Why Is Church History Important?

During this Church History Intensive, Doctor Steve Hoskins allowed us to delve deeper into the history of the Church, and throughout the class, he challenged us to reevaluate our perspective of the Church, as a whole. We were instructed on why church history is important, and why we should not only know the history of our Salvation Army but of the Church, in general. Countless men and women fought for the freedom of religion that we have in this day and age. If we do not educate our people, they will continue to ignorantly take for granted the church that we experience now. From Luther’s ninety-five theses to Martin Luther King Jr.’s march on Washington, the world-wide Church that we are a part of has such a phenomenal, yet flawed, history …show more content…
The universal church is now for any race or ethnicity, yet we cannot figure out how to show that we are all inclusive and handle the issue of sin simultaneously. Men and women who struggle with sin are not welcomed in our buildings because their sin looks different than ours. How or will we ever be able to overcome this without compromising our beliefs? After reading Noll’s book, The Work We Have To Do, we can see that our Church needs more heroes of the faith such as Daniel Payne. Payne lived through a time where the Church was attempting to overcome the sin of racism. Just after the Civil War had been fought, Payne began to help open churches for the AME. He preached a strong message of inclusiveness, and he preached even stronger against those who were not allowing people in. He said, “I believe that the pastor who could turn away from God’s sanctuary any human being on account of color was not fit to have charge of a gang of dogs (Noll 77).” If more churches loved inclusively like we are called to do, I believe more lives would be freed from the bondage of sin, and thus, causing our churches to