What exactly does this mean? You do know the "emancipation proclamation" didn't free anybody, right? If you are saying that preaching will free you (or somebody else) then you chose a poor analogy.
Note: "Now by itself that proclamation on a piece of paper did not free a single slave."
BTW, I see from your profile that you describe yourself as an "unreconstructed Southerner," which helps to explain your reaction. :-) Yes, I am aware of the complexities of the Emancipation Proclamation, but I only make the analogy as far as the few points of comparison I make in the sermon.
Actually, and check your history on this, the Emancipation Proclamation did formally set hundreds of thousands free.
Since it applied only to those states in rebellion, yes, it didn’t count for places like Maryland, or Delaware...or the District of Columbia, states and jurisdictions which were slave areas, but were not in rebellion.
However, the Union in 1863 controlled whole sections of Virginia, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi, etc. and the proclamation did formally...apply to those states. And in jurisdiction (as claimed by the Union) applied, though unenforceable, to all the Southern states.
For most black Americans too—the symbolic power of the Emancipation was enormous too.
Just so you know, I am the great-grandson of a Confederate officer and slave owner, and though I respect his service—and believed he did right in his circumstance... I am happy for everyone’s sake, that in God’s good Providence, the Union won the war. There would be no United States without that, and WWI (just 50 years after) and further, would have been very different.