(This essay was first delivered
as a lecture at the Howard
University School
of Divinity in Washington, DC in October 1999. It was also published in the And Yet the Melody Lingers: Essays Sermons and Prayers on Religion and Race, 2006.)
C. Anthony Hunt, PhD.
Division: An Introduction
Growing up in the United
Methodist Church, it always puzzled me, as to why and how there came to be so
many Methodist Churches located so close together. St.
Paul United Methodist Church
– the church in which I was baptized – was a small church, all of whose members
were Black. Although I had been baptized
and was regularly taken to church by my parents and grandparents, the problem
of race in the church really didn’t dawn upon me until I was seven years old in
1969.
That was the year that St. Paul received its
first white minister. That was also the
year that there began to be, for the first time, discussion and outward
overtures from the white Methodist Church around the corner (Oxen Hill) about
shared ministries and possible merger.
Up to that point (1969), the two churches seemed to exist in two
separate worlds. Although less than a
mile apart, in the same denomination, and supposedly serving and worshiping the
same God, the churches were in fact essentially invisible to each other.
It was at the point when
serious talks of merger and shared ministry began (circa 1970), that the
realities of racial division in the church came to the surface for both the
white and black communities. Up until
1968, St. Paul had been a part of the Methodist Church’s Central Jurisdiction -
the all-black sub-structure created within the structure - concocted by a
compromise of Methodist factions in 1939 (to be discussed in detail later),
while Oxen Hill had been an established and well-regarded member of the
Methodist Church. The merger of the
Evangelical United Brethren Churches in Christ with the Methodist Church, and
the subsequent elimination of the (all-black) Central Jurisdiction in 1968
offered new hope that local congregations like St. Paul and Oxen Hill, which
had up to that point remained segregated, could heal their racial wounds and
work toward reconciliation and eventual union.
Despite the hope engendered
by these circumstances, the talk of congregational merger brought the often
unspoken wounds and pain of the race problem to the fore. Who would be the pastor of the newly merged
congregation? Would she or he be black
or white? How would the committees of
the new church be established? How would
power be shared? In what style would the
new congregation worship? The talks of
merger eventually ceased, and today these two congregations continue to
co-exist less than a mile apart from one another.
The experiences of St. Paul and Oxen Hill
United Methodist Churches are not unique within the historical context of
Methodism and other denominations. Based
upon my early personal experiences and observations of Methodism, along
with subsequent experiences while
serving in ministry with four African American United Methodist congregations –
one in Southern Prince George’s County, Maryland, two in rural Middleburg,
Virginia, one in suburban Northern Maryland - and now working with the more
than 8000 congregations – white, black, brown, and red – that comprise the
Northeastern Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church - I have continued to
hear similar stories of the wounds of racism in the church, as – white, black,
red, and brown Christians - seem mired in the unease and uncertainty of how to
overcome the racial division that has been so endemic to the church’s history
in America.
A question rooted in a
thought previously raised by Dr. Josiah Young of Wesley Theological Seminary in
another quite different context remains before the church. Are Christians who are from diverse ethnic
backgrounds really sisters and brothers, or are we merely distant cousins? How closely are we related, and are we ever
destined to dwell together as siblings in the same house?
Methodism and John Wesley’s Thoughts
Upon Slavery
It is important to note that
John Wesley consistently took a stance that opposed the selling and holding of
persons as slaves. William B. McClain
points out that Wesley’s treatise Thoughts
Upon Slavery published in 1774, has been assessed by many historians as the
most far-reaching treatise ever written against slavery.[i] It was widely distributed and reprinted in England and America. In this pamphlet, Wesley reviled “the
enslavement of the noble by barbarous and inferior white men.” He appealed to rationality and morality in
addition to revelation to condemn slavery:
But, waiving for the present
all other consideration, I strike at the root of this complicated villainy. I absolutely deny all slave-holding to be
consistent with any degree of natural justice, mercy and truth. No circumstances can make it necessary for a
man to burst in sunder all the ties of humanity. It can never be necessary for a rational
being to sink himself below a brute. A
man can be under no necessity of degrading himself into a wolf…[ii]
Wesley practiced what he
preached. According to John Wesley’s Journal, he baptized his first black
converts on November 29,
1758, and received them into the Methodist movement. One of these converts was a black woman. These new converts, influenced by Wesley’s
preaching of experiential faith through which persons are brought into a
redeeming conscious fellowship with God, were so filled with evangelistic zeal
that they went home and witnessed so persuasively what they had experienced,
that their owner, Nathanial Gilbert also became converted to the Christian
faith. Gilbert was subsequently licensed
to preach as a local preacher in the Methodist movement.[iii]
Wesley’s theological
opposition to slavery was based primarily on his doctrine of grace. For Wesley, grace was rooted in the notion
that all creatures bore the stamp of their “maker,” thus all persons are
recipients of God’s prevenient grace.
Grace is available and real to all.
