African Americans and United Methodism

The grand plea [in favor of slaves] is, 'They are authorized by law.' But can law, human law, change the nature of things? Can it turn darkness into light, or evil into good? By no means. Notwithstanding ten thousand laws, right is right, and wrong is wrong still. There must still remain an essential difference between justice and injustice, cruelty and mercy. So that I still ask, Who can reconcile this treatment of the Negroes, first and last, with either mercy or justice?

-- John Wesley, in Thoughts upon Slavery, 1774

Racism plagues and cripples our growth in Christ, inasmuch as it is antithetical to the Gospel itself Therefore, we recognize racism as sin and affirm the ultimate and temporal worth of all persons.

-- From The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church, 2004.

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African Americans found liberation in Methodism

by Donald W. Haynes

John Wesley is credited as the first man of influence to write a published work on the evils of slavery, Thoughts upon Slavery, written in 1774 and circulated widely. He called slavery that execrable sum of all villainies. When told that slavery was authorized by law, his blistering response was, Notwithstanding ten thousand laws, right is right, and wrong is wrong still. His last letter before he died was to William Wilberforce, urging the young member of Parliament to press for the outlawing of slavery in Great Britain and to work toward outlawing it in America. Wesley's unlettered /lay converts were drilled on Wesley's conviction that there is no holiness without social holiness. Consequently, when Joseph Pilmore reported on his Philadelphia preaching, he reported, The Lord is making bare his arm and many of the poor Affricans(sic) are obedient to the faith. Thomas Rankin w as preaching in Virginia and wrote of a congregation of 500, hundreds of whom were Negroes who came forward with tears streaming down their faces. Philip Bruce wrote to Bishop Coke from the Chesapeake, the greatest work in many parts of this circuit is among the blacks.

Perhaps the most effective preacher in the 1780s was an African American, Harry Hoosier. By 1800 black preachers were being ordained. By 1815, more than 20 percent of all Methodists in America were Black. More African Americans became Christian in ten years of Methodism than in the previous century of Congregational and Anglican ministry.

Our heritage is clear as crystal; Methodism was God's saving agent to the slaves and freed people of color. Then our fathers ate sour grapes and our teeth have been set on edge.

Freedman's Aid Society

Though southern Methodism allowed culture to triumph over Christ in their refusal to condemn the institution of slavery, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South did have 172 missionaries on the slave plantations at the onset of the Civil War. Thanks to their labors, Methodism was the major teacher of literacy and seven of ten African Americans who had been baptized by 1860 were members of a Methodist Church!

In 1866, the Methodist Episcopal Church set up the Freedman's Aid Society which raised more than $1 million in 14 years and established 18 colleges and seminaries in the old Confederacy. By 1899 that number had grown to 29 colleges for educating former slave children. In 1866, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South granted the colored brethren their request for their own church and the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church was born [later to become today's Christian Methodist Episcopal Church], receiving all their church and parsonage properties and a pledge to be recipient of mission money every year, which they were.

In 1880 when Atticus Haygood was president of Emory College in Oxford, Ga., his Thanksgiving sermon to the student body included the words, There are some unpleasant things that need to be said; they are on my conscience. We (in the South) think of ourselves better than the facts of history and the present state of our progress justify. Had we been less provincial there would have been no war in 1861. He continued, Does anyone say to me, 'You have got new light; you have changed the opinions you had twenty years ago as a Confederate chaplain?' I answer humbly but gratefully, 'I have got new light; the light is breaking; the shadows will flee.' In 1881, he published a book that was a rousing call for brotherhood - Our Brother in Black, His Freedom and His Future.

What was the Methodist Episcopal Church, South's response? They elected him a bishop --- the first time he refused and four years later they elected him again!

The dark cloud of racism began to hide the sun from the eyes of American Christians when the first black child of God was brought to these shores in chains.

The cost of the racist sins of our fathers has been enormous to both races. As we continue to hear Rachel's children weeping, we must ask, How long, O Lord, how long?

'Light is dawning'

In 1995 as a district superintendent, I asked the Cabinet and Bishop to appoint an African American to a predominantly white church that was no longer serving its surrounding community. Plaza UMC today is the largest United Methodist congregation of African American culture in the city of Charlotte, N.C..

Let us be clear; there is no place for racism among those who would have the mind in us that is in Christ Jesus When we are in culture, we can justify racism with a thousand justifications. But when we are in Christ, we know in our heart of hearts that God has only one family of children and none of them have descriptive adjectives to describe or define them. Praise the Lord, we can echo anew the words of Bishop Atticus Haygood that racial prejudice is wrong, and that the light is dawning.

-- From the United Methodist Reporter, February 4, 2005.