Cheers for John Waller!
| Watch an excerpt from the performance at Urbanna Baptist Church on Sunday. (Video by Mike Kucera and Eric Deagle) |
The 40-minute play celebrates the life of Middlesex County hero and Baptist preacher John Waller who in 1771 was arrested and jailed in Urbanna for preaching the word of God “without a license.” In those pre-revolutionary years the established state church in Virginia was the Church of England or Anglican Church, and it was illegal to practice any other religion.
The established church did not approve the rising tide of Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians who were also organizing throughout the Colonies and soon were challenging the established church.
It’s hard to believe today that in those early years in Virginia all citizens were forced to be members and pay taxes to the Anglican Church. Those who refused were labeled “dissidents.” They could be stoned, beaten, whipped and sent to jail for meeting together to share the word of God and defying the Anglican Church.
What makes the play so vibrant is that it is based on an actual letter that John Waller wrote while in Urbanna jail that was fortunately preserved for history. The letter tells circumstances of his arrest, judgment and even the way he was treated in Urbanna jail. Names like Montague, Faulkner, Weber and Greenwood pop up in the story; family names that we still recognize in Middlesex County.
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| by Mary Wakefield Buxton |
What made the play especially intense during the direct confrontation between John Waller and Reverend Klug from Christ Church was that both parts were played by clergymen. Dennis Buchanan, who played John Waller, is a Baptist minister in Fredericksburg, and The Reverend Paul Andersen, who played Rev. Klug, is rector of Christ Church. When Klug told the Baptist he had no right to preach the word of God because he had not had a proper education or background it made me, an Episcopalian, squirm in my pew.
Special kudos go to Father Paul who was a good sport to agree to play the part of the miserable Klug. He did a good job speaking for the establishment of the past, so much so that I thought the audience might break out into hisses and boos!
But there were no young people in the audience in the Urbanna presentation. This bothered me. Where were the teenagers of Middlesex County? Have we become so used to religious freedom that we no longer value the real-life stories of hard-fought battles waged and won by earlier generations? Or do we have more important things on our minds and things to do than relive a piece of local history? Perhaps we hardly think twice about history any more? But we should. Those who don’t learn history are destined to repeat it.
Perhaps the play could possibly go to Middlesex schools because it is imperative that young people understand how important religious freedom is. The alarming truth is that future generations may very well face a similar threat that John Waller once faced.
With the Muslim religion growing by leaps and bounds throughout the world and its corresponding insistence on Sharia law that forbids religious freedom beyond its own perimeters and severely restricts the rights of women, we had better take seriously this issue of religious freedom. Americans may still enjoy religious freedom, but numerous other nations do not. The next generations need to know how basic this freedom is to mankind if they hope to preserve it.
This republic absolutely does not ever want to return to a state or world-established religion (or government, for that matter) or any kind of forced dictation of religious laws to our citizens.
So learn history and be ready at all times to defend religious freedom. And thank you, John Waller, and our Baptists for leading the way in Virginia. ©2010
http://www.marywakefieldbuxton.com
