Why Should Christians Care About Juneteenth? A Study on Freedom, Jubilee, and the Gospel That Cares About the Whole Person
A standalone study on the faith woven through Juneteenth and what marking it asks of the church.
The Jude 3 Project | Study Guide
The big question
Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, the day freedom finally reached the last enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. For many Christians the honest question is simpler: is this our story, or just a holiday? Pastor and teacher Rasool Berry argues it is our story, and that most Christians have not been told enough of it to know. One of Juneteenth's first names was Jubilee Day. The first celebration was a spontaneous worship service in a church. Freed pastors built schools, churches, and neighborhoods. The gospel driving all of it was holistic, the kind that cared about bodies and conditions and communities, not only inner states. This study asks where that gospel came from, where it has been going, and what it asks of us now.
Key takeaways
- Freedom did not arrive everywhere at once. It reached Galveston, Texas two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, when Union troops enforced it.
- One of Juneteenth's earliest names was Jubilee Day, a theological claim rooted in Leviticus 25. The freed people read themselves into Scripture because Scripture had been their map.
- The first Juneteenth celebration was a spontaneous worship service. The church was not on the sidelines of this story.
- Slaveholders produced a Bible with the Book of Exodus and other liberation passages removed because they knew what those texts said and feared them. The enslaved held onto the full gospel anyway, and it outlasted the faith of their enslavers.
- What you set aside time to mark shapes what you actually believe. Marking Juneteenth is a form of discipleship, not politics.
- The gospel that cares about the whole person, mind, body, and soul, is not a revision of Christianity. It is the real thing, the one the enslaved recognized and held.
Scripture to sit with
Leviticus 25:10. Proclaim liberty throughout the land. The year of Jubilee cancels debts, releases the captive, and resets the social order. When freed people called June 19 'Jubilee Day,' they were making a theological claim.
Luke 4:18-19. Jesus opens his ministry by reading Isaiah: good news to the poor, release to the captive, freedom for the oppressed. Physical freedom is not a side theme of the gospel. It is part of the announcement.
Galatians 5:1. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. The freedom of Juneteenth is a smaller picture of the freedom the gospel announces.
Psalm 9:12. He does not forget the cry of the afflicted. The wave of freedom that finally reached Galveston on June 19, 1865, arrived because it was prayed for across decades of captivity.
1 Corinthians 10:11. These things happened as examples, written for our instruction. Remembering history rightly is part of being formed by it.
Quotes worth discussing
"That happened on June 19th, 1865, when they arrived in Galveston, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed." (Rasool Berry)
"It was like a wave of freedom that swept over that place." (Rasool Berry)
"One of them was Jubilee Day. And I was like, 'Wow. Jubilee Day?'" (Rasool Berry)
"They tried to take out all liberation passages so that folks wouldn't get any idea. Why they go through the whole effort of taking out like 90% of the Old Testament?" (Rasool Berry)
"From them calling Harriet Tubman Moses to what Frederick Douglass writes, the faith of the oppressed outlasted the faith of the oppressor." (Rasool Berry)
"What you mark in time matters." (Rasool Berry)
"Honoring this day gives us an opportunity to see how God cares about the whole person, the mind, the body, and the soul." (Rasool Berry)
"The God of the Bible has been intentionally and purposefully involved in the lives of African descended people, and we can find our hope, our identity, our purpose in that God." (Don Carey, from the Jude 3 Project episode on whether Christianity was forced on Africans)
The faith history you may not have been told
When Union troops arrived in Galveston on June 19, 1865, the enslaved people did not wait for an official ceremony. They made their way to Reedy Chapel and started a praise service. That first celebration was spontaneous and liturgical at the same time.
One of the day's earliest names was Jubilee Day. The freed people reached for Leviticus 25, the year when liberty was proclaimed and the captive was released. They were not using religious language as decoration. They were reading their experience through Scripture because Scripture had carried them through the years of waiting.
The pastors who led those first celebrations went on to build institutions. Dr. Charlie Dates, a historian of the Black church, has documented how the Black church became the primary social safety net for Black communities in the years that followed, meeting people with housing, schooling, and work because no other institution would. The Juneteenth celebration was the beginning of that building project, not a coda to it.
And underneath all of it was the question of which gospel. Slaveholders had produced a Bible with the liberation passages removed. The Book of Exodus was cut. Passages about submission were kept. The enslaved who held onto the full text, who called Harriet Tubman Moses and who read Frederick Douglass's distinction between the Christianity of the land and authentic Christianity, they were holding onto the real thing. What they celebrated on June 19, 1865, was not separate from their faith. It was a fruit of it.
Discussion questions
1. What did you learn about Juneteenth that you had not known before? What surprised you most, and what questions does it raise?
2. Berry says one of Juneteenth's first names was Jubilee Day. Read Leviticus 25:8-17. What does Jubilee actually mean in its original context, and what does it mean that freed people reached for that image?
3. Slaveholders removed the Book of Exodus from a Bible produced for enslaved people. The enslaved held onto the full gospel anyway. What does that tell you about which version of Christianity actually survived?
4. Berry says what you mark in time matters. What does your family or church set aside time to remember, and what is it forming in you? What is missing from what you mark?
5. The gospel the freed pastors preached was holistic. It addressed the mind, the body, and the soul. How does your own church's gospel stack up against that? Where is it wide, and where is it narrow?
6. The struggle did not end in 1865. Berry is clear about that. How does knowing the history of what has been survived give you something to draw on for what has not yet been finished?
A spiritual discipline this week: mark the day
Choose one of the following:
- Read Exodus 1-15, the section the Slave Bible erased, in one sitting. Write down every time God acts to free his people. Let the list sit with you before you do anything with it.
- Look up Rev. Jack Yates and Opal Lee, two people Berry names as central to Juneteenth's history. Read a short account of what each of them did and why. Let two real people make the history concrete.
- Gather with one other person and read Luke 4:18-19 together. Talk about whether the gospel you were handed includes this, and what you would need to do if you found out it did not.
- Find out how your church has or has not marked Juneteenth in recent years. If it has not, ask a simple question: what would it take to start?
Go deeper
This study grew out of the Jude 3 Project episode 'Why Is Juneteenth Important?' with Rasool Berry. For a companion conversation on how the Black church became a social safety net for Black communities, see the Jude 3 Project study on the Contributions of the Black Church with Dr. Charlie Dates. For a deeper look at whether Christianity was forced on African people, see the Jude 3 Project episode with Don Carey and Christopher LaMark. Berry also produced a documentary on the faith history of Juneteenth; ask him or search his name for access.
A closing reflection
June 19, 1865. Union troops ride into Galveston. The people do not wait. They find each other and they find a church and they praise God. They name it Jubilee Day. They know exactly what they are saying. They have been reading the same Book the enslavers tried to censor, and they know the God in it hears the cry of the captive and does not forget the last person waiting on the news. What you mark in time shapes what you believe. Mark this.