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The Protestant Episcopal Church, Black Nationalists, and Expansion of the West African Missionary Field, 1851–1871

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

J. R. Oldfield
J. R. Oldfield
Affiliation:
Mr. Oldfield is lecturer in history in the University of Southampton, Southampton, England.
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Extract

One of the most boldly conceived assaults on benighted Africa during the nineteenth century was that undertaken by mainline Protestant denominations in the United States. With the brash confidence characteristic of the age, hundreds of American missionaries were dispatched from New York and Baltimore to convert the heathen tribes of Africa and wrest a continent from ruin. If the experience of the Protestant Episcopal church is at all typical, however, these efforts not infrequently aroused suspicion and open hostility. In fact, Episcopal penetration of Liberia in the second half of the second century was remarkable for a long and bitter contest with black nationalists who were intent on using the church as a vehicle for their own personal and racial ambitions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , March 1988 , pp. 31 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1988

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References

1. Payne, John, A Full Description of the African Field of the Protestant Episcopal Church, with statistics from all the mission stations (New York, 1866), p. 11.Google Scholar

2. The standard history of Maryland Colony is Cambell's, PenelopeMaryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society (Urbana, 1971).Google Scholar For a more recent study of American settler society in West Africa, see Shick, Tom W., Behold the Promised Land: A History of Afro-American Settler Society in Nineteenth-Century Liberia (Baltimore, 1980).Google Scholar

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4. John Payne to P. P. Irving, 4 June 1850, Papers of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church (DFMS), incoming Liberian correspondence (ILC), Archives and Historical Collections, Episcopal Church, Austin, Texas. Irving was Secretary of the Foreign Committee of the Board of Missions, the controlling body of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.

5. For Stokes, see Bragg, George F., The History of the Afro-American Group of the Episcopal Church (Baltimore, 1922), pp. 103, 106, 109.Google Scholar

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8. For Crummell, see Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, “Civilising Missionary: A Study of Alexander Crummell,” Journal of Negro History 60 (1975): 230–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Minute Book of the Foreign Committee of the Board of Missions of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (Foreign Committee Minute Book), 23 November and 28 December 1852, DFMS; Crummell to Irving, 24 June 1853, DFMS/ILC.

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13. Crummell to Irving, 11 November and 27 November 1854, DFMS/ILC; Payne to Crummell, 8 December 1854, Crummell Papers, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.

14. Crummell was full of this idea while he was in England. See his Hope for Africa: A Sermon on behalf of the Ladies Negro Education Society (London, 1853), p. 22.Google Scholar

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24. Payne to Irving, 8 May 1854, and 29 January 1856, DFMS/ILC. For Stokes's connection with the Scottish Episcopal church, see Thomas March Clark to Denison, 4 June 1855, Clark to Bishop Trower, 4 July 1855, and Payne to Denison, 15 May 1856, DFMS/ILC.

25. Payne to Denison, 8 May 1856, DFMS/ILC.

26. Crummell to Irving, 26 August 1854, and Crummell to Denison, March 1857, DFMS/ILC.

27. Stokes to Payne, 13 May 1856, DFMS/ILC.

28. Payne to Denison, 15 May and 21 October 1856, DFMS/ILC. Despite representations, Stokes had never been formally admitted to the Scottish Episcopal church. The question of the episcopate seems to have been a figment of his imagination.

29. Payne to Denison, 21 October 1856, DFMS/ILC.

30. Payne to Denison, 12 January and 23 April 1857, DFMS/ILC.

31. Payne to Denison, 17 February 1857, and Bishop Vail to Denison, 6 October 1857, DFMS/ILC. Stokes was charged with officiating in Payne's jurisdiction without special dispensation to do so.

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34. Spirit of Missions 24 (11. and 12. 1859): 611.Google Scholar

35. Journal of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1862), Appendix E, p. 245.Google Scholar Trinity Church was finally consecrated by Bishop Payne on 22 February 1863. See Payne to Denison, 10 March 1863, DFMS/ILC.

36. Crummell had spent the intervening period, 1858 to 1861, as Principal of Mount Vaughan High School. For Russell, see Journal of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1853), Appendix E, p. 303.Google Scholar

37. National Archives, Washington, D.C., pamphlet accompanying Microcopy 160, Records of the Office of the Secretary of Interior Relating to the Suppression of the Slave Trade and Negro Colonization, 1854–1872, pp. 1–3.

38. See Crummell to William Coppinger, 5 May and 5 September 1864, American Colonization Society Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

39. Foreign Committee Minute Book, 5 November 1861, DFMS.

40. DFMS/ILC, Box 29, Letter of the Liberian Clergy to the Rt. Rev. G.T. Bedell, D.D., Rt.Rev. G. Burgess, D.D., Rev. L.P. W. Balch, D.D., Rev. J.L. Clark, D.D., Rev. George Leeds, D.D., Rev. R.A. Hallam, D.D., J.J. Brandigree, and J.J. Conyngham Esqrs. Special Committee on Missions for 1863 (Monrovia, 1864), pp. 4–5,Google Scholar hereafter cited as Letter of the Liberian Clergy.

41. DFMS/ILC, Box 27, Journal of the Proceedings of the Clergy and Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Liberia, West Africa: at a General Council for Organization held in Trinity Church, in the City of Monrovia: from February 18th to February 23rd, inclusive, 1863 (Monrovia, 1863), pp. 3–4Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Journal of the General Council). Very little seems to be known about either Wilcox or Thompson, but for black missionaries in general, see Williams, Walter L., Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa, 1877–1900 (Wisconsin, 1982).Google Scholar

42. Ibid., pp. 15–18.

43. Journal of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1859), Appendix E, p. 345.Google Scholar

44. Spirit of Missions 27 (04 1862): 246–251;Google Scholar Payne to Denison, 31 March 1863, DFMS/ILC. Significantly, one of the first acts of the Diocese of Monrovia was to speak out against the facility of divorce in Liberia. Crummell also wrote a pamphlet on the subject. See Crummell to William Coppinger, 26 March and 15 April 1864, American Colonization Society Papers.

45. Payne to Denison, 10 March and 31 March 1863, and Payne to Bishops Burgess and Bedell, 22 March 1865, DFMS/ILC.

46. Journal of the General Council, p. 4.

47. Garretson Gibson to A. F. Russell, 27 June 1863, DFMS/ILC.

48. Russell to Gibson, 28 June 1863, DFMS/ILC.

49. Payne to Denison, 31 March 1863, DFMS/ILC.

50. DFMS/ILC, Box 27, “Resolutions adopted by the Convocation held at Rocktown, Maryland County, April 11, 1863.”

51. Edwin Marriner to Crummell, 16 June 1863, Rev. Canon Browne to Crummell, 20 July 1863, Francis Procter to Crummell, 20 July 1863, and Philip Freeman to Crummell, 20 July 1863, Papers, Crummell. Procter published An Elementary History of the Book of Common Prayer in 1862;Google ScholarFreeman, was the author of The Principles of Divine Service (1855–1862).Google Scholar

52. Letter of the Liberian Clergy, p. 6. The Liberian clergy do not appear to have made any personal contact with either the Foreign Committee or the Board of Missions until 1864.

53. Payne to Denison, 31 March 1863, DFMS/ILC.

54. Spirit of Missions 28 (11 and 12 1863): 265–266.Google Scholar

55. See, for example, Crummell to Coppinger, 5 August 1864, American Colonization Papers.

56. Letter of the Liberian Clergy, pp. 3–5.

57. Ibid., p. 2.

58. Payne to Denison, 2 February and 5 September 1864, DFMS/ILC.

59. Gibson to Payne, 4 June 1864, and Payne to Denison, 11 October 1864, DFMS/ILC.

60. Payne to Denison, 5 September and 11 October 1864, DFMS/ILC.

61. Payne to Denison, 6 December 1864, DFMS/ILC.

62. Crummell to Coppinger, 5 October 1865, American Colonization Society Papers.

63. Journal of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1865), pp. 99–100, 104–105, 214.Google Scholar

64. See, for instance, Foreign Committee Minute Book, 18 December 1865, DFMS.

65. Russell to Payne, 5 February 1866, DFMS/ILC.

66. Colonial Church Chronicle (11 1866): 461–462.Google Scholar

67. Russell to Payne, 5 February 1866, DFMS/ILC.

68. Ibid.

69. Gibson to Denison, 25 April 1866, and Payne to Denison, 11 June 1866, DFMS/ILC; Report of Bishop Payne to the Board of Missions, Proceedings of the Board of Missions (1866), Appendix F, pp. 76–82.Google Scholar

70. For racial politics in Liberia, see Reade, Winwood, The African Sketch Book (London, 1872), p. 257.Google Scholar

71. Spirit of Missions 32 (07 1867): 542–543;Google Scholar Foreign Committee Minute Book, 9 November 1868, DFMS.

72. Payne to Denison, February 1869 and June 1870, DFMS/ILC.

73. Proceedings of the Board of Missions (1869), pp. 7–8;Google Scholar W. H. Hare to Payne, 10 February 1871, DFMS: Hare Letter Book.

74. Journal of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1871), Appendix 3, p. 523.Google Scholar

75. Coppinger to Crummell, 5 May and 8 December 1871, American Colonization Society Papers.

76. Journal of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1871), pp. 210–211, 227, 229, 231.Google Scholar Crummell was a serious contender at a second election in 1872, but the appointment finally went to John Auer, a white missionary in Liberia. See Bishop Whittingham to John Kerfoot, 27 May 1872, Maryland Diocesan Archives, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore; Our Liberian Episcopate (New York, 1906), p. 4.Google Scholar

77. The Spirit of Missions 37 (08 1872): 486.Google Scholar