By Charles Jones
Baptist historian
Canceling services due to illness is not new to Baptist life. Pandemics, epidemics and weather have all been part of our collective experience.
In musty old church minutes, it’s not uncommon to see statements like “services canceled due to cholera” — or typhus or smallpox. John Newton (1732-1790), an early Georgia Baptist pastor and physician, left diaries that included Indian uprisings along with illness as reasons for canceling services.
Possibly the most feared epidemics were those of yellow fever, which periodically swept through the South, emptying cities, towns and villages. Three major outbreaks occurred in 1820, 1854 and 1876.
None of the earlier epidemics had the impact of the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. It began in the fall of 1918 near the end of World War I. This flu was especially fatal to young people. People woke up feeling fine in the morning only to be dead by nightfall. [Read more…]