No Guts, No Glory

A battle fought by an all-black regiment during the Civil War offers insight into the glory of the death of Christ.

During Black History Month, it’s appropriate to look at a film that tells an important story — one that not only connects with the African-American experience in the United States, but also helps us understand an important theme in today’s epistle text from 2 Corinthians.

In 1989, Matthew Broderick, Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington starred in a film that was nominated for five Academy Awards and won three of them, including Best Supporting Actor for Washington. It tells the story of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, the second all African-American unit in U.S. history (a development made possible by the Emancipation Proclamation), which began training in 1863 at Camp Meigs outside of Boston. The commander was a white officer, Robert Gould Shaw, about 26 years old.

When Union military authorities decided that Fort Wagner in South Carolina had to be captured, they sent in the 54th. Fort Wagner was positioned on Morris Island to defend Charleston harbor,...