Politically Correct Religion: A Religious Liberty Conference

This video titled, Politically Correct Religion: A Religious Liberty Conference, was held in Yeager Theatre on March 21, 1994. The introduction was presented by Elon’s Chaplain Richard McBride on James O’Kelly – the Apostle of Religious Liberty. McBride said, Elon College has gotten its sports name as the Fightin Christian in the same way Wake Forest was founded as a Baptist school and Trinity College (Duke University) was founded as a Methodist school and Guilford was a Quaker school. Elon was a Christian school. McBride introduced a book titled, Culture of Disbelief by Stephen L. Carter a political and religious author. Carter asks the question of what is religious freedom in our culture right now, stated McBride. Bill Alexander played the role of the Rev. John O’Kelly. Rick Eden was the narrator of the Rev. John O’Kelly. The two men had a dialogue about O’Kelly’s life in character. O’Kelly was influenced by Methodist revivalists in Virginia, and in approximately 1775, he converted to Methodism; in particular, he adhered to Francis Asbury’s teachings and identified with Asbury’s Methodist Society. By 1778 he was a minister on trial, riding the New Hope Circuit in North Carolina. He rose quickly in the Methodist ranks (many ministers took ten years or more), and by 1780 he was district elder over circuits in Tidewater Virginia and in eastern and central North Carolina. In 1790’s there was a conference meeting. O’Kelly was against slavery. In 1794, James O’Kelly established the Christian Church in the South. O’Kelly’s teachings were widely adopted in south side Virginia and North Carolina, the region in which the Southern Conference of the United Church of Christ still has a large presence, as Elon College was founded on O’Kelly teachings. O’Kelly died in Chatham County, North Carolina on October 16, 1826.