“De Sun Do Move and De Earth Am Flat” — Reverend John J. Jasper (a Sermon)

[DaveyT]

“De Sun Do Move and De Earth Am Flat” — Reverend John J. Jasper (a Sermon)
By Noel J. Hadley November 21, 2018

IT IS CERTAINLY REMARKABLE TO CONSIDER THAT PREACHING was expressly prohibited among blacks during the first 25 years of Reverend Jasper’s ministry, and yet the Southern gentleman preached. For more than fifty years of his life, John J. Jasper was a slave. Regardless, in the decades leading up to the Civil War, the electrifying sermons which derived from the man who labored in tobacco factories and iron mills engaged both the black and white population of Richmond, the very city which would soon serve as the capitol of the Confederacy. None of his sermons however drew larger or more eager audiences than what you are about to read. First given to his Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church in 1878, “De Sun Do Move” was received to a packed audience, including members of the Richmond press. It is said that the remarkable sermon resulted from a question Jasper received from a church parishioner regarding Joshua 10. Jasper responded the following Sunday. Word immediately spread, and further requests began pouring in. Jasper would repeat his celebrated sermon another 250 times to packed audiences. The Virginia House of Representatives was among them.

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