June 19

Juneteenth, the First Council of Nicaea, Blaise Pascal, and Charles Spurgeon

Author

David Barnhart
June 19, 2025

Sunflower, 2024. Own photo.

Today is Juneteenth, the day commemorating the liberation of the last enslaved Black persons in the United States in 1865. Although the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all enslaved persons free, went into effect on January 1, 1863, it was not until two and a half years later that news of federal emancipation reached the last enslaved persons in Galveston, TX. Juneteenth is known as the “longest running African-American holiday,” but only became a federally recognized holiday in 2021. 

Today also marks the date, in 325, when the First Council of Nicaea adopted the Nicene Creed. This statement of faith was drafted when the Christian bishops were summoned to codify the Christian faith by the Emperor Constantine. Although beautiful in its poetics and profound in its reconciliation of theological paradoxes, it also represents a shift in Christianity from a grassroots movement to an Empire-supporting institution. 

Today is the birthday, in 1623, of Blaise Pascal, mathematician, philosopher, and inventor whose argument for believing in God is called “Pascal’s wager.” 

Today is also the birthday, in 1834, of Charles Spurgeon, Calvinist Baptist pastor and the most famous preacher of his day. 

Reflection:

From “Call Us What We Carry,” by Amanda Gorman: 

“When day comes, we ask ourselves:
Where can we find light
In this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry, a sea we must wade.
We braved the belly of the beast,
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,
And the norms and notions of what ‘just is’
Isn’t always justice.
And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it,
Somehow, we do it.
Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed
A nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.”

Amanda Gorman, “Call Us What We Carry”

I am not a fan of Spurgeon’s Calvinist theology, or his patriarchal Victorian values, but I have to admit some of his sermons were bangers. In this quote, he skewers Christian exclusivism: 

I know it is the notion of the bigot, that all the truly godly people belong to the denomination which he adorns. Orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is anybody else’s doxy who does not agree with me. All the good people go to little Bethel, and nowhere else: they all worship at Zoar, and they sing out of such-and-such a selection, and as for those who cannot say Shibholeth, and lay a pretty good stress on the “h,” but who pronounce it “Sibboleth;“let the fords of the Jordan be taken, and let them be put to death. True, it is not fashionable to roast them alive, but we will condemn their souls to everlasting perdition, which is the next best thing, and may not appear to be quite so uncharitable.

Prayer: Spirit of Freedom, you liberate us by inscribing the law of love on our hearts. Free us from all earthly oppression, both external and internal, so that we may find true freedom in you. Amen.