this is the intersection of faith in the culture. It's wall builders. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Rick Green America's Constitution coach here with David Barton America's premier historian and our founder at wall builders Tim Barton of course national speaker and pastor and president of wall builders. You can learn more about all three of us at wallbuilders.com and also go to wallbuilders live.com for some archives of the program. If you have any questions,

you missed any of the recent programs, especially yesterday because we started a three part series with Bob McEwen speaking at the pro family legislators conference. We'll be jumping back into that later in the program today. But first let's get our hero of history for the day. Tim, who's our hero of history today?

Well, Rick today is one of our favorite stories for those who have followed wall builders or really heard some of our presentations. If you've heard a mere my dad on the road. This is a guy we've talked about for really years. His name is Harry Hoosier and he's really credited as being the namesake for Indiana at the Hoosier State. And as I'm already saying this, I know there's people out there who skeptics and critical and they'll say, wait a second, right? Indiana being the Hoosier State. They're not named after Harry Hoosier

as a side note. Harry Hoosier was a black evangelist from the early days of the second grade awakening. But people say, no, Indiana did not get their name after him. In fact, if you look up online right now, where did Indiana get its name? What you will find is nobody knows that there is not a definitive source because there's not an actual footnote where Indiana said, this is where we got our name. But you can certainly look back at historically and see influences and even on Indiana State University or the Indiana State website.

They will say some options for where the name came from. They'll say, well, back then it's possible people had really thick accents and somebody knocks on the door and and the person would say, who's there?

But maybe their accent was so thick, it sounded like Hoosier. And so, right, maybe that's where the word Hoosier came from. Where there was an Indian word for corn named Hoosie. And maybe like the derivative of it was Hoosier. And so maybe Hoosier came from like this Indian word for corn or when Indiana was a territory.

Allegedly, like legend has it. There was a big drunken brawl during the brawl. Somebody's ear got torn off. And so at the end of the drunken brawl, somebody sees the ear on the ground. They pick it up and say, hey, who's ear? And so maybe Hoosier came from Hoosier or one of the other possibilities that people suggest is there was a black evangelist from the second grade awakening. He was known as black carry or black carry Hoosier.

And he's very well documented. We know he existed historically. We can point to many things that even highlight the significance of his ministry. So it's known that he was a minister. He was very influential. It is known that some of the converts under his ministry were then called Hoosiers as if they are the followers of Harry Hoosier, the followers of his teaching. So to those were Hoosiers. And it's documented that many of the people he influenced moved into the Indian a territory.

And they were called Hoosiers when they went to the Indian a territory. And so it's possible the name Hoosier came from those converts under Harry Hoosier. So it's possible the name came from this black evangelist. But what they'll tell you online is but we don't really know where the name came from now. It's possible. You might not really know where it came from, but there is only one option that makes very much sense. And that really is the hero we want to highlight today. So the name is Harry Hoosier. I've already kind of given away some of the story.

He was an evangelist at the beginning of the second grade awakening and some of his background. He was a slave in North Carolina. He was able to gain his freedom at the end of the American War for Independence, which during that era of the American Revolution.

There were a lot of Americans, including founding fathers who even talked about they had identified. There was a level of hypocrisy when they were fighting for freedom for themselves while they were enslaving others.

John Jay has a couple of very interesting letters about that. Those are things we actually have on the website. Or if you have this, this PDF for this printed off pamphlet, this page and half on Harry Hoosier.

We have one of those quotes from John Jay and their footnoted. You can go look that up and read it. But there was a revelation for so many Americans. They're fighting for their freedom that slavery really is a bad institution. And if we say that today, a lot of people would feel skeptical that how dare, you know, us pretend like these guys were moral and ethical when they had slaying.

And this is not as a slavery is not an evil institution. Of course it was. But if you're looking at a time in world history, when every nation of the world had slaves, in fact, anybody who had any level of prominence, any political leaders, anybody of affluence, every one of them had slaves. This is the way the world was. And I'm saying it to point out that America, at this time of the American Revolution, America wasn't uniquely evil for having slaves. America was normal with every other nation of the world for having slaves.

But America did something nobody else was doing. America's political leaders began a movement to abolish slavery, to abolish slave trade. And this is where Harry Hoosier was able to find his freedom, hands up being a convert in Christianity. And one of the very cool things is one of the guys he travels with early on, one of the guys he mentor or is mentored by was Francis Asbury. Now dad, we've talked about this a little bit off air. Rick, we've talked some as well. But there's the name Asbury.

Asbury might be something that people are recognizing a little bit today because there's a revival going on that asbury college right now, well, asbury college, asbury university, asbury seminary, those were named after Francis Asbury. And dad, after you talk about Francis Asbury many times, he was a very significant evangelist in the early days of the second grade awakening.

Yeah, he was an evangelical evangelist. And I say that in sense that evangelicals, if you look back to the 1700s, 1600s, the evangelicals would have been the congregationalists, which is the pilgrims of the Puritans. As you move into the late 1700s and the 1800s, the evangelicals are the Methodists. They were the circuit riding preachers. They preached like Whitfield did all over the place and Whitfield was himself a Methodist.

So asbury, like Whitfield, traveled all over America, preaching to every group he could find, he went to every community he could think of, the guy in his years of preaching, he preached 20,000 sermons, and he rode 300,000 miles on horseback. That's like riding a horse around the world 12 times.

So these are the guys that went to everyone. Jesus talked about going out in the highways and the byways and telling everybody the gospel, these guys did it. And Harry traveled with Francis Asbury and other great Methodists leaders. He was one of those traveling preachers.

Well, and what's also cool is so many of those Methodist ministers are on a record as identifying how good Harry was as a minister. He was one of the best spoken. He was one of the most intelligent. And as we're saying this, right, this is when, when you begin to see the influence that Harry Hoosier had, it actually didn't make sense.

That is, people are converting under his ministry and some of these bishops he traveled with, they would talk about that Harry would draw larger crowds and they would, well, Harry has these huge crowds. These people are converting to Christianity.

They're following the teachings of Harry Hoosier on the Bible. They moved to Indiana. This is the only thing that actually makes sense. And even though I get there's, there's no definitive proof of this. It is what makes the most sense. But what is unquestionable is one of the incredible pastors ministers and the early days of the second grade awakening was a black minister named Harry Hoosier to find out more. You need to go to wallbuilders.com learn more of this guy such a unique minister from American history.

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