Have you ever explored the issue of freedom with your church’s
youth and children? This week’s famous Kentucky Christian may be a way for you
to open the conversation.
Peter Durrett was an enslaved, biracial man, whose father
was his first owner. He believed the Christian message and received it into his
heart during the First Great Awakening in Virginia. He became a Baptist
exhorter when he was twenty-five. He never was ordained because the white
church officials prevented it. But his enslaved condition did not stop him from following his calling as a pastor.
Peter Durrett and his wife, Dinah Durrett, came to Kentucky
in 1781 with the Traveling Church. Peter and Captain William Ellis were the
guides for this group of some 500 Baptists who emigrated from Virginia. Peter and
Ellis had been to Kentucky before. They knew the way through the mountains, and
they had planted crops in Kentucky. They also helped build Grant’s Station. Both Durretts were enslaved
to Pastor Joseph Craig, one of the leaders of the Traveling Church. They were
never emancipated but they were able to hire themselves out to prominent people.
Peter was the first African American to preach a sermon in Kentucky. He and his
wife started the first African American church in Kentucky, the third in the
nation.
Do your students think that they would be willing to do what
Peter Durrett did especially if they knew they would always have to be a slave?
What do your students think they would do if their freedom was taken away? Why?
Would their faith be something they would be willing to share if they understood
that they would be imprisoned for talking about?
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