The James Logan Courier

By Joseph Agharanya, Courier Staff Writer

Part of being human is that we all look for spiritual fulfillment. We are born into the control of others; as adolescents we develop into adults while others, our peers and authority figures in our lives, pervasively condition us with their systems of values and beliefs. We end up struggling with those beliefs and values when they conflict with our commitment to satisfy our own human needs. But when we finally break free of the control and influence that ties us down in our relationships and conditions us to to their way of thinking, we can begin to gain our own spiritual fulfillment.

From wikipedia:
Elijah Parish Lovejoy (November 9, 1802 – November 7, 1837) was an American Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper editor and abolitionist. He was murdered by an opposition mob in Alton, Illinois during their attack on his warehouse to destroy his press and abolitionist materials.

Lovejoy's father was a Congregational minister and his mother a devout Christian. He attended Waterville College (now Colby College) in his home state of Maine. He traveled west and in 1827 settled in St. Louis, Missouri. He worked as an editor of an anti-Jacksonian newspaper, the St. Louis Observer and ran a school. Five years later, he studied at the Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey and became an ordained Presbyterian preacher. Returning to St. Louis, he set up a church and resumed work as editor of the Observer. His editorials criticized slavery and other church denominations.

Learn more about Elijah Lovejoy, free from the Alton, Illinois website.