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Go to PowerStep.com slash OAS and use code OAS for 15% off your first order. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. If you want to know about the history of America, it's imperative that you know the role that the Bible played in shaping our country. Here to share another story is Robert Morgan, who is the author of 100 Bible verses that made America, defining moments that shaped our enduring foundation of faith.
Let's take a listen. Elijah Lovejoy was born in my wife's home state of Maine in 1802. His father was a congregational pastor and a farmer. Lovejoy began reading his Bible at the age of four, and while still very young, he memorized the entire 119th Psalm, which is the longest chapter in the Bible. Along with other passages and many classic hymns, he later graduated at the top of his class and decided to move west to St. Louis. His parents, concerned for his spiritual well-being, prayed earnestly for him, and their prayers were answered when he wrote home telling them he had experienced a personal relationship with Christ during a revival meeting. He also told them that he was entering the Presbyterian ministry.
He enrolled in Princeton, and as he grew in his knowledge of Scripture, his convictions about the abolition of slavery deepened. Within a year, Lovejoy was licensed to preach, and while on a preaching circuit through Missouri, he met Celia Anne French and fell in love with her and married her. Lovejoy didn't confine his sermons to the pulpit. Returning to St. Louis, he became the editor of a weekly Christian publication called The St. Louis Observer.
The first issue rolled off the press on November the 22nd of 1833. In his opening editorial, Lovejoy wrote that his paper will seek no controversy, and it will decline none, when by so doing it might compromise the purity of the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. The Observer became a vehicle for teaching Scripture, relating the news of the day, and interpreting the latter by the former. His editorials were most reading, and sparks began to fly when he set forth the biblical facts and the brutal truths about slavery. On April the 16th, 1832, Lovejoy wrote prophetically, While Christians have been slumbering over it, the eye of God has not slumbered, nor has his justice been an indifferent spectator of the scene. The groans and sighs and tears and blood of the poor slave have gone up as a memorial before the throne of heaven.
In due time, they will descend in awful curses upon this land, unless averted by the speedy repentance of us all. Lovejoy's drumbeat against slavery sparked an uproar in St. Louis. Mobs formed, threatening his newspaper and threatening his life. Officials sought to silence him, demanding he pass over in silence everything connected to the subject of slavery. Crowds marched into the street, chanting, Down with the Observer.
Lovejoy was threatened with whipping. He said, I cannot surrender my principles, though the whole world beside should vote them down. Asserting his freedom of speech, he fired off another series of blistering editorials condemning slavery with all of its horrors. He compared himself to his namesake in the Bible, Elijah, who stood before Ahab, rebuking his sins and who refused to be silenced. He said, I do, therefore, as an American citizen and a Christian patriot and in the name of liberty and law and religion, solemnly protest against all these attempts, how so ever and by whom so ever made to frown down the liberty of the press and forbid the free expression of opinion under a deep sense of my own obligations to my country and church and to my God.
I declare it will be my fixed purpose to submit to no such dictation. Writing to his brother, Elijah Lovejoy said, Men came to me and told me that I could not walk through the streets of St. Louis by night or by day. I was alone in St. Louis with none but God to whom to ask counsel. But thrice blessed be his name, he did not forsake me.
I was enabled deliberately and unreservedly to surrender myself to him. When it became impossible for Lovejoy to dwell in St. Louis, he moved 30 miles away to Alton, Illinois. His printing press, which was transported by a boat up the Mississippi, was destroyed by a mob upon its arrival. He ordered another press from Cincinnati and the paper resumed publishing on August the 17th, 1837. Another mob surrounded him, shoved him around and destroyed his new press.
Lovejoy ordered a third one. About 10 p.m. on November 21st, in the light of a full moon, a mob of about 30 men armed with rocks and pistols left local taverns and began marching toward Elijah Lovejoy's house. Church bells rang and by midnight the whole town had assembled. The mob broke into his house and one of the rioters shot Lovejoy. Three bullets struck his chest, another his stomach and another his left arm. His new printing press was destroyed and thrown into the Mississippi River and his hearse was hissed in the streets on the way to the cemetery.
He was buried on his 35th birthday, the first white martyr in America for the cause of abolition. A fearless publisher who gave his life for the freedom of the press and a preacher of the gospel who once said, I can die at my post, but I cannot desert it. And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to Robert Morgan, the author of 100 Bible verses that made America the story of Elijah Lovejoy here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns.
But we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to our American stories dot com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.
Go to our American stories dot com and give. We've all got a thing, an obsession. For some of us, it's vintage fashion, our cars, anything we can collect.
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Mental illness. I bet you have rarely, if ever, heard these topics discussed in church. And I bet you've got questions about them that you'd love to ask a pastor. Well, there's a podcast that tackles these taboo topics. I'm Pastor Mike Novotny with Time of Grace Ministry and in my new podcast, Taboo Questions with Pastor Mike Novotny, I answer questions from people just like you as I open up the Bible to give answers that point people back to the truth and especially to our Savior, Jesus.
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