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The Negro and Methodist Union

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Paul A. Carter
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Extract

The schism in the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844, and her reunion in 1939, fall into a pattern remarkably similar to that of the great schism and reunion of the United States. The antislavery movement possessed religious overtones of the same evangelical temper characteristic of Methodism; and the centralized—constitutional, if you will— structure of Methodism exposed it to federal-versus-regional stresses similar to those that divided the nation. There is the significant difference that the Northern and Southern Methodists parted amicably, and did not become involved in partisan bitterness until after the adjournment of their last General Conference together, but otherwise the parallel is complete: general acceptance of the principle of emancipation by the founders both of church and nation; with the renascence of slavery, the recession of this view, marked by a series of compromises in General Conference as in the Congress; the rise, and unpopularity, of militant abolitionism; a dramatic revival of partisan concern, marked by an acute constitutional debate growing sectional irreconcilability: schism; conflict—and an eventual resolution of the breach in terms of the tacit recognition by the North of the principle of segregation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 1952 , pp. 55 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1952

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References

1 In the nation, a debate over the relative powers of the Federal Government and the States; in the church, over the relative powers of the General Conference and the Episcopacy.

2 Norwood, John N.. The Schism in the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1844: a Study of Slavery and Ecclesiastical Polltics (Alfred, N. Y.: Alfred University Press, 1923).Google Scholar

3 Moore, John M., The Long Road to Methodist Union (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1943).Google Scholar

4 Moore, op. cit., pp. 198f.

5 There had been no Negroes in the Church South since 1870; they seem to have requested separation themselves because the Black Codes of the period (1866) had made their position in the Southern Conference impossible to maintain.

6 Quoted in Moore, op. cit., p. 104.

7 Quoted in A Working Conference on the Union of American Methodism (NewYork and Cincinnati: Methodist Book Concern, 1916), p. 252.Google Scholar

8 In justice to Bishop Moore it should be added that he combined this program with the more constructive suggestion that the detached Negro Methodists be in their turn merged with other independent Negro Methodist bodies, partly in the interests of the elimination of Negro Methodist denominational rivalry. He pointed out how the Negro Baptist bad flourished following the union of their major groups into the National Baptist Convention. This overlooks, unfortunately, the great difference in temper between the Negroes of the mixed church and the African Methodists or the Colored Methodists. Moore. op. cit., p. 232.

9 Williams, R. M., in “Methodist Union and the Negro,” The Crisis: a Record of the Darker Races, 43, 5 (05, 1936), 158.Google Scholar

10 Charles Carrington, in Ibid., p. 149.

11 Daily Christian Advocate: General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, XXIII (Birmingham, 1938), p. 12.Google Scholar

12 Journal of the Thirty-Second Delegated General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, (New York and Cincinnati: the Methodist Book Concern, n. d.) p. 628.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., p. 602.

14 Ibid., pp. 658ff.

15 Ibid., p. 614.

16 Ibid., pp. 354f.

17 The Christian Century, en Undenominational Journal of Religion, LIII (January 1, 1936), 7.Google Scholar

18 A Working Conference on the Union of American Methodism, p. 128.

19 Pittsburgh, Courier, XXVIII, Saturday, 05 9th, 1936, p. 1Google Scholar. Other sample headlines: WHITES CONSIDER M. E. MERGER GOOD THING FOR THE NEGRO (Apr. 25th); HISTORY SHOWS MERGER WILL SPEED SEGREGATION IN SUBTLE MANNER (May 9th).

20 The Crisis, June, 1936, p. 177.Google Scholar

21 Quoted in press roundup in Ibid., July, 1936, p 211.

22 The Daily Christian Advocate: a Record of the General Conference of the M. E. Church, XXIII (Columbus O., 1936), p. 87.Google Scholar

23 As of January 3rd, 1951, when interviewed by the author, Zion's Herald, although no longer under his editorship, continues to hold the same position on unification—see, for example, the scathing editorial “Southern Comfort,” Zion's Herald, January 31, 1951, p. 103Google Scholar. The Alabama Ckristian Advocate replied in kind on February 27; the controversy of letters, at any rate, remains alive.

24 Daily Christian Advocate (M. E. Church), pp. 85f.

25 Ibid., loc. cit.

26 Ibid., p. 86.

27 Ibid., p. 87.

28 Ibid., p. 88.

29 Zion's Herald, CXIV, 10 (March 4th, 1936), 221.Google Scholar

30 General Conference vote from the Journal, p. 204. Negro vote from the Pittsburgh Courier, May 16th, second section, p. 10.

31 Christian Century, LIII, 21 (May 20, 1936), 741.Google Scholar

32 Daily Christian Advocate, (M. E. Church), p. 88.

33 Ibid., p. 311.

34 Rev. Lorenzo H. King, “Methodist Unification,” pamphlet, the National League Against Racial Segregation in the Church of Christ, no date.

35 The Methodist Protestant Church ratified the Plan of Union by a General Conference vote of 142 to 39 and an Annual Conference vote of 1,265 to 389. The issue here was not race but fundamentalism; the dissidents reorganized as the Bible Protestant Church.

36 See above, p. 59.

37 Daily Christian Advocate (M. E. Church, South), p. 29.

38 Ibid., p. 34.

39 Ibid., p. 39.

40 Whom we have already encountered in a rôle of protest against union with the North— see above, p. 56.

41 Daliy Christian Advocate (M. E. Church, South), p. 24.

42 There has been some discussion since the unified Church came into being of the possibility of holding a General Conference in a Southern city if special arrangements could be made with the local authorities (Hartman in interview).

43 Daily Christian Advocate (M. E. Church, South), p. 36.

44 Ibid., p. 30. Cf. Hartman: “It is possible to unite and pile up a great total of millions of members and yet lose our spiritual power.”

45 Ibid., p. 28.

46 Ibid., p. 42. Cf. the discussion in Crisis above, p. 58.

47 Ibid., p. 62.

48 An excellent and thorough treatment of the legal aspects of unification may be found in McElreath, Walter, Methodist Union in the Courts (New York and Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1946).Google Scholar

49 Yearbook of American Churches, 1949 (Lebanon, Pa.: published by the Sowera Printing Company), p 67.Google Scholar

50 Loescher, Frank S., The Protestant Churches and the Negro (New York: Association Press, 1948), p. 79.Google Scholar

51 Doctrines and Discipline of The Methodist Church, 1948 (Nashville and elsewhere: The Methodist Publishing House), Paragraph) 1726, p. 417.Google Scholar

52 Loescher, op. cit., p. 53; Hartman, interview.

53 The Crisis, June, 1936, p. 177.Google Scholar

54 Doctrines and Discipline of The Methodist Church, 1948, Par. 2026, p. 600.Google Scholar

55 May, Henry F., Protestant Churches and Industrial America, (New York; Harper and Brothers, 1949), esp. Part IV.Google Scholar

56 Hopkins, C. H., The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865–1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), chap. xvii.Google Scholar