Would you believe a Free Will Baptist magazine called The True Blue? There was such a paper, published in Alabama (sometimes at Guin, other times at Townley) in the late 1920’s. The title page identifies The True Blue as “successor to the Free Will Baptist Visitor” and as “published in the interest of True Christianity everywhere, and especially the Freewill and Liberal Baptists.”
W.C. Austin edited the magazine, a man who spent most his ministry in Arkansas and Oklahoma. The contents reflect the typical salty humor and serious spiritual concern of what must have been a grand old Free Will Baptist preacher.
The second issue published, dated December 1926, outlines the purpose of the publication, as follows:
We have no apology for presenting to you The True Blue…
One of the leading features of The True Blue will be to point lost souls to Christ.
The True Blue will contend for the Bible to be the leading book in all of our homes and for it to occupy a place in our public schools.
The True Blue will contend for a change in several of our text books used in our public schools…
It will stand for true science and higher education; yea advocate the educating of every boy and girl of our land. But at the same time condemn all such rot as man sprang from the monkey…
Therefore we earnestly solicit the cooperation of God-loving, God-fearing people…Help us to put The True Blue in every home.
Judging from the above, the times have not changed as much as we might like to think.
About the Writer: Mary Wisehart served as chairman of the Free Will Baptist Historical Commission
