News
By the staff of The Lutheran, ELCA News Service and Religion News Service
Traveling up Ebenezer Creek by boat, ELCA members retrace the journey taken by as many as 5,000 enslaved Africans seeking freedom who saw their hopes destroyed when Union soldiers prevented them from crossing the creek.
Lutherans retrace ancestors’ footsteps
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bout 75 Lutherans of African and European descent dug into the history of black involvement with Lutheranism May 16-19 at Jerusalem Evangelical Lutheran Church and New Ebenezer Family Retreat and Conference Center, both in Rincon, Ga. Participants visited sites where free African-Americans worked with early settlers from Salzburg, Germany. Led by Henry Morgan, a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Ascension, Savannah, Ga., and
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a Salzburger Society official, partici- pants walked through the expanded boundaries of the Salzburger cem- etery, including portions that contain remains of 250 African workers, both enslaved and free, who couldn’t be buried in other church cemeteries. In 2012 the Salzburger Soci-
ety, Jerusalem Lutheran and Holy Spirit Lutheran Church, Savannah, rededicated this part of the cemetery. Ground-searching radar also discov- ered remains thought to be those of British and Revolutionary soldiers who fought in the same region. Event participants heard a presen- tation by Katrina Browne, a descen- dant of the DeWolf family of Bristol, R.I., the largest slave trader in the U.S. Browne, an Episcopal participant,
Judith Roberts, ELCA program director for racial justice, spends time in a cem- etery with recently discovered graves of Africans enslaved in Georgia.
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shared her documentary Traces of the Trade about how slavery contributed to the economic development of the U.S., and her family’s retracing of the slave trade from Bristol to Ghana to Cuba and U.S. southern states. Judith Roberts, ELCA program director for racial justice, compared the economic forces of slavery in the development of the Americas with the historic use of incarceration during the period of reconstruction after the Civil War. She shared how the proposed ELCA criminal justice statement speaks against the current practice of private, for-profit prisons that benefit from prison labor. During a slow boat ride up Ebene- zer Creek, the boundary between South Carolina and Georgia, partici- pants passed the site of the Ebenezer Creek Massacre. As many as 5,000 enslaved Africans who were follow- ing elements of Gen. William T. Sher- man’s army to freedom lost their lives when Union soldiers prevented them from crossing the swollen creek. They faced swimming in frigid waters, being shot by Confederate troops chasing Sherman’s forces or being returned to their owners. The event was organized by ELCA member Jacqui El Torro.
Richard Stewart
Stewart is retired faculty member of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia.
Quote
Jesus says [to] love our enemies. So I was sitting in Starbucks and thought, “Maybe I’m the one person who needs to do something.”
Martha Mullen, a Virginia woman and mental health counselor who helped arrange the burial of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a Muslim cemetery in Doswell, Va. She was quoted by The Boston Globe.
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