Juneteenth
Contemplating the Good News of Emancipation
Featured article
Juneteenth, according to a northern Black
In this week’s featured article, Dedria Humphries Barker graciously admits that she had to look up the history of the newest Federal Holiday in the United States, Juneteenth. As an African American Woman living in the “North,” she wonders how best to celebrate and commemorate the last people to receive the news of emancipation from slavery.
Barker calls Juneteenth a celebration of “tardiness,” which is an apt description for a holiday that was formally enacted in 2021, 41 years after Texas made it a state holiday, 166 years after the memorialized event. June 19, 1865, Union Army Major Gen. Gordon Granger “informed the people of Texas ‘that in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” The “Executive” was Abraham Lincoln, and he had freed them two-and-one-half years earlier on January 1, 1863.” Hence the “tardiness.” In 2025, 162 years separate us from Lincoln’s declaration. We are all late to this party that celebrates the finality of emancipation in America.
Even then, 1863 was 87 years after the Declaration of Independence which declared so boldly that all are “created equal” and endowed with liberty by their Creator. Tardiness indeed.
Learn more about Juneteenth from the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
What is Juneteenth? a video for children from Colonial Williamsburg
Faith-based considerations
Sadly, if we were to put all the inspired texts and scriptures pertaining to slavery together in a two-column format, there may be more scriptures allowing or condoning slavery than there are which condemn it. The only way to make sense of this is to admit that economic and other power-based interests — attitudes that support exploitation and marginalization of others — frequently dampen and hamper a spirit of liberation among us. The Divine may be calling us all toward freedom for millennia; but we have lots of wax in our ears and cannot hear the quiet insistence for emancipation and human dignity.
Central to Jewish faith and tradition is a feast centered on liberation from slavery: Passover. In this annual memorial of liberation from slavery in Egypt, Jews across the world remember how God has been a consistent and persistent force for freedom from exploitation for the Covenant People.
For Christians, the inaugural message of Jesus’ ministry incorporates a reference to the prophet Isaiah: “I come to proclaim release to captives.” (Luke 4:18 and Isaiah 61:1)
God proclaims through the voice of Muhammad in the Quran that the liberation of the slave opens us to the path of righteousness (Surah 90:13).
Buddhism and Hinduism, much older faith traditions, have made room for involuntary servitude usually on the basis of an understanding of karmic-debt and the caste system. However, most modern teachings stress the ways of compassion and one of the world’s earliest abolitionists was the Chinese emperor Wang Mang, a Buddhist (9 C.E.). 1 For Sikhs, Guru Nanak preached against slavery and advocated for human equality.
Nineteenth century abolitionists in England and the United States generally offered three arguments against slavery. Economic: Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776) observed that slavery is a less efficient and more costly form of labor than can be generated by free workers acting for their own benefit and interests. Paid labor actually costs less than slavery, he argued. Humanitarian: Slavery denies people human rights. Even the slave traders put their lives at risk and were themselves dehumanized in pursuit of profit. The brutality of the slave trade tainted everyone who participated in it. Christian: Slavery is contrary to the commandments of love for one’s neighbor. It dehumanizes and fails to recognize the dignity of the human person. 2
Freedom is an essential human capability and the exercise of freedom in the service of reason, love, compassion, and truth ennobles us. Slavery robs the enslaved person of this nobility. Slavery diminishes the humanity of the slave-holder and corrupts their spirit by their inclination to dominate, oppress, exploit, and diminish the slave.
This year, 2025, seems to be marked by a different political attitude toward slavery and the fraught history of the United States with respect to slavery.3 Recently, the President announced that he was restoring the Confederate names to U.S. military installations and facilities. He has gone on the record in the past opposing the removal of monuments to Confederate military figures. His anti-D.E.I. initiatives have made sponsors of Juneteenth celebrations and other facilities that memorialize our struggles against slavery skittish to continue in their sponsorship.4
In this climate, communities of faith can stress the faith dimension of our struggle to promote human dignity for all people. This concern rises far above the smaller political and “culture war” aspects that are dominating the American media and the tweets and social media feeds of political influencers. We can highlight our support for the African American community. We can renew our promises to maintain and sustain the abolition of slavery wherever it reemerges. We can celebrate freedom and promote the participation of all people in our political and community activities. Inclusion can remain for us an essential faith conviction, even if some political or cultural leaders want us to believe or act against this.5
Considerations for your prayers
Faith communities often arrived late-to-the-game when prompted to support and recognize the essential, inherent dignity of all people. This calls for a genuine repentance and a metanoia, a “turning around” or “change of mind,” regarding the fundamental worth of every person.
Despite the current political rhetoric, systematized, unacknowledged racism is deeply embedded in many laws and institutions at many levels of society. Racism both fed the institution of slavery and was one of the main excuses given to support it. Slavery and racism are mutually entangled sins. As much as we have rooted out slavery, we have not rooted out racism. It is easier to eliminate a practice and certain classes of actions (buying and selling human beings) than it is to eliminate prejudices and bias (which cannot be legislated against to the same degree).
We are one human race. Racialist mythologies supporting the “supremacy” of certain races and ethnicities over others are not supported by facts or science or reason. Additionally, they are immoral and irrational even if they cannot be made illegal.
We can celebrate the liberation and freedom of all Americans. In a way, 1865 marks the end of slavery (for the most part) in the modern world. While human trafficking and some forms of slavery remain in parts of the world, its practices have changed substantially and there are laws everywhere that seek its eradication — even if they are not evenly enforced.6
As Barker wrote in today’s Featured Article, freedom is an “idea that needs action.” Celebrating Juneteenth, she writes, requires “food, music, looking good, and community.” Even for people who were never slaves or for whom slavery is a distant memory, confirming and affirming an anti-slavery, emancipatory mindset ennobles us.
In some ways, the “proclamation of the good news” of Juneteenth is analogous to the “proclamation of the good news” of God’s reign among human beings. Jesus understood that the reign of God, the “basileus tou Theou,” demands celebration. More than anything else, joy and dancing are signs of the fulfillment of human beings. We thrive when we celebrate and we celebrate our thriving — and we never thrive when we subsist under the thumb of the domineering.
Prayer
O God, we have so often arrived late to the festivals of freedom!
On this day, Juneteenth, a day to proclaim another step
toward the completion of the American project
to build up freedom and human dignity on this continent,
we pledge to oppose the exploitation of people across the globe,
we promise to seek and root out the weeds of racism wherever
they may have infested our hearts, attitudes, values, or laws.
Too often, in the past, we may have preferred to remain in bondage ourselves
or unjustly curbed the freedom of others;
for these attitudes and actions we beg your forgiveness and mercy.
Instead, give us voices to proclaim emancipation to captives,
a will to liberate those who live in bonds,
a song of joy to comfort those who have been tread down by hatred or violence,
resolve to make reparations for those whose dignity
has been wounded or destroyed by our ancestors.
We celebrate your movement among us to live peacefully together,
to recognize the dignity of every human person,
to support the fulfillment and thriving of all people and all communities.
Amen.
BBC, Bitesize guides: Main abolitionist arguments.
Trump says he's restoring the names of military bases that honored Confederate soldiers.
A Pentagon agency pauses celebrations of Martin Luther King’s Birthday and other cultural events.
Americans need transformative talks on race. Juneteenth is the space for that.
DEI Bans Leave Juneteenth Organizers Scrambling To Make Up For Lost Corporate Funding.