CHURCH DIVISION: CAUSE AND RESULTS … THE SLAVE QUESTION AND THE CIVIL WAR

(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.

To Wesley, one of the most critical points regarding the slave question was that he viewed Blacks as human beings. Slavery was in direct conflict with God’s laws of mercy and justice toward persons.  In light of Wesley’s evangelical message of God’s universal grace for all human beings, one of the problems was that those who were enslaved were often considered to be less than human, or non-humans.  It was not untypical for persons of African descent to be thought to be uncivilized peoples, or even heathens. 

The record of the establishment of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (in foreign parts) in 1701 points this out.  Formed by the Anglican Church, the SPG was one of the first missionary institutions that sought to convert slaves and Native Americans to Christianity.  The debate underlying the work of the SPG was not only rooted in whether or not conversion of slaves and native persons was appropriate or necessary.  The conclusion as to this particular aspect of propagation had been addressed by British Royalty in 1660 as Charles II encouraged the evangelization and conversion of slaves in America.  The debate was more rooted in who (or what) was being converted – whether slaves and native persons were in-fact persons.  Noted black historian Carter G. Woodson points out that the Society’s perspective on this question is clearly stated in its mission statement: “to do missionary work among the heathen, especially Indians and Negroes.”[iv]

To counter these contentions, Wesley offered examples of persons throughout Africa, for example in Guinea, who were not brutal and cruel peoples, and certainly not violent and barbaric by nature.

Wesley cited studies conducted by Monsier Allanson for the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris to make this point.  Concerning both the country and the people of Guinea, the study concludes:

“Which way soever I turned my eyes, I beheld a perfect image of pure nature: An agreeable solitude, bounded on every side by a charming landscape; the rural situation of cottages in the midst of trees the ease and quietness of Negroes, reclined under the shade of the spreading foliage, with the simplicity of dress and manners: The whole revived in my mind that idea of our first parents, and I seemed to contemplate the world in its primitive state.  They are, generally speaking, very good-natured, sociable, and obliging.”[v]

Wesley also opposed slavery as a means of helping the new nations in its struggle toward economic independence and prosperity.  He pointed out that slavery was not justifiable based on the notion that wealth is considered to be the means to the glory of a country, and that wealth should not be supported through holding other persons captive.  Again, it was against God’s will, and against moral law that persons be seen as chattel property – to be brought and sold as a means of production.

The Wesleyan Doctrine of Grace -  Slavery and Black Christianity 

Grace, as the integral component in Wesley’s construct of the Way of Salvation, required that persons live out grace through loving one’s neighbors as was commanded by Christ.   Returning to Wesley’s opposition to slavery, it is important also to note that he felt that even though slavery was legal in certain parts of the world, it was not justifiable in accordance with the laws of God. He pointed out that man’s laws pertaining to slavery and the holding of persons in servitude were flawed at the point where they advocated or allowed slavery.

From the outset, the notion of universal grace seemed particularly attractive to Blacks who had the privilege of receiving this message.  Historian Carter G. Woodson aptly called Black’s attraction to the proselytizing by Methodists and Baptists as “The Dawn of a New Day” in the religious development of Negroes.  Religious sociologist E. Franklin Frazier pointed out that the proselytizing activities on the part of Methodists and Baptists were a phase of the Great Awakening, which began in New England and spread to the West and South.  When Methodists and Baptists began their revivals in the South, large numbers of Negroes were immediately attracted to this type of religious worship.[vi]

The conversion of Richard Allen offers insight into the power of the message of universal grace.   Converted to Methodism in 1777 at the age of seventeen, his experience was typical of many Blacks. 

Allen states:

“… I was awakened and brought to see myself, poor, wretched and undone, and without the mercy of God, must be lost.  Shortly after, I obtained mercy through the blood of Christ, and was constrained to exhort my old companions to seek in the Lord.  I went rejoicing for several days and was happy in the Lord, in the conversing with many old, experienced Christians.  I was brought under doubts, and was tempted to believe I was deceived, and was constrained to seek the Lord afresh.  I went with my head bowed down for many days.  My sins were a heavy burden.  I was tempted to believe there was no mercy for me.  I cried to the Lord both night and day.  One night I thought hell would be my portion.  I cried to (God) who delighteth to hear the prayers of a poor sinner, and all of a sudden my dungeon shook, my chains flew off, and “Glory to God!” I cried.  My soul was filled.  I cried, “Enough!  For me the Savior died!” Now my confidence was strengthened that the Lord, for Christ’s sake, had heard my prayers and pardoned all my sins.”[vii]

It is clear that Allen’s attraction to Methodism was rooted in the evangelical hope that it offered.  It was an evangelical message rooted in: (1) The Primacy of Scripture; (2) Conversion as a personal normative experience; and (3) Evangelism as essential to conveying the message of God’s grace.

The Roots of Church Division: The Cause

In terms of race relations, the Methodist Church was one of the most progressive religious bodies at the end of the eighteenth century.  But although Methodist evangelists preached a gospel that emphasized that God was “no respector of persons,” and large numbers of Blacks responded favorably to this message, attempts to apply the Wesleyan teachings of Wesley began to run into opposition when these teachings directly confronted the world of slaves and slave masters.

The social customs of the newly formed United States had begun to draw particular lines as to the appropriate social, economic and political strata - and location - of persons based upon race.  Blacks invariably occupied a societal position that was separate from and subordinate to Whites.  Eventually, this social ordering, and its incumbent racial prejudice and discrimination, had become embedded within the structures of the Methodist Church, as well.  Joseph Pilmore, one of the first men (along with Richard Boardman) appointed to a Methodist circuit in America (Philadelphia), pointed out this festering problem in a letter to John Wesley:

“As the ground was wet they persuaded me to try to preach within and appointed men to stand at the door to keep all the Negroes out till white persons got in, but the house would not hold them…”[viii]

In attempts to adapt to the growing race problem, many churches began to build balconies or other side rooms for blacks.  If separate rooms or seating areas were not practical, they arranged separate services.    

The experiences of Richard Allen and other blacks at St. George Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia offer a case in point.   An itinerant Methodist preacher after gaining his freedom, Richard Allen arrived in Philadelphia in 1786.  After beginning to regularly attend and preach at St. George, Allen sensed the need for a separate place of worship for blacks, but was opposed by both Blacks and Whites.  He and other black Methodists began to question the hypocrisy among white Methodists who held slaves, and continued racist practices within houses of worship.  In reaction to the segregation policies and practices at St. George, Allen and others would eventually be forced, by conscience, to leave and start a separate worshipping community. 

Allen states, “When the colored people began to get numerous in attending the church, they moved us around the wall, and on the Sabbath morning we went to church … the sexton stood at the door and told us to go to the gallery.”  As they were making their way to seats, the minister said, “Let us pray.”  They apparently knelt in the wrong place because one of the trustees had hold of Rev. Absolom Jones, pulling him off his knees, and saying “You must get up – you must not kneel here.”  Mr. Jones replied, “Wait until the prayer is over.”[ix] 

Allen continued, “And we all went out of the church in one body, and they were no more plagued with us in the church.”

In 1816, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded in Philadelphia, became the first black denomination in the United States.  Richard Allen was elected the first Bishop of the AME church, with the first two congregations being founded as the Bethel Churches in Philadelphia and Baltimore.

African Methodist Episcopal Bishop Reverdy Ransom’s thoughts speak to the results of the separation of African Methodists from the Methodist Episcopal Church: 

“As to the result of this separation from the Methodist Episcopal Church, permit us to remark that it has been really beneficial to the man of color.  First, it has thrown us upon our own resources and made us tax our own mental powers both for government and support: For government - viewed in the light of official responsibility – when we were under control of the M.E. Church we were dependent upon them for ministerial instructions.  They supplied our pulpits with preachers, deacons and elders, and these in the vast majority of instances were white men.  Hence, if the instructions given were of the right kind, the merit was the white man’s and his alone; so also, if the manner of instruction was pleasing, the merit was the white man’s and his alone.  The colored man was a mere hearer.”  Secondly, “the separation of our church form the M.E. Church …has been beneficial to the man of color by giving him an independence of character which he could neither hope for nor attain unto, if he had remained as the ecclesiastical vassal of his white brethren…The circumstances have been such as to produce independent thought; this has resulted in independent action; this independent action has resulted in the extension of our ecclesiastical organization over nearly all of the States and also into Canada; this ecclesiastical organization has given us an independent hierarchy, and this independent hierarchy had made us feel and recognize our individuality and our heaven-created (humanity).”[x]

In 1796 Black Methodists in New York would have similar experiences as African Methodists in Philadelphia in 1786.  The result would be their separation from John Street Methodist Episcopal Church.  Eventually two separate Black Methodist congregations – the Asbury Church and the Zion Church - would be formed in New York that would lead to the eventual founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in 1820 with James Varick as the denomination’s first Bishop.  In its eventual formation into a denomination, two questions remained for the AME Zion church.  First, should they join the AME Church, which had been formed in Philadelphia, or second, should they return to the predominantly white Methodist Episcopal Church.  The leaders of the Zion movement would decide against both of these options, and eventually adopt a separate Book of Discipline (unlike the AME Church which used the Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church with minor adaptation). 

It is important to note that that AME and AME Zion Churches were established as Methodist Churches. The length of time (AME: 1786 to 1816; and AME Zion 1796 to 1820) between the institutional separation of some Black Methodists from the Methodist Episcopal Church, to the establishment of the denominations is worth noting.  It is apparent that it was is not the immediate inclination of African Methodists to start new Methodist denominations, but due to ongoing racist practices within Methodist Episcopal Churches, separation became necessary in the eyes of many blacks based upon their spiritual, cultural, social and political needs.  

William McClain points out that these new Methodist churches did not condemn the doctrines, nor did they repudiate the polity of traditional Methodism.  These were adopted by both African Methodist bodies with few changes and these black churches continue to stand as bulwarks against racism.[xi]

There was a consistent the pattern of formation of autonomous Black Methodist Christian communities.  The steps included: (1) Integration; (2) Segregation – in-house segregation came quickly; (3) Separate meeting times; (4) Separate meeting places; (5) Autonomous local organization; (6) Independent local churches; and (7) Regional and National Denominations (African Methodist Episcopal and African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches.

Black Baptists and the Move Toward National Autonomy

The struggles for identity among African Christians in America were not confined to the Methodists.  In the nineteenth century, black Baptists were also engaged in organizing and moving toward separate national structures.  Leroy Fitts in his study, The History of Black Baptists suggests that the discrepancy between the ideal and actual of white Baptist tradition and practices led several black Baptists to follow the example of Richard Allen and the African Methodist Episcopal Church to withdraw from white churches to establish independent churches.[xii] 

Fitts suggests that the struggle for national organization was focused as much on how to unite black Baptists across regional lines, and how to overcome the debate regarding congregational and regional autonomy, as it was based on dealing with the race question and slavery.  Still, within the context of racism and slavery within the church and society, the issue remained how best to deal with the great paradox of the accommodation to slavery on the part of white Baptists in North America.[xiii] 

Some of the first recorded black Baptists were in churches in Providence, RI and Boston in 1772.  From the founding of the first African Baptist congregation at Silver Bluff across the river from Augusta, Georgia in the colony of South Carolina around 1774, black Baptists had experienced some degree of political, social and spiritual autonomy.  This might – at least in part – explain why the first national Black Baptist denomination was not established until 1895. With the union of the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention (1880), the American National Baptist Convention (1886), and the National Baptist Educational Convention (1883), the National Baptist Convention, USA, was founded in 1895 with E.C. Morris of Helena, Arkansas was the first president.[xiv]

Ongoing Philosophical Debates – The Church, Slavery and Race

It is clear that with the forming of the Methodist Episcopal Church as a denomination at the end of the eighteenth century, slavery was at the forefront of the church’s conscience.  How could the church reconcile the holding of slaves with the message of universal grace that it so consistently espoused?

By the start of the nineteenth century, the institution of slavery and the Christian religion had managed to co-exist with minor conflict in the minds of many Christians.  On one hand, many persons of high standing within the church had found a way to justify the institution of slavery, while condemning the cruel treatment of slaves by masters.  One of these persons was the great evangelist George Whitefield, a contemporary of John Wesley, and considered by many to be of equal standing with Wesley in the broader evangelical Christian community.

Another great evangelical preacher, Samuel Davies, who in 1755, had more than 300 slaves under his pastoral care, supported Whitefield.  Davies found nothing about slavery that was inconsistent with the Christian religion.  “He pointed out that it was a part of the order of “Providence” that some should be masters and others servants.  Christianity did not destroy that relationship, but only regulated it.”[xv]

In 1756, Benjamin Fawsett, a contemporary of Davies, wrote “A Compassionate Address to the Christian Negroes in Virginia” in which he spoke of the “compatibility” of slavery and Christianity.  Fawsett said to the slaves:

“If it pleases God to favour you with good and gentle masters, your obedience to them will not only be easy and pleasant, but you ought to bless and praise God for them.” 

He went on to say,

 “If, on the other hand, your masters are forward and thereby render your obedience the more difficult, do not therefore cease to pray even for such Masters.”[xvi]

On the other side of the argument were persons such as New England puritan judge Samuel Sewell, who in 1700 wrote one of the first anti-slavery documents, The Selling of Joseph.  Sewell attacked all the prevailing arguments supporting slavery.  Citing one example, Sewell attacked the “positive good” theory, which maintained that slavery was good because it provided an excellent opportunity to make Christians of Africans.  To that theory, Sewell simply said that “evil must not be done, that good may come of it.”[xvii]

Another supporter of antislavery was John Wolman who, in the period of twenty-five years between 1743 and 1768, led the fight among his fellow Quakers.  Often depressed because he felt his appeal was ignored, eventually Wolman was successful in making Quakers the only denomination to rid itself of slavery prior to the Civil War.

At the Methodist Episcopal Conference of 1780 in Baltimore, the northern preachers went out of their way to require preachers who held slaves to free them: 

Does this conference acknowledge that slavery is contrary to the laws of God, man and nature, and hurtful to society, contrary to the dictates of conscience and pure religion, and doing that which we would not others should do to us or ours?  Do we pass our disapprobation on all our friends who keep slaves, and advise their freedom?[xviii]

At the Christmas Conference of 1784, the Methodist Episcopal Church passed its strongest legislation concerning slavery, calling it an “abomination” that must be done away with.  That position unified the Methodist position on slavery.  However, that position became more diverse and weaker each year after that.[xix]

In June of 1785, while still maintaining that “we hold in the deepest abhorrence the practice of slavery,” Methodists at a Baltimore meeting voted to “suspend the execution of the minutes on slavery until the deliberations of a future conference.” 

The rule on slavery was not called up at the next conference.  The 1785 General Conference also made changes in the Discipline that reflected further compromises.  The Discipline required that emancipation take place in accordance with the laws of the respective state; it called upon ministers to free their slaves “if it is practicable” and “conforming to the laws of the State in which he lies”; and it established that slaveholders who wanted to join a church must be counseled by a minister “upon the subject of slavery.” [xx]

Now there existed the conditional allowance for the holding of slaves based upon slave laws, and/or whether slavery was thought to be “practicable.”

The 1800 General Conference defeated a motion designed to prevent slaveholders from being admitted as members.  This Conference defeated a separate motion that would have set an age limit by which all children born in slavery would have to be set free.  The “Affectionate Address” was offered to local congregations as a way of placing responsibility for providing leadership and a voice regarding the slave question not upon the denomination, but again, upon local communities.[xxi]

Eventually antislavery agitation in the official minutes ceased.  The ideological justification for this retreat continued to be that “the Church must preach to the slave even if it could not emancipate him.”

Division: Denominational Struggle, Schism and the Civil War

At the turn of the nineteenth century, compromise on the slave issue continued to be the order of the day.  However, many persons within the Methodist Church refused to compromise.  One such person was James O’Kelly who warned, “slavery is a work of the flesh, assisted by the devil; a mystery of iniquity, that works like witchcraft, to darken your understanding, and burden your hearts.”  O’Kelly went on to say, “If there is such a being in existence as may be called God, who was the author of this tragedy (slavery); it must be one of those gods that ascend from the bottomless pit.  Such a god I defy in the name and strength of Jesus, and proclaim eternal war against him!”[xxii]

In spite of voices such as O’Kelly’s, the Methodist Episcopal Church continued to ignore the issue.  In 1836, the bishops warned against dragging the issue of slavery into the church.  In an Episcopal letter, they said: “the only safe, scriptural, and prudent way for us, both as ministers and people, to take is wholly to refrain from agitating the subject…” One of the signers of the statement was Bishop James O. Andrew.  He became the focal point of the controversy that would divide the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844.[xxiii]

Bishop Andrew became the owner of slaves when his first wife died.  To compound matters, his second wife was also a slaveholder.  Realizing that opponents of slavery would use this situation, Andrew offered to resign from the office of Bishop. 

The issue was larger than Bishop Andrew, however.  Persons against slavery felt that for a bishop in the church to be a slaveholder was the same as the church’s support of slavery.  They urged Bishop Andrew not to resign.  Persons for slavery felt that to yield on this point would overthrow the very principle of slavery.  The issue was settled when southern delegates met in Louisville, Kentucky, and formed the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1845.[xxiv]

From 1836 to 1845, the Methodist Episcopal Church was forced to review and renew its doctrine of (and practice of) grace, and particularly its understanding of sanctification.  Rarely did John Wesley or other early Methodists understand sanctification to mean freedom from all sin.  Yet, in response to the question of how Christians are to know if they are saved, John Wesley replied, “We know it by the witness and by the fruit of the Spirit … Indeed the witness is not always clear at first; neither is it afterwards always the same.” 

 Division: The Results – Ongoing Compromise and Dreams Deferred

The Methodist Church offers one of the clearest cases of the church’s general failure or inability to speak prophetically in word and action to the matter of slavery.  The split of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1845 would be a precursor to the actions of the nation, which in a few years would be engaged in a Civil War between the North and the South over the very same issue of slavery.  

Between 1844 and 1865, many southern Methodists used their missionary trust among the slaves to essentially maintain the status quo.  The termination of slavery as a result of the Civil War eliminated the need to maintain blacks within The Methodist Episcopal Church, South.  No longer did the church need to preserve slavery as a way of life.  At the close of the war, 207,000 Blacks left the ME Church, South.   They joined the two African Methodist denominations, and separate churches being organized by the Methodist Episcopal Church (North).  Black Methodist membership in the ME South church would eventually dwindle to below 78,000.[xxv]

The ongoing effort to rid the church of the race problem did not end for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South with its split with the North.  In April of 1866, the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South voted to provide for the organization of a separate church based on race.  The stated purpose of this action was “to save this remnant” of Black Methodists in the ME Church, South:

When two or more Annual Conferences shall be formed, let our bishops advise and assist them in organizing a separate General Conference jurisdiction for themselves, if they so desire and the bishops deem expedient, in accordance with the doctrine and discipline of our Church, and bearing the same relation to the General Conference as the Annual Conferences bear to each other.” [xxvi]

This resolution led to the creation of five black annual conferences.   By May 1870, three more black annual conferences had been added.  On December 15, 1870, a decision was made to “allow” black Methodists to split off and form another separate Methodist denomination.  The conferences met in Jackson, TN and formed the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (CME).    

William McClain asserts that the racism of the Church’s past continues to plague the United Methodist Church – the racial tragedy of Methodism’s past persists.  Compromise in efforts to sweep the problem of race under the church’s “rug” was evident again in 1939 with the Plan of Union between the Methodist Episcopal Church, the ME Church South and the Methodist Protestant Church.[xxvii] 

For Black Methodists, the results of the “Uniting Conference of 1939” in Kansas City meant establishment of a “denomination within a denomination – a church within a church.”   The creation of the all-black Central Jurisdiction was yet another effort of the Methodist Church to rid itself of this problem of race.  Black Methodists would be allowed yet again to elect their own Bishops and build their own institutions. 

 

Conclusion

It is clear that problems of racism, and the various compromises on these matters, continue to affect the Church today.   The observation of Dr. Benjamin E. May, the late president of Morehouse College remains true today, “Sunday morning remains the most segregated hour of the week.”  As we enter the new millennium, the problems of race and the color line continue to plague the church and our society.  

The question for the church and even for the nation is: will the color line and the problem of race dominate the next century and the next millennium?  How much longer will we allow racial chauvinism and color xenophobia to sap our energy, block our mission, and blunt our witness?[xxviii]

It is the hope that persons of faith share in Christ, that offer possibilities for renewal and reconciliation so that – given the church’s past - we might someday realize new unity and peace on earth.

---

[i] William B. McClain, Black People in the Methodist Church: Whither Thou Goest (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984), p. 12.

[ii] John Wesley, “Thoughts Upon Slavery,” quoted by William B. McClain in Black People in the Methodist Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984), p. 12.

[iii] McClain, p. 7.

[iv] Carter G. Woodson, The History of the Negro Church (Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1921), p. 5.

[v] John Wesley, Thoughts Upon Slavery (1774), recorded by Albert Outler in John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 85-86n.

[vi] E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Church in America (New York: Schocken Books, 1963), p.15.

[vii] Daniel A. Payne, History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Nashville: Publishing House of the A.M.E. Sunday School Union, 1891), p.72.

[viii] Related in Joseph Pilmore, Journal (Philadelphia, 1769, ed. 1969), pp. 135f.

[ix] Richard Allen, The Life Experiences and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1960),  pp. 24-25.

[x] Peter Paris, The Social Teaching of the Black Churches (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), p. 27.

[xi] McClain, p. 8.

[xii] Leroy Fitts, A History of Black Baptists (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1985), p. 14.

[xiii] Ibid, p. 43.

[xiv] Ibid, p. 44-106.

[xv] Lewis Baldwin and Horace Wallace, Touched By Grace: Black Methodism in the United Methodist Church (Nashville: Graded Press, 1986), p. 32.

[xvi] Ibid.

[xvii] Ibid, p. 33.

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Ibid.

[xxi] Ibid, p. 34.

[xxii] Ibid, p. 34.

[xxiii] Ibid.

[xxiv] Ibid.

[xxv] Ibid, p. 39.

[xxvi] Ibid.

[xxvii] William B. McClain, “When a Dream is Deferred: The Racial Tragedy of Methodism, The Circuit Rider (Nashville: UM Publishing, March/April 1999), p. 25.

[xxviii] Ibid, p. 26.