The following message was delivered by Dr. Fred Anderson at Dover Baptist Church's 250th Homecoming Celebration on September 17th, 2023. Dr. Anderson is the executive director emeritus of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the founding director of the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies. For 36 years Dr. Anderson served as an officer of the Baptist General Association of Virginia. For 30 years he wrote a heritage column for the state Baptist newspaper, the Religious Herald. He is the author of 25 books on Virginia Baptist stories.

Something Important Happened (Happens) Here by Dr. Fred Anderson

The last time I spoke here, that was another man. It was 30 years ago for the church's 220th anniversary, and I portrayed John Waller, the 18th-century preacher who shared a preaching stand and a prison cell with your first Pastor, William Weber. Indeed, it was John Waller who baptized William Weber, and it is good to return just as myself for a moment. Let's just bask in the glory of a church reaching its 250th anniversary in November. The Baptist General Association of Virginia celebrates its 200th anniversary. Dover Baptist Church predates the General Association by 50 years. In another three years, the United States of America will celebrate its 250th with the biggest fireworks display since the bicentennial. Dover Baptist Church predates our country. While 250 is indeed a milestone, there are few extant Virginia Baptist Churches which predate Dover. One of these is Catoctin in Loudoun County, which was constituted in 1751, if you don't count the 60 years when they were without a congregation and considered extinct. Catoctin is 272 years old or 22 years your senior. About 2001, Catoctin began to deserve again. I received the telephone call inviting me to come for a service. I was forewarned that there was no electricity and no more. I was somewhat comforted that a pharmacist of water would be provided for me, but no running water told me that there would be no indoor plumbing. Goodness! I was told that there was an ancient outhouse, but it was occupied by a swarm of beasts. Without the necessary facilities, the service would have to be short, and my message extremely short. As far as I know, the necessary facilities are available at Dover, so there is no abbreviated sermon.

In her wonderful remembrances of her childhood at Dover, our friend and your former church's historian, Mary Catherine Henley Shepherd, recalls that the Old Dover church building had a unisex outhouse, which was camouflaged by dense growth of honeysuckle and poison oak. She shared that it was used only in dire emergencies since it was inhabited by black snakes and spiders. For those of you who long for the good old days, we need to be reminded that not everything was good. There's a happy ending to the story of Catoctin Church. The congregation remains small, but they are devoted. They began a restroom fund, but when Hurricane Katrina hit in Louisiana, they sent the restroom fund's money to disaster relief. They began rebuilding the fund, and as of this year, it's reported that Catoctin has restrooms, a kitchen, electricity, air conditioning, heating—some churches do die, some are revived. Praise God, Dover is not and never has been extinct. You are part of a continuously living congregation for 250 years, and a very alive and active church. Your buildings and grounds are matching, and your people are involved in missions as you continue to serve God by serving others. There is every reason to believe that your best days are ahead.

It's important to remember all the ways in which the Lord God has led His people. In the scripture text which I've selected for this message, we are reminded of the long and epic journey of 40 years in which God, through Moses, led His people Israel out of the bondage of Pharaoh, through the wilderness, and eventually through Joshua into the promised land of Canaan. If a generation is 20 years, then this epic journey itself required two generations. So, there were some who were born and came to maturity who had never known the time of slavery by the Egyptians. They had to be reminded by those who had been slaves what the people had endured.

We remember what happened when Moses went up on the mountain, and the people melted down their gold jewelry to fashion a golden calf to worship instead of worshiping the Lord God who had led them out of bondage and was bringing them to the promised land. We remember that Moses was not to set foot on the land which God had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And we remember that Moses had laid his hands upon Joshua, who was full of the spirit of wisdom. Joshua led the people to the Jordan River, and the provision was made, and it was dry land. They could walk across to possess the land. But first, Joshua had commanded that 12 men, one from each tribe, take a stone each and carry them over. These stones would be piled up, so these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever. When the scripture was written, it was stated that at that time, those stones were still visible, still there to mark the spot where something important happened (Joshua chapter 4, verse 21). "And he said to the people of Israel, 'When your children ask their fathers in time to come, "What do these stones mean?" then you shall let your children know, "Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground." For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever."

We could borrow Joshua's words this morning: "When your children ask their parents in time to come, 'What do these stones mean?' then you shall let your children know." And we can tell how the Lord your God provided a great purpose for the Dover Church in its early history. When your children or grandchildren or friends or newcomers or strangers come to Dover Church and ask, "What does this stone mean," referring to that large granite stone outside the sanctuary that stood there for a century, what does it mean? Then you shall let them know that when Virginia was settled by the English, only one church was allowed by law—it was the Anglican Church or the Church of England. It was declared by law to be the one and only established church of Virginia, that the government and the church were one and the same, that everyone was required to attend the established church, to support it, to have the Anglican priests bless your marriage, to have the Anglican priests baptize your infants. Tell them more. Tell them that in time, other faith groups arrived in Virginia—Quakers, Presbyterians, and the noisy, troublesome Baptists. Tell them that the Baptists were especially persecuted, that Baptist believers were ridiculed, ostracized, and considered the lowest of the lows, that in many places, their worship services were broken up by mobs or the local sheriff, that their preachers were yanked away from the preaching stand and hauled around by the hair of their head, beaten, whipped, and imprisoned. Tell them that the Baptists organized and met violence with non-violence, that they petitioned for full religious freedom, not just for themselves but for everyone of any faith—Christian, Jew, or Muslim—and even for those of no faith who still should have freedom of conscience. Tell them that after a long, long time of struggle, the Baptists, including the earliest Baptist of Gucci, were able to secure mankind's most elemental rights: the freedom to believe however they felt led to believe, without interference from the government. Tell them that today, everyone can worship wherever and however their conscience so leads them because of courageous people like William Weber, the founding pastor of Dover Baptist Church. They will want to know more, so tell them that the stone means that something important happened here.

I made a long study of the Baptists of Virginia, including especially in the 18th century. Virginia Baptists, and I think my considered opinion is that of all the surviving 18th-century churches, more things of great import happened right here at Dover than any of the others. A long time ago, before there were any Baptist churches in the area, the people of Goochland were stirred by the gospel preaching of an itinerant Baptist preacher named Samuel Harris. He lived far away from here, near Danville, yet his calling from God was so strong that he traveled vast distances on horseback to preach the gospel. He was among the most celebrated of the early Virginia Baptist preachers and led meetings across the Southside all the way to Goochland. And that's when it became dangerous to be a Baptist. The Virginia Baptist Historical Society has published a guide to the historical sites associated with Virginia Baptists and the struggle to secure religious liberty, and it includes that large granite marker out in the churchyard to William Weber and this old photograph, which shows these two young girls in front of the old church house. And this little girl here, age three, was a friend of mine. Now, I didn't know her when she was age three, and I knew her in my former church. Her name was Grace Woodson Usher, and this guide also includes the large stone marker at the old Chesterfield Courthouse, which carries the name of Weber and six others who were imprisoned in Chesterfield simply for preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Weber was also imprisoned in Middlesex County, and there is a memorial tablet on a building in Urbanna. It's the Woman's Club now, and it once was a site of the county jail where there was the imprisonment of several Baptists for their faith. There also is a state historical marker of William Weber, which tells of his importance, and of course, there is a church in Richmond which is a memorial of the Weber. The very building which houses the Virginia Baptist Historical Society is a living memorial to men like William Weber and the others who were imprisoned or otherwise severely persecuted in Virginia simply for preaching the gospel. And inside that building, there is a memorial stained glass window which Virginia Baptists commissioned in the 1870s, and it's dedicated to the imprisoned ministers, and it carries the verse from Acts which states, "And they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor to teach in the name of Jesus." But Peter and John answered them and said, "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak of the things which we have seen and heard." Like the apostles of old, these Virginia Baptists, including William Weber, honored God more than man, and they would not be silenced.

Yes, something important happened here in Goochland County. There were two pastors and their churches which played important roles in securing religious liberty in Virginia and eventually the new Republic. One was Weber and Dover Church, and the other was Reuben Ford and Goochland Church and Buckingham and elsewhere, now known thankfully as Smyrna. Whoever not only occupied jail cells but also provided much of the servant leadership to organize Virginia Baptists and then to lead them for the balance of his earthly life.

Reuben Ford, who had become a Baptist under the preaching of Samuel Harris, provided the wording of the eloquent petitions of the Baptists which were presented to the Virginia General Assembly. The two men became patriots in a great movement. Their two families were united when Weber's son married Ford's daughter. Together, these two men helped change the structure of Virginia. In the fullness of time, the Baptist influence upon Thomas Jefferson helped secure the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and, close on its heels, the Baptist influence upon James Madison helped secure the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, with its provision for religious liberty.

Yes, something important happened here. The little Dover meeting house, made of huge logs and located across the road, was alive with the spirit of God and with the spirit of religious liberty. From its pulpit, William Weber preached the gospel for 35 years. A contemporary described him as "a man of correct judgment, well-acquainted with mankind, well-versed in the scriptures, sound in the principles of the Gospel. He could rally the people for religious liberty because only two years before, Dover was constituted, he had experienced imprisonment for conscience's sake."

Yes, something important happened here. Dover was the site where Virginia Baptists organized to evangelize and to secure religious liberty. In the very year of the church's founding, there was a great meeting held in the original meeting house on May the 8th, 1773. It was the organizing of the General Association of Separate Baptists. William Weber was a key leader in the new organization, and as early as 1778, he was chosen as its moderator. That Baptists have always had differing opinions on theology. After all, they are Baptists, and Baptists are free people, even free to disagree.

At the meeting held at Dover in 1773, a theological question was raised and debated: Is salvation by Christ made possible for every individual of the human race? The entire first day was spent in debate, and the next year, the two camps met separately, with the Calvinists inside and the Arminians outside, under the trees. We're told that after several hours of weeping and praying and exchanging messages, the two groups united when they discovered that their differences were not as important as their unity.

Yes, something important happened here. Baptists organized on the local level here at Dover, and that organization was sealed. Baptists across Virginia were growing at such a rate that it was practical to have localized gatherings, which were called District Associations. The decision was made in 1783 to form what was first known as the Lower District, and its full organization took place the next year at Dover Meetinghouse. William Weber served as moderator of the association, and in honor of its place of organization, the name Dover became applied to the District Association. At one time, the Dover Association was the largest association in all of the United States, and it still serves as a means of cooperation and good work among the Baptist churches of its geographic area.

Yes, something important happened here. Virginia Baptists organized a General Committee to work toward full religious freedom. About the same time as the founding of the Dover Association, the General Association of Separate Baptists decided to cease due to the difficulty of many people to be able to attend. Instead, here at Dover Meetinghouse on October the 9th, 1784, that was formed what would be known as the General Committee, and it would serve as a watchdog to ensure that religious freedom was not in danger. By that time, the Anglican Church was in the process of being disestablished and becoming the Episcopal Church, yet the Virginia General Assembly was still prone to grant favors to what had been its established church, now just under a new name.

William Weber was appointed moderator of the General Committee, and Reuben Ford clerk, and in that first meeting, those present drafted a memorial to the Virginia General Assembly to change the Marriage Act, which was grievous to dissenters, forbidding them to perform the rights of matrimony even among members of their own congregation. They called for all distinctions in your laws to be done away with so there'd be no separate privilege for Anglican clergy. The very next year, the General Committee mounted an effort to defeat the Assembly's bill for general assessment for religion. This was a scheme by which every religious society could have a little piece of the tax dollars. The Presbyterians would have gone along with it. The Baptists, well, the only organized group that opposed the assessment. Their legal memorial against favoritism towards the Episcopal Church was sent to the Virginia General Assembly and was signed by none other than William Weber. Baptists believed that the government should keep its hands off religion, except to protect religious freedom, and that the government should not support any religion with the public's tax money.

Yes, something important happened here. The two great opposing camps of Baptists in Virginia gave up their party divisions and became one united people. In August 1787, the General Committee met here at Dover Meetinghouse, and delegates came from all of the District Associations. How did they get here, is one of my questions. I think they came on horses. Think how many horses must have taken the people to come here, and there had to be water nearby for all those horses. There were two great and distinct parties among Virginia Baptists. They were known as the Regulars and Separates. Those of us living 250 years later barely sense any difference between them. But one main difference was that the Regulars favored having a written confession of faith, a statement of what they believed. One of the Separates opposed any such prescribed statement. These two parties had been at loggerheads for some 30 years, but here at Dover Meetinghouse, the two camps, Regulars and Separates, agreed to form a union. That the names of Regular and Separate would be buried in oblivion. 25 years later, it was said that scarcely a Baptist in Virginia could tell you the difference between a Regular and a Separate. It was that much oblivion. They agreed to adopt the Philadelphia Confession of Faith with the following proviso: "To prevent the Confession of Faith from usurping an tyrannical power over the conscience of any, we do not mean that every person is bound to the strict observance of everything therein contained." Baptist freedom of thought was upheld in the General Committee meeting that took place right here at Dover. Indeed, all of those important things happened in that original little log meeting house across the road.

Something else important happened here. Baptists took a stand against slavery in Goochland County. Some Baptists began to express anti-slavery views in 1788. The General Committee met at another Baptist church in this county, Williams's Meetinghouse, near the Louisa line. Now, Williams's has been extinct for 145 years, so I like to talk, and I don't think it's coming back. The issue of the times was whether Baptists ought to take an anti-slavery stand and petition the Virginia government over removing what they called the "yoke of slavery." It was referred to the next session, and in 1789, when the General Committee met in Richmond, with Samuel Harris preaching after Zion and Reuben Ford taking the minutes, John Leland of Orange County, the great spokesman for liberty in its fullest sense, offered the following resolution: "That slavery is a violent deprivation of the rights of nature and inconsistent with a republican government, and therefore recommended to our brethren to make use of every legal measure to remove this horrid evil from the land, and pray almighty God that our honorable legislature might have it in their power to proclaim the great jubilee." In 1797, Dover Association even recommended, believe this or not, that Baptists unite with the abolition society for gradual emancipation. If only the Virginia government had listened to the pleas of the 18th century Virginia Baptists, emancipation may have happened 70 years earlier and without a civil war. At the time, few Virginia Baptists owned slaves, but in the great revivals which swept Virginia in the late 1780s and 90s, when Dover Church alone added some 170 members to the roll, many slaveholders were among the converts. And when they were added to the church rolls, the great opportunity was lost among Baptists to lobby for the abolishment of slavery.

Yes, something important happened here. The congregation, which was composed about evenly of black and white believers, outgrew that little meeting house. The modest, plain little log building where so much of great importance had taken place. In 1854, the congregation wanted a new building. History records that they had four dollars and six cents in the treasury and a heap of planking and offerings placed to build. But a year later, in 1855, Dover's congregation entered a new building, again in typical Baptist fashion. It was a plain, simple wooden building, but it was adequate.

In just 10 years, the entire social order changed. The close of the Civil War brought freedom for half of the church's membership, and they joined the great exodus as the newly freed people formed new churches. Over the long years, the people of Dover Church have maintained cordial relations with their closest spiritual kinspeople at First Baptist Church of Manakin and Saint James Baptist Church, something important, even if it took 70 years until that one-room house of worship had a Sunday school addition. But it took almost twice that many years for women in the membership to participate in the Baptist version of congregational democracy. They got the vote in 1909, which was still sooner than the national elections. The building of 1855 lasted nearly a century. When disaster struck on October the 30th, 1951, and the church house went up in smoke, just as it had been a century earlier, it took a heap of praying and planning and giving to build this present sanctuary. And it was followed in time with educational space and the boldest undertaking of all, the million-dollar Fellowship Building named Heritage Hall.

Across two and a half centuries, many other things of significance have happened at this place. Let's change the verb of kids to declare that something important happens here. Even now, especially now, here at Dover Baptist Church, boys and girls and middle-aged and senior-aged women learn that God is love. They are brought into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Our school in the teachings of Christ are baptized into the faith or taught how to walk the Christian walk and had their lives changed for better. Dover remains the scene of some of the most important times in a person's life: faith decisions, marriages officiated, the acknowledging and endorsing of calls from God, and the celebration of lives well lived.

Dover carries on as a center of Christian worship and teaching. Dover is a place where others are shown the love of Jesus in actions of Christian love and acts of kindness. And now there is no outhouse. Here in the house of the Lord, boys and girls, youth and adults are pointed towards a life with purpose, fulfilling a mission and honoring the Savior. May it ever be so, that something important happens here. To God be the glory.