Quotes About John R. Rice

For his entire adulthood and throughout his public ministry in Texas, John R. Rice had avoided talking about the subject of race. He had never, by any published report or in the memory of any of his friends or family members or in any sermon in The Sword of the Lord, attacked or defended the institution of slavery or the subjugation of black people by white people.

Nothing in John R. Rice's life or career suggests that he would ever condone or support the racist mob violence that had been on display in Sherman in 1930. But his failure to criticize the Sherman Riot or to call for racial reconciliation or repentance for racial crimes can be attributed to some basic assumptions he must have made.

The focus on social and racial justice that strongly marked John Wesley, William Wilberforce, Charles G. Finney, Jonathan Blanchard, Charles Spurgeon, and other evangelical leaders in the 18th and 19th centuries was absent from the millions of words and scores of books John R. Rice penned during his lifetime.

The unpardonable sin is committed only by lost people, and then it is the sin of those who do not want to be saved and deliberately refuse salvation. There is no other unpardonable sin.