, which was centrally located between the city’s principle Black neighborhoods[4]. The frame of his home at 105 Ridge Street served as the worship space until 1883, when the Mt. Zion congregation celebrated the laying of the cornerstone of the present structure on the lot.  

The church, surviving a crisis of great debt in the early 20th century[5], grew and developed many modes of social outreach and leadership, including a Deaconess Board, Young Men’s Usher Board, Social Club, and the designation of the first Sunday of each month as “Young People’s Day.” 

In 1967, Mt. Zion undertook the work of recording the history of their lived experience. An existing copy of their publication “Mt. Zion Baptist Church: A Century of Christian Service” can be found at The Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society. At the time of its publication, Mt. Zion’s pastor was Reverend James Hamilton. He would go on to serve from 1960 to 1980, followed by Mt. Zion’s current pastor Reverend Alvin Edwards[6]

Reverend Hamilton’s pastorate covers “an exciting period in human history” in which “confusion seems to be the order of [the day],” as he writes in his letter to the congregation. In the American landscape of the Civil Rights Movement, his congregation worked to “denounce the path taken by [their] culture” according to his guidance to “work and pray within it … to be instrumental in changing it.” However, a different national project would require much of Mt. Zion’s prayers and strength. 

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government funded American cities to raze “blighted areas” for the goal of improving the utilization of the land. In Charlottesville, as in most participating urban areas, this resulted in the destruction of minority neighborhoods and displacement of their communities away from the center of public life. Charlottesville’s Vinegar Hill neighborhood, located directly across Main Street from Mt. Zion’s historic Ridge Street building, was razed as a result of a city-wide vote subject to exclusive poll tax in 1965[7]. Mt. Zion’s publication in 1967, in the wake of this loss of community, notes the “new dimensions … of Christian education and social outreach” which the congregation adapted to undertake. 

From this point on in Mt. Zion’s story, there is a shift in attitude. While unconfirmed, it seems as though this church body, which had recorded as its chief history the major renovations and additions to its worship space at 105 Ridge Street, began to search for a more appropriately located space for worship. To this end, Reverend Edwards worked to place 105 Ridge Street on the Virginia Landmark Register (1991) and the National Register of Historic Places (1992). In 2003, the congregation marched from their historic building to their new worship space at 105 Lankford Avenue. Their Ridge Street edifice, protected from destructive “progress” by its designation as a landmark, was sold to the Music Resource Center (MRC) of Charlottesville, with the helpful purchasing power of the Dave Matthews Band. Mt. Zion’s current history identifies the motivation for this new worship space as congregational growth and the need for a larger building, a new “magnificent edifice.” This certainly aligns with the growth of social outreach initiatives under Reverend Hamilton and Reverend Edwards’s leadership. However, a research project collecting the oral histories of Charlottesville’s Vinegar Hill neighborhood claims that the church relocated out of necessity as a result of the neighborhood’s destruction[8]. A small note in Mt. Zion’s current recorded history claims that Dr. Edwards fulfilled Reverend Hamilton’s goal of building a new church. 

So, where do we stand? The Lord has blessed the Mt. Zion community with resilience in the face of oppression, debt, and relocation. In fact, Mt. Zion’s witness has resulted in an expansion of their church body requiring a larger building and greater direction of many community-driven programs. Their historic building, where “ancestral voices echo” and the “deep histories and textures”[9] of a faithful, resilient community lie hidden from public view, is owned by a community outreach music center. The MRC’s programs provide after school direction and education in creative arts for local city children. And now, after 20 years of silent Sunday’s, the MRC has leased the space to a new tenant. 

Joining the voices of spiritual parents in the faith, whose liberating efforts have re-introduced the modern American church to the “true witness of Christian life [as] the projection of a social gospel,” a small, young, predominantly White Anglican church plant inhabits 105 Ridge Street. Pastors Robert Cunningham and April Murrie seek to join Mt. Zion’s gospel witness through truth-telling, listening, and acting alongside neighbors for the “flourishing of [their] community.”[10]

Mt. Zion and Good Shepherd stand at a crossroads ripe for participation in beloved community. In a tragic age where “men know so little of men”[11] and the city of Charlottesville and others like it remain functionally segregated, these two churches exist as a family of faith, whose Christian responsibility is to realize the colony of heaven. How does this happen? John Perkins, minister, civil rights activist, and community builder argues that beloved community has everything to do with place[12]. There is something to be realized about the interaction of physical space and community, of knowing and loving, of history sharing and future building, that feeds and nurtures beloved community. Thus, there lies an invitation to a new “alignment,” a new revelation of “collective body in Jesus.”[13]Certainly, this project must begin with truth telling, the effortful retaining of “constructive tension”[14], a harmony with undercurrents and histories of disharmony. Out of this tension grows compelling Christian witness, which, “depends on our ability to sing better songs with our lives. … in which our life harmonizes with others even the lives of those least like us and swells into a joyful and irresistible chorus”[15] of which “the minor cadences of despair change often to triumph and calm confidence.”[16] It will be through these songs that we, as Reverend Edwards prayed, prevent the vision of the new heaven from becoming dim. 


[1]Local expert on Race and Place in Charlottesville, Louis Nelson, points to the prominent position of this location. Placing themselves along the “major public thoroughfare” of the city claims space for Black voices in social and religious communities. 

[2] “an act reducing into one the several acts concerning slaves, free negroes and mulattoes, and for other purposes” (March 15, 1832)

[3] “Mt. Zion Baptist Church: A Century of Christian Service”, Charlottesville Albemarle Historical Society

[4] “Mt. Zion Baptist Church: A Century of Christian Service”, Charlottesville Albemarle Historical Society

[5] “Mt. Zion Baptist Church: A Century of Christian Service”; A 1967 written record of Mt. Zion’s first 100 years notes that Reverend Royal Brown Hardy was instrumental in support raising and stewardship of resources to rescue the church. 

[6] Warren Dawkins served as Interim Pastor between 1980 and 1981.  

[7] The Westhaven public housing development, which housed many previous Vinegar Hill residents, is located on Hardy Drive. This street is named for Mt. Zion’s Reverend Hardy. 

[8]Saunders, James Robert; Renae Nadine Shackelford. Urban Renewal and the End of Black Culture in Charlottesville, Virginia . McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. 

[9] Willie James Jennings, Lived Theology “Disfigurations of Christian Identity” (74)

[10] The Church of the Good Shepherd; https://www.goodshepherdcville.org/about/location

[11] W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (192)

[12] John Perkins, Welcoming Justice, “A Time for Rebuilding” 

[13] Willie James Jennings, Lived Theology, “Disfigurations of Christian Identity” (74) 

[14] Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (90) 

[15] Charles Marsh, Welcoming Justice, “The Power of True Conversion” (78)

[16]  W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (222) 

Learn more about the Lilly’s Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in Lived Theology here.

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

Some Concluding Thoughts on the Shape of Freedom

by Emily Miller, 2022 Undergraduate Summer Research Fellow in Lived Theology

Fairfax Taylor’s gravesite in Charlottesville

With the start of the Fall semester here at the University, I’m brought to the end of my summer internship with the Project on Lived Theology, and for the time being am pausing my research on First Baptist Church on Park Street and First Baptist Church on Main Street. I learned more this Summer through my research than I ever could have imagined and am beyond grateful for the opportunity that the Project has offered to me. I’ve come to realize that the ground I walk everyday in our dynamic, alive Charlottesville bears the remarkable stories of people who dared to chase freedom, people who fought, people who kept the faith in pursuit of the holy. The legacies of our local heroes traverse the bounds of time and I see it all around me: First Baptist on Main, William and Isabella Gibbons Residential Hall, letters from Fairfax Taylor preserved in the Albemarle Historical Society. 

But for every legacy of freedom, there runs parallel a legacy of oppression. I sit in ornate Old Cabell Hall as I write this article, a UVA academic building named for a family of particularly racist slave owners and white supremacists. As I wrote about a month ago, the Cabell story intertwines, painfully and ever so intimately, with the story of First Baptist. Thomas Jefferson, the highly venerated ‘king’ of the University of Virginia even today, kept close contact with the Cabells and communicated frequently with the them regarding the trading and sale of slaves. Charlottesville is the site of many an atrocity, from the treatment of African American bodies in anatomical labs, to the construction of academic structures over slave gravesites, to the horrific attacks that took place in August 2017. For many, 2017 came as a moment of great clarity (though it should not have had to come at all): no matter how far the work of Charlottesville legends may have taken us, there is still much, much further to go.

If there is anything I have learned from this project that I know I’ll hold onto, it is that the heavenly promise of freedom can take a variety of forms. I’m reminded of what Pat Edwards told me when I visited First Baptist Church on Main Street: the freedom of the original black members of Charlottesville Baptist Church to form their own church was not just a freedom from, “but a freedom toward”- toward autonomy, agency, education, and worship. Similarly, Lottie Moon fought for her freedom to live out and share the Gospel without barriers for herself or other women- another very particular kind of freedom. All of these are forms, in my opinion, of deeply holy and spiritual liberation; the hand of God present as the Gospel is spread with increasing accessibility and joy. I’m encouraged by these echoes of freedom I can hear when I walk down Charlottesville’s West Main Street. 

Going forward, I hope to continue to engage with the story of First Baptist in further research, perhaps culminating in a Distinguished Major thesis next year. Many more twists and turns that I did not have time to cover over just one Summer remain in this story, and I hope to explore them over the course of the next couple years (so rest assured, to those dear readers of mine who have been devoted to my posts, that there is more to come!).             

I have many people to thank for this amazing opportunity with the Project on Lived Theology. My particular gratitude goes to Guy Aiken, Charles Marsh, Jessica Seibert, Miranda Burnett, Mike Dickens, Pat Edwards, and Rob Pochek. Without any of these people, this thrilling and invigorating experience would not have been possible. 

Learn more about the Emily’s Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in Lived Theology here.

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

Lottie Moon: The Mother of Southern Baptist Missionaries

by Emily Miller, 2022 Undergraduate Summer Research Fellow in Lived Theology

Charlotte Digges Moon, nicknamed “Lottie” Moon, is renowned throughout Southern Baptist history as a pioneer of Chinese missions for women, and her story begins right in central Virginia. A member of Charlottesville Baptist Church (before there were the two First Baptists), Miss Moon would help pave the way for Baptist women in ministry. Though this is something of a deviation from the history I’ve told in my previous blog posts- specifically, that of the church split- Lottie Moon’s story follows a tangential trajectory toward spiritual liberation.

Lottie Moon was born in 1840 to Edward Moon and Anna Barclay Moon and named for her paternal grandmother. She had eight siblings, though two died in early infancy. Her parents were wealthy landowners in Scottsville, Virginia, and prioritized educating Lottie and her sisters. Known as one of the best educated women in the South, she ended up attending Albemarle Female Institute to receive her Master’s degree, which was common at the time for educated women in the Charlottesville area since they could not yet attend the University. 

Lottie felt indifferent toward her Southern Baptist upbringing, and her friends from school frequently prayed that she would orient her curiosity and thirst for knowledge toward spirituality. In December of 1858, a series of revival meetings were taking place at Charlottesville Baptist Church, led by the Reverend John Broadus, one of the original founders of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Moon arrived at one of these meetings without the intention of becoming a Christian, but was baptized by Broadus and gave her life to Christ. In her book The New Lottie Moon Story, Catherine B. Allen writes that “Lottie rose from the waters of the Charlottesville Baptist baptistry a noticeably different woman. ‘She had always wielded an influence because of her intellectual power,’ wrote Julia [Toy]. ‘Now her great talent was directed into another channel. She immediately took a stand as a Christian.’”

Moon began her career as a teacher, moving to Danville, Kentucky to teach at Danville Female Academy in 1866, and later at a high school she opened, Cartersville Female High School, in Cartersville, Georgia. In the meantime, Lottie also ministered to impoverished families at the First Baptist Church of Bartow County, Georgia. In 1872, Lottie’s sister, Edmonia, became a missionary in China. Edmonia Moon would be the first single woman to become a Southern Baptist missionary, and Lottie decided she wanted to follow her there in 1873. 

In China, Lottie became committed to being “out among the millions” and was determined to participate in direct evangelism. This would prove an issue, however, as women were discouraged most of the time from ministering to people. For a while Miss Moon was assigned to become a school teacher to particularly unruly children. After 7 years and persistent correspondence with H.A. Tupper of the Southern Baptist Missionary Board about the need for women missionaries, Lottie moved to the Inner Shantung Province to do the direct evangelism she’d set out to do. She connected especially with the Chinese women, learning Chinese herself and taking the time to familiarize herself with Chinese culture. Lottie’s preaching would produce hundreds of converts to Christianity, her passion reflected in the letters she sent back to the states constantly asking for more missionaries to join her. Lottie seemed to express concern that Southern Baptist missionaries did not want to interact with cultures different from their own, writing, “People talk vaguely about the heathen, picturing them as scarcely human, or at best, as ignorant barbarians. If they could live among them as I do they would find in the men much to respect and admire; in the women and girls they would see many lovable traits of character… Here I am working alone in a city of many thousand inhabitants with numberless villages. How many can I reach?” (Allen 172).

Lottie Moon would die in 1912 at the age of 72 on a passage back to the States, but her legacy continues. Considered the modern mother of Southern Baptist missionaries, the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions, established in 1888, is responsible for half of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Missions Fund. She encouraged women to form their own missionary organizations, being a founder herself of the Women’s Missionary Union which is still active today. 

Her dedication to her faith and to helping others led Miss Moon to bravely challenge expectations of her as a woman and break down the walls in her way. A woman from central Virginia and Charlottesville Baptist Church, Lottie Moon’s proximity to the rest of the First Baptist’s history cannot be overstated. Lottie’s determination to lead people to the freedom of salvation, regardless of barriers in her way, is reminiscent of the members of First Baptist Church on Main fighting courageously for their own freedom. These local heroes live out the words of 2 Corinthians 17: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

Learn more about the Emily’s Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in Lived Theology here.

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

Fairfax Taylor: Civil Rights Hero of Albemarle

by Emily Miller, 2022 Undergraduate Summer Research Fellow in Lived Theology

Fairfax Taylor’s gravesite in Charlottesville

Having spent my last blog post discussing people who might have made the church split at Charlottesville Baptist more difficult, this week I want to refocus on a man who fought hard for First Baptist Church on Main Street’s Independence: the Reverend Fairfax Taylor. Born on June 1, 1816 in Charlottesville, Fairfax Taylor was the son of Bennett and Grace Taylor. Taylor bought his freedom prior to the Civil War and used that freedom to urge black liberation in Albemarle political and social circles. Taylor was considered a major radical for the nineteenth century, advocating for black inclusion on local juries and at the University. To provide a clearer picture of how this would have appeared to community members at the time, the first African American student to attend UVA, George Swanson, was not admitted until 1950, fifty-five years after Taylor’s death. 

Fairfax Taylor was a member at Charlottesville Baptist Church, as well as one of the original ministers at First Baptist Church on Main Street, back when it was called Delevan Baptist. According to manuscripts available at the Albemarle County Historical Society, Taylor was “instrumental” in the separation agreement between the Park Street and Main Street churches. During dealings with the two church committees, Taylor often spoke on behalf of the black congregants, and was able to do so quite well; he could “not only read and write but [had] some knowledge of grammar,” according to Freedmen’s Bureau records, something unusual for African Americans of Charlottesville at the time. 

While Taylor identified as a Baptist, he also served as the sexton at Christ Episcopal Church starting around 1859. According to church records, Taylor might have even been the first sexton at Christ Church, as his is the earliest name listed in the position. Much like at Charlottesville Baptist Church, black members of the congregation at Christ Episcopal were segregated to the balcony of the church during services, and like First Baptist they eventually petitioned to separate during World War I. Taylor remained employed by the church until December of 1883, and was possibly followed by his son, James T. S. Taylor.

One of nine children and the only boy, James followed in his father’s footsteps and was involved with local politics. He was elected to the Virginia Constitutional Convention in 1867, but did not have his father’s support in the election. When the time came to nominate a delegate, Fairfax endorsed Judge Rives, who was a radical white man. Fairfax believed that an African American would not have the “oratory skills or education” (according to manuscripts) to be an effective delegate, and advised that for the sake of representing African Americans properly, a white man should be sent. Regardless, James was nominated anyway and served on the Convention.

Fairfax Taylor’s legacy of activism and persistence permeates throughout the Charlottesville community today. A small road by Martha Jefferson Hospital was renamed Taylor Road in his honor in 1993, and his grave (pictured above) was rededicated in 2013. I had the honor of going to visit his grave just a few days ago, and was struck, similarly to last week, by the physical closeness of this history to where I live now. Hidden beneath the busyness of Charlottesville today, more and more I have found stories of unrelenting faith, courage, and the desire for freedom in our city. Taylor’s story reminds me of what Pat Edwards said just a few weeks ago when I visited her at First Baptist Church on Main Street: the original members were motivated by their reach toward freedom, a spiritual exercise of resilience and fortitude. Not too different, I’d wager, from the reach toward freedom Paul describes to the Romans in his Biblical letter: “Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

Special thanks for this post goes to Michael Dickens, who I had the pleasure of speaking to about the history of Christ Episcopal Church and about Farifax Taylor. Some information for this article is taken from his book, Like an Evening Gone: A History of Christ Episcopal Church, Charlottesville Upon the Occasion of Its 200th Anniversary.

Learn more about the Emily’s Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in Lived Theology here.

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

Virginia Legacy and False Science: The Cabell Family

by Emily Miller, 2022 Undergraduate Summer Research Fellow in Lived Theology

Volunteering at the Albemarle Historical Society just the other day, I had a casual conversation with the librarian about the ways that Charlottesville was “ruled” by particular prominent families in the nineteenth century- certain last names come up over and over in her and my own research of local history. “Everyone was kind of related to everyone,” she told me- and for the history of First Baptist Church, I don’t think this sentence rings more true than for the Cabell family.

The history of Cabell influence in Virginia traces back to William Cabell, who came to the Jamestown settlement in 1726 from England. After spending time exploring the land that would later become Nelson county, Cabell received an initial grant of 6320 acres from King George I. Eventually, his land ownership would grow to exceed 40,000 acres of land in Central Virginia, thus beginning the Cabell legacy. 

Cabell Hall of UVA is named for Joseph Carrington Cabell, who was recruited by Jefferson in the initial planning for UVA’s development. Joseph Cabell was strongly committed to upholding the institution of slavery in Virginia and, like his nephew, white supremacy. Records located at various UVA libraries discuss the Cabells’ dealings with enslaved peoples, one of which being the 1820 census of slaves- taken when Joseph Cabell was thirty two- pictured in part below.

According to Alan Taylor, UVA Professor, Joseph Cabell was particularly unforgiving in his management of slaves, “treat[ing] slaves as investments… he shifted and sold them to increase his profits, slighting their family relations as of little concern. When the estate manager, George Gresham, balked at the proposed changes as disruptive, Cabell wanted to fire him.” According to Taylor, Cabell would frequently have his slaves whipped or beaten, and slaves would frequently run away from the Corotoman Estate, where Cabell owned a share.

Joseph Cabell’s nephew, James Lawrence Cabell, was a professor of science at UVA, and eventually became the first president of the National Board of Health. In the meantime, Cabell wrote The Testimony of Modern Science to the Unity of Mankind, which highlighted his affirming beliefs about both eugenics and, namely, white supremacy. James Cabell also “solved” the University’s problems with obtaining anatomical subjects for study by encouraging the grave robbery of deceased, formerly enslaved African Americans at the University.

The power the Cabells had- over land, enslaved people, and understandings of race and science in Virginia- becomes more tangible when exploring their direct impact on First Baptist Church. According to the essay The Education of William Gibbons by Scott Nesbit, the first black pastor at First Baptist Church on Main Street, William Gibbons, was likely enslaved by none other than Arthur Gibbons, who is the brother in law of James Lawrence Cabell. Gibbons began preaching informally at Charlottesville Baptist while he was still enslaved in 1844 (likely as an aid to a white preacher, according to Nesbit), and became the official pastor at First Baptist Church on Main Street in 1868. William Gibbons would go on to marry Isabella Gibbons, a teacher at the Jefferson School, and Gibbons Residence Hall at UVA is named for the couple.

William served as an aid of sorts to Arthur Gibbons, and through social connections of Arthur’s was able to obtain an informal education that would have far exceeded most other African Americans of the day, earning him great respect in the church. However, Nesbit writes that at that time “often students would “teach” African Americans about racial hierarchy through acts of violence that interrupted black community life and reinforced blacks’ vulnerability and consequent dependency upon whites.” Orra Langhorne, a 19th Century writer for the Southern Workman magazine, wrote regarding William Gibbons that “it was rather amusing to the white boys… to see a Negro so anxious to learn.” It’s well worth noting that James Lawrence Cabell was teaching eugenic beliefs at UVA at the same time that William was enslaved there.

During the same year that William Gibbons became the preacher of First Baptist on Main, the congregation members were working on securing a church building. According to Richard I. McKinney in his book Keeping the Faith, there was a great deal of difficulty securing the deed for the church from a certain P. Cabell (I have had trouble finding this man’s first name, but McKinney is clear that he is of the Cabell family). The matter took five years to settle, as the buyers had to negotiate continuously with Cabell about specifically how much was owed to him and his assignees.            

Anyone who attends UVA now can recognize the Cabell name. But before first hearing about James Lawrence Cabell in a theological bioethics class I took this past year, and before learning the history of First Baptist Church, I only knew the name as an academic building with a library that I liked. To find that the Cabells were a picture of domination in Charlottesville- over those enslaved and over the city itself- makes me think deeply about the land I walk on everyday here, for a long time owned in part by a family that went to great lengths to preserve white supremacy.

Learn more about the Emily’s Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in Lived Theology here.

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

First Baptist: The Condensed Version

by Emily Miller, 2022 Undergraduate Summer Research Fellow in Lived Theology

In order to set the stage for the many interweaving threads that form the contemporary complexities of First Baptist churches on Main Street and Park Street, let’s begin at a point in history that now only exists on paper: the original Charlottesville Baptist Church. In establishing some framing first, we can set the stage to dive deeper into the specific people and events that bring life and meaning to the congregations today.

1820 marks the first records of Baptist services taking place in Charlottesville, led by Reverend Daniel Davis at the Charlottesville Courthouse. Finally formally established in 1831, the Charlottesville First Baptist Church was located at the corner of Fourth and East Jefferson Streets. The original Charlottesville Baptist Church was home to many prominent Baptist Virginians, including Dr. John A. Broadus, former president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; the two founders of the first college YMCA; and legendary Baptist missionary Lottie Moon, whom I will cover in more depth in a later blog post. 

By 1863, at the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Charlottesville Baptist had approximately 800 black members, who by some accounts outnumbered the white congregants, despite the fact that black members were segregated to the balcony of the church. On April 20th, 1863, just four months after Lincoln’s issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation, the black members of the church issued an application through white church member C.L. Thompson to leave the church and form their own congregation elsewhere. I had the opportunity to sit down with Pat Edwards, historian at First Baptist Church on Main Street, who gave three main reasons for the split: the anxiousness of the black members of the congregation to become educated, their eagerness to take hold of church leadership that they had always been denied, and the realization that Emancipation could mean true freedom in more ways than one. The letter given to the governing board of Charlottesville Baptist by Thompson is below.

However, the break was not exactly clean. The formation of an independent church by black members with the conditions they set forth was a contested matter until over a year later in July of 1864 (in the meantime, the black members of the congregation met in the basement of Charlottesville Baptist). In fact, the black members made some concessions; namely, that the new black church had to have a white pastor—a Virginia law passed in 1832 made it illegal for African Americans to worship without a white minister present. The first three pastors at First Baptist Church on Main Street—Reverend J. Randolph, Reverend H. Fife, and Reverend J. George— were all white men. Reverend William Gibbons, who was formerly enslaved at UVA and in other parts of Albemarle county, became the first black preacher at First Baptist Main in 1868.

In the meantime, the two First Baptists experienced several location changes. Black congregation members had already been meeting separately in the parent church as well as the old Delavan Hotel, also called the “Mudwall” Building, located on West Main street. In 1868, the members of the new black church bought Mudwall, and in 1883 the new church building was completed as it is on Main Street today. As for First Baptist Church on Park Street, the building moved in October 1853 from Fourth and Jefferson streets to Second and Jefferson streets. On February 2nd, 1977, after plans for a new building had already been made, a fire destroyed the church and the current building was later erected on Park Street. It’s worth noting as well that Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church, now located on Lankford Avenue, is an offshoot of First Baptist on Main that separated during the nineteenth century, and that Jefferson Park Baptist Church, now located on Jefferson Park Avenue, is a church plant of First Baptist on Park (both offshoots will be covered in later posts).

Reading the bare-bones history of it all, I imagine more questions than answers come up in the minds of the reader (they would for me, at least). Who, truly, are the people behind these religious movements? How does this story intertwine with Civil Rights, integration, Charlottesville? As we go deeper and deeper each week, the picture will become clearer. Next week, I’ll introduce the Cabbell Family of UVA fame, and the ways that their influence shaped the history of UVA, Charlottesville, and most importantly, First Baptist Church.

Learn more about the Emily’s Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in Lived Theology here.

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

Two Separate Churches

by Emily Miller, 2022 Undergraduate Summer Research Fellow in Lived Theology

The day I first found out that Charlottesville had two First Baptist Churches, it felt like something of a footnote. I was attending a lecture on racial reconciliation for a CIO leadership program, and the speaker was discussing the tendency for homogenous racial groups to stay together, particularly in faith communities.

“There’s actually two Baptist churches in Charlottesville–Main and Park–who used to be one, but split, and now are two,” he said. “And they’re still segregated today.”

And with that, the lecture moved on, and there was nothing more to say about the two First Baptist Churches. I sat still, admittedly having stopped paying attention too closely and instead thought about the two churches. First Baptist Church on Main Street was just a few blocks from where I was living at the time of the lecture. I drove by it nearly every single day. I knew people who attended First Baptist Church on Park Street. And yet, I had no idea–and frankly at the time, no reason to care–about the deep, profoundly complicated relationship between and histories of each of the congregations.

I was dumbstruck. Charlottesville had become my city, and I claimed to be someone who was socially aware of what was happening within the city limits. And still, right under my nose was a story that I would come to find reverberated across the culture of Charlottesville, UVA, the state of Virginia, and even the Southern Baptist Convention.

With the fellowship opportunity from the Project on Lived Theology, my digging began. Mornings spent between classes in downtown Charlottesville at the Albemarle Historical Society became my newest obsession, and every visit has unlocked something new: tales of heroic activism in people like Fairfax Taylor, the closest thing to Virginia royalty in the old-money Cabell family, and even a murder involving a local church historian. Each intertwining thread, when carefully untangled and woven back together, forms a microcosmic narrative reflective of the imbalance that exists in the (dare I say, increasingly) separate two Baptist churches of the United States: black and white. 

And now, with the start of the summer, I’m eager to become a mouthpiece that brings the truth to life. All of the church history is here, in our city, but it’s also disconnected: profound authenticity hides within a vast number of newspaper clippings, dusty old books, penciled-in family trees, and court records. I’m hoping to begin to produce a narrative by the end of this summer that brings all the pieces together in such a way that we can tell the story beyond a footnote.

In the midst of it all, I’m met with an essential question: where is the kingdom of God in this story? Where is the Jesus of liberation? We’re talking about churches after all. I say truthfully that a dim yet distinct undercurrent of hope has infused every account of church history I’ve read. I sense a strong spiritual passion–what Richard McKinney describes simply in his account of First Baptist on Main Street as “Keeping the Faith”– permeating the history of civil rights in Charlottesville.

I can’t wait to dig deeper.

Learn more about the Emily’s Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in Lived Theology here.

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.