The Colored Man in the Methodist Episcopal Church

The beginning of a work among these images of God cut in ebony is found in the following resolutions looking to the protection of the interests of the colored man by the civil government. It is nothing against a system that it was badly managed or fell into bad hands, or else our venerated Constitution is involved. That General Conference (1864) in its report on freedmen, said:

“(1) Resolved, That in the events which have thrown the thousands of freed people upon the benevolence of the humane and loyal people of the North, we recognize a providential call to the Christian public for contributions for their physical relief and mental and moral elevation and especially to the Church of Christ for the means of their evangelization.

“(2) Resolved, That the best interests of the freedmen of the country demand legislation that shall foster and protect this people, and we do hereby respectfully but earnestly urge upon Congress the importance of establishing, as soon as practicable, a Bureau of Freedmen’s Affairs, as contemplated in the bills now pending.”

What did this mean? If it meant anything, the Church meant to practice, at its earliest convenience, the doctrine it had been preaching for the last eighty years and more,—that the poor enslaved colored man should be properly trained to enjoy this life and that which is to come. It meant that just as soon as the alarms of war had sufficiently subsided and God opened the way, or signified that an entrance could be gained, to go at once up and down through the Southland carrying the gospel of free salvation to the downtrodden, poverty-stricken, and demoralized colored man. While but few, if any, believe the only mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the South was to the poor colored man, but few will doubt that, had it no other call to go into the South, that were enough. But few rational Christians believe the Church had no call into the South.

That the Church was needed there, no one will question when the condition of the colored man at that time is considered, as well as the relation the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, sustained to the colored man before and during the war, and that other significant fact that the colored man, as such, was, and for that matter is, peculiarly either a Baptist or a Methodist. From the beginning Methodism took hold of him, and he learned that, wherever found, a true Methodist was his friend. This in itself is sufficient explanation of the peculiarity referred to above. What was the condition of the colored man at the close of the war? When the black smoke of battle arose from a hundred battlefields the entire colored population—four and a half millions—came forth ignorant, superstitious, degraded, and poverty-stricken. The only beam of hope rested entirely on the education of the race. The emancipation was followed by the enfranchisement of these ignorant and superstitious people. The cry of opposition was heard vociferously in the South, while in some places in the North leading newspapers and men expressed doubts as to the wisdom of the thing. Who, under the then existing circumstances, doubted the earnestness of those who cried out as they saw the colored men clothed with freedom and franchise, yet slaves to superstition and ignorance:

Amid the religious training received from that part of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, that trained them at all, did not appear anything different from the system of slavery in vogue, save the promise of an eternal Sabbath. It is true a colored membership was reported by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; but this did not mean that the colored people within that Church were permitted to worship God in their own congregations, or that there were any colored pastors or class-leaders among that membership. If slavery had continued, the condition of the colored man religiously could never have become better. Just how—unless force of circumstances played a part in the drama—a brotherly feeling could have arisen or existed in the bosom of the poor colored man under that régime, we can not, for the life of us, surmise. But all that was ended with the war, and still there was but little, if any, change. The withdrawals at first opportunity of colored people from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, meant something. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was then, at any rate, unwilling to educate the colored man. In proof of the last assertion, we turn to page 148 of Dr. A. G. Haygood’s book, “Our Brother in Black.” The following, published in 1881 by this leading philosopher and clergyman in the Methodist Episocopal Church, South, is as significant as sound. He says:

“If the work of educating the Negroes of the South is ever to be carried on satisfactorily, if ever the best results are to be accomplished, then Southern white people must take part in the work of teaching Negro schools. There have been some very sad and hurtful mistakes in the relations assumed by most of us of the South to this whole matter, and especially in the fact that, with very rare exceptions, our people have steadfastly refused to teach Negro children, especially since they were made free, for love or money. They have recoiled from Negro schools as if there were personal degradation in teaching them. Perhaps the state of things that existed at the South for a full decade after the war, and for which Southern people were not alone responsible—a state of things that made it impracticable for Southern white men and women to teach Negro schools—was inevitable. But so it was; they could not do it without ‘losing caste.’ As I am trying to state facts honestly, I should add, the prevailing sentiment of the South would not even now look favorably upon such teachers; but I must say we are growing in sense as well as grace on this subject.”

Without further comment, the above corroborates the statement that the condition of the freedmen in the South directly after the war, temporally, spiritually, morally, and intellectually, was a loud enough call, and the mission of enough importance to warrant the action of the General Conference of 1864 in its action that virtually announced the intention of the Methodist Episcopal Church to go into the South. The fact that conferences had been opened in the South for colored people was sufficient proof.

THE CHURCH IN THE SOUTH.

When the General Conference of 1868 met in the city of Chicago, Ill., for its twentieth session, among other things it took up the subject of the relation of the Church to the colored man. There were present at that General Conference two hundred and forty-three delegates. When the General Conference of 1864 authorized the formation of mission conferences in the South for colored people, as a Church, it “had been practically excluded for twenty years” from Alabama, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, while a generation had grown up under the immediate care, as if were, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. It is true that the Methodist Episcopal Church had held on in some sort in the city of Baltimore—this being her strongest fort—while through some parts of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri it had a foothold. Our Church in 1863, in the last-named States, claimed 332 effective preachers, 84,673 members, and 919 church-buildings. By the next year, when the General Conference of 1864 met for its nineteenth session in Philadelphia, it claimed in the above-named five slave States 309 effective preachers, 87,072 members—15,898 being colored—and 982 churches, being an increase in these five States of 2,399 members, not including probationers, and a decrease of 23 effective preachers, and an increase of 63 church-buildings. Thus it may be seen that a wise Providence proclaimed the mission of our Church; and there was then, as we see now, no mistake made on the part of our Church when it heard and obeyed the commission in this case, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” The crowning act touching the subject we discuss was given by the General Conference of 1864 in these words: “We are not aware of any legal obstacle to the reception of colored preachers into our annual conferences.” Touching the work done by the last General Conference, and showing somewhat of the results attained, the Bishops’ Address to the Twentieth General Conference contained the following:

“They [the Delaware and Washington colored conferences] now contain one hundred and one ministers and twenty-six thousand four hundred and eighty-seven members and probationers. The creation of these conferences was hailed by our colored ministers and membership with great joy, and has, we believe, been productive of much good. The ministers are becoming familiar with the mode of conducting business, and many of them are rapidly improving. At their recent sessions they elected representatives to this body according to the form of the Discipline for electing delegates. Whether these representatives should be admitted, you alone have authority to decide. In our judgment, the success of this work demands all the encouragement which the General Conference can properly give.”

The regular and natural succession of action touching the relation of the Church toward the colored man seems to declare, to our mind at any rate, that it has the divine sanction. The submission of the above resolution brought at once before the General Conference of 1868 the question of the advisability of admitting—not colored testimony, or testimony from people of color—but colored delegates to equality in the General Conference of one of the largest denominations in the world. The Christ-like spirit of the bishops in presenting the matter, supported by their modest indorsement of it, was manly. They said: “In our judgment, the success of this work demands all the encouragement which the General Conference can properly give.” It may have been that it was not thoroughly settled in the minds of all the delegates of that General Conference. The result, however, was satisfactory, in that James Davis and Benjamin Brown were seated as delegates, and thereby the equal rights of our colored members were not only recognized, but everything looking to their elevation, done by the Church, was stamped with approval. The adjournment of that General Conference did not take place until provision for other conferences for our people, at their own request, was made. The year preceding that General Conference a colored presiding elder had been appointed over a district in Kentucky; nine mission conferences had been organized in our Southern field; colored preachers had been received into the Kentucky and Missouri Annual Conferences. Notwithstanding this, wherever a mission conference was organized a new inspiration seemed to overshadow the entire work. The provision above referred to was as follows:

“‘Resolved, 1. That the bishops who may preside in the Kentucky Conference during the next four years, are hereby authorized to organize the colored ministers within the bounds of said conference into a separate annual conference, if said ministers request it; and if, in the judgment of the bishops, the interest of the work requires it, to be called the —— Conference: Provided, that nothing in this resolution shall be construed to impair the existing constitutional rights of our colored members on the one hand, or, on the other, to forbid the transfer of white ministers to said conference, whenever it may be deemed desirable or expedient.’

“So soon as this resolution was taken up, a motion was made to lay it upon the table, which was lost.

“A motion to amend by inserting, ‘Provided, that colored members may remain in the Kentucky Conference,’ was laid on the table.

“A motion to strike out the words ‘the interest of the work,’ and insert ‘the unity and success of the Church,’ was laid on the table; and the resolution was adopted as matured by the Committee on Boundaries.”

The motions subsequently made show at once the animus of the white brethren of that conference at that time. While many were anxious to have restrictions, others objected to it in toto. But, as in the General Conference, so it has been in nearly every annual conference, that a wide difference of opinion on the color-line question existed. It is well that it was so.

Following hard upon the above action in the interest of the colored man, this General Conference paid special attention to its work so grandly begun in the sunny South. While the discussion of the status of the colored delegates elicited much animation, the restrictions were removed from the conferences of the Church in the South, irrespective of color, by a vote of 197 to 15. All our benevolent societies were instructed to redouble their diligence to meet the exigencies of the case; our Book Concerns were to publish one or more papers adapted to the new order of things within the South; transfers, if needed, were to be sent into this fruitful field; training-schools and theological schools were ordered for the special training of the colored people of the South within our Church and without, if accepted. The bishops were requested to give the colored work special episcopal supervision. As a finale of the action of that General Conference, an “enabling act” for the establishment of the third annual conference among our colored members was passed, with the provision that in every case the rights of every preacher were to be fully and carefully, as well as impartially, considered. The white preachers and teachers who were sent by the Church into the South to carry out this plan of work were, in too many cases, not only subjected to insult, but cruel scourgings and false imprisonment, as if ostracism was not cruel and wicked punishment enough. But many of those thus treated were men and women of God, and therefore consistent but firm and true heroes and heroines.

Dr. Walden (now bishop), in an address, Aug. 13, 1883, at the anniversary of the Freedmen’s Aid Society, spoke of this work. The following needs no comment, as he speaks of the period in our work in the South at which we now are, and we insert it here as a retrospect:

“Two courses were open—one to delay employing colored preachers until they could be educated, the other to put these untutored men to work at once. No people ever needed the gospel more than did the freed people. Standing in the midst of new relations, the possessors of a new-found freedom for which they had never been trained, they needed both the restraints and the inspiration of the gospel. The Wesleyan prescience of our Church recognized this need, and at the same time the fact that these unlearned preachers, if divinely called, could so tell the story of the Cross as to benefit their people. The lives of many of these men had been an unbroken period of slave-toil; but the sequel proves that they knew enough of the saving power of Christ and the fullness of his love to instruct their hearers in the way of life, and we now see that their relation to this work was not unlike to that of the first of Wesley’s lay preachers to their work among their own classes in England.

“With this illustration before us of the general principle that a people may and must be instrumental in their own evangelization, let us study some of the results of our itinerant system among the freedmen—of our itinerancy and its auxiliary agencies. All understand our itinerancy to be the general superintendency and the pastorate; by auxiliary agencies I mean our sub-pastorate, in which the class-leaders stand, our Church literature, and our Sunday-schools. The mere suggestion of the fact leads you at once to see that the real function of each and all of these is to re-enforce both the general and the particular work committed to the itinerancy or three fold pastorate—the bishops, presiding elders, and pastors of our Church. The very fact of taking this comprehensive system to a people who had no system, of beginning at once to build them up into it, could not be without producing some marked and favorable results. I mention the more obvious of these:

“(a) The freedmen who were recognized as having a call to preach could do little more than exhort, but they were put into the pastoral relation; a great Church committed to them a new and solemn trust, and laid upon them grave responsibilities; they were under the leadership of the superintendents of the missions—good, prudent, self-sacrificing men—men who in their devotion to duty represented the highest life of their Church. Such things could not be without affecting these untutored preachers. Crude as all they did may have been at first, their pastorate benefited the people they served, and was to themselves a means of training, of real and rapid progress; and there are still in the effective ranks of the conferences which came from such beginnings many pious, able, and successful preachers, who were thus transferred from the cotton and rice fields and sugar plantations to, and trained in, our itinerant ministry.

“(b) As the work progressed, these colored men acquired by observation and experience, and such study as was possible with them, a wider knowledge of their work; and in due course the bishops began to appoint some of them as presiding elders, investing them with all the honors and responsibilities of this important office. It should also be stated that the Church that acted thus through her bishops was constantly displaying to them an encouraging interest in them by furnishing means to aid in the support of their Church work.

“(c) In the annual conferences they were and are brought under the presidency of our bishops—the most efficient presiding officers in this or any other country, a fact that became most obvious at the Ecumenical Methodist Conference. The very methods of business in our annual conferences, and the promptness with which it is dispatched under this presidency, have had such influence on the older conferences that the advantages of like administration to the colored conferences are obvious. The influence of the conference session ought also to be named, as these annual meetings of the preachers have all along affected most favorably the character of Methodism. These colored preachers have been coming together, as do their brethren in older conferences, to report and review the year’s work, to pass upon the character of each one, to consider the various connectional and benevolent causes, to attend to all the business that is usually presented, and to enjoy the social privileges and religious services to which all our preachers look forward with deep interest. Every such session tends to make them wiser and more effective in their work.

“(d) Under our system of study for probationers and deacons, the colored preachers are steadily improving, and their conferences are becoming more careful as to the qualifications of those who are received into the ministry. I well remember the class taken on trial in the South Carolina Conference in 1867; near a dozen of them were then uncouth and ill-clad men, who seemed to have come direct from the plantations; little or nothing was said as to even elementary education; they were taken as they were, and sent out to do work for the Master, who ordaineth strength even out of the mouths of babes. But it is radically different in that conference now; at its session, last January, I heard the report of examinations, and learned thereby that the standard of qualification is applied more rigidly each succeeding year. I rejoiced in this as a fact common to all these colored conferences; and yet I also rejoiced to remember that when the exigencies required it, our Church dared to send out the earlier members of that and other conferences, illiterate as they were, to the work of winning souls.

“(e) These early colored preachers, coming as they did from a condition in which there was no home, in the better sense of that word, soon came to know something of the importance that our Church attaches to Sunday-schools. They were organized, often in the crudest form; but they have been improved, and now nearly two thousand are reported in the twelve conferences. This work is important there, not only because it is in behalf of the youth and children, but also because there has been, and is, a relatively great demand for such work in the South. It is a fact that the ratio between the number of Sunday-school scholars and Church members of any and all Protestant denominations in the South is far below what it is in the North. The schools organized in our “new Southern field” have been aided with papers published by our Church, and especially adapted to the condition of the scholars. All the teachers employed by the Freedmen’s Aid Society have done good and faithful service in these Sunday-schools. Through them the Church has been, and is, furnishing moral and mental instruction to about one hundred thousand of the youth and children, that will be of incalculable value to them, and through them to the Church and the nation.

“(f) The Methodist newspapers published in the South—within this new field—by our Church, in order to furnish a literature specially adapted to the condition and needs of the people, have been potent for good. We may not be able to estimate the force of the fact that papers have been provided for them which they in a special sense regarded as their own. It was no mean fact with them that a part of the capital of the Book Concern was being employed to publish papers which, by their very location, must chiefly be for them. And the presence of a depository of books at Atlanta tended to impress the lesson, taught in so many ways, that our Church was ready and anxious to help them in their every effort to reach the plane of a higher and better life.

“Other facts might be named to show how every thing that is forceful in our itinerancy and its auxiliary agencies has been constantly, wisely, and effectively employed to reach, evangelize and elevate these colored people. It has been more than a formal recognition of Christian equality; it has been the continuous presence and power of educational relations as well as educational agencies among them. The Church, during these years, has recognized the divine call into her ministry of more than a thousand of these men, thereby reposing a confidence and conferring an honor that has been a special inspiration to them, and, in good degree, to their people. Ministerial position and pastoral duties, prerogatives and responsibilities, shared in common with the largest corps of preachers in our country, have been made realities to them. When that whole people shall come to the plane and glory of a true manhood and womanhood, it will be known that the impartial planting of our system of itinerancy among them was one of the early and potent means of their elevation.

“3. The aim of the Methodist Episcopal Church is to enlist every local society in the support of her benevolent enterprises. She would give to every person converted at her altars the opportunity to do work for the Master. For this reason, all her pastors are charged with the duty of presenting to their congregations the claims of the Missionary, Church Extension, Freedmen’s Aid, Sunday-school, Tract, and Educational causes, and of affording to all the opportunity to contribute thereto according to their ability. Into each sphere of work represented by these causes, the Church has been led by a marked providence, and her efforts in them have been attended with her Lord’s signal favor. The presentation of these causes in the relation they hold to the world’s evangelization, the end for which Christ established his Church, teaches with special emphasis the magnitude of her mission, and indicates the certainty of ultimate success. How the faith of God’s people has enlarged under the inspiration of this widening work! These causes have been presented more or less fully to our new societies in the South.

“The colored preachers and people have taken a ready interest in the Missionary Society because it carried the gospel to them. The preachers were not learned, and the people were poor; but what if the earlier missionary sermons were crude presentations of a world-wide cause? what if but a few pennies were collected in a charge? the people were thus coming into contact with the genius of the gospel, and beginning to have some part in the movement that is conquering the world. Among the many wise things done during the administration of the revered Dr. Durbin as missionary secretary, the one of all others that has affected and will continue to affect our Church the most, was providing for the organization of the Sunday-schools into missionary societies; wise and potential, because thus, in a practical and methodical way, the idea of the world’s evangelization is fixed in the thought of the youth and children, by far the greatest idea touching the human race that can be given to the human mind.

“The colored preachers have been learning this fundamental idea of the missionary cause and the purpose of each of the other benevolences of our Church, and in their own way it may be presenting them to their people; but the result has been a measure of enlightenment in these directions, an increasing knowledge of the far-reaching plans of the Church to which they belong, a clearer consciousness that by being brought within her pale they have part in one of the great aggressive Christian movements of the age. Standing as they do in the dawn of a new day, this conscious identification with all the benevolent plans of the Church that brought them the gospel can not do less than enlarge their views of Christian duty, and inspire them with zeal for and devotion to causes grand in themselves and glorious in their results.

“4. The preaching that is distinctively Methodistic has had its influence in this as in other fields. While we hold the fundamental truths of Christianity in common with other evangelical Churches—points of agreement, each of which is infinitely more important than all the questions in regard to which there is a difference—all do not place the same emphasis we do on some of these truths. Our preachers in the ‘new Southern field,’ as elsewhere, have given special prominence to the willingness and power of Jesus to save every one who comes to him; the universal call and the gracious ability of every one to come; the radical character of the change wrought in conversion—a new life through divine power; the adoption into the divine family, and that adoption clearly, satisfactorily attested through the witness of the Holy Spirit; the complete cleansing power of the blood of Christ, and the keeping power of the promised grace. Need I say in this presence that the emphasis given to these Scriptural doctrines by our ministry has molded the experience of Methodists in every society, and made the meeting for testimony, whether love-feast or class-meeting, a part of our Church life? The preaching of these doctrines in the earnest Methodist way among the colored people, the building up of a Church among them under the molding and inspiring effect of such truths, the leading of the members up to a clear, well-defined religious experience, is giving them a Church life, the advantage of which is best known from what Methodism has done for other peoples. Already the advance of Christian morality, the growing habits of industry and economy, the increasing spirit of benevolence and liberality, the new home-life where home was so recently unknown—the fruits of an evangelical gospel faithfully preached—show what we have done, and are the promise and pledge of a pure, strong, and active Church in every part of our new Southern field in the near future.”