Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind

so that you may be able to prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12.2. This is resistance and reformation on the Fight Laugh Feast Network.

Gideon Blackburn was an early graduate of the pioneer Tuskulam Academy, founded by Samuel

Doak in the Western Appalachian Settlements of Tennessee. His unique gifts

well prepared him to shape the frontier for God.

He possessed a commanding physical presence, was a gifted orator, and was filled with a compassion the early settlers rarely saw

among the more hard-bitten frontier preachers of their day.

Blackburn pastored Presbyterian churches at New Providence

and Eusebia near Maryville, but soon turned his attention to educating and

evangelizing the nearby Cherokee Tribal settlements.

In 1803, Blackburn established a Mission School near Teleco. Others may have seen the children of the Cherokee as the

nits that make lies but Blackburn believed that if Christianized and educated they would grow up to be a blessing to the world.

Blackburn's success was astounding. The Cherokee children learned their three

rs, reading, writing, and arithmetic, with amazing speed, mastered simplified

forms of the Presbyterian doctrine and

revealed a unique affection for the poetry and hymns of the settlers.

Blackburn delighted in showing off his promising geniuses and was most delighted when

Governor John Severe himself attended a ceremony in 1805. Severe was reduced to tears by what he saw. I have often stood, he told

Blackburn, unmoved amidst the showers of bullets from Indian rifles but this

effectually unmanns me. I see civilization taking the ground of barbarism and the praises of Jesus succeeding the war whoop of the savage.

Though Blackburn, it usually prepared his sermons while engaged in some form of manual labor,

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