Christian Leaders Encourage Churches to Celebrate Juneteenth

When the enslaved community in Galveston, Texas, learned on June 19, 1865, that they'd been freed, they went to their church and prayed. They understood that President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had ordered their freedom, but they believed God had made it possible, said Lisa Fields, founder of the Jude 3 Project. "They gave the glory to God. They saw God as their deliverer," she said during a June 15 webinar on religion's role in Juneteenth.