THE COLOR-LINE.
Opinions Gathered from the Press.
CASTE PREJUDICE.
REV. W. H. WARD, D.D.—ADDRESS AT CLEVELAND.
Christianity in India has utterly succumbed to caste once. The missionaries of the last century, after beginning nobly, yielded and allowed caste to rule in the Christian church. “I have carefully avoided all coercive measures,” said Schwarz, in 1787. Bishop Heber allowed caste. Not till 1833 did the English Church missionaries decide, through the voice of the noble Bishop Wilson, in a peremptory pastorate letter of July 5, 1833, that no mercy should be shown to the accursed thing. “The distinctions of caste,” said he, “must be abandoned decidedly, immediately, finally. Birth condemns no class of men, from generation to generation, to inevitable contempt, debasement and servitude. The enforcement of this order broke up churches. A Sudra would sooner give up his Christianity than take the communion with a pariah. The war has been long, and is not yet fully concluded. An American Lutheran missionary lately felicitated himself that now the two castes have been prevailed upon to take the Lord’s Supper together. In a London missionary station some ten years ago a few pariahs were converted, whereupon the Shanars, at their own cost, built a chapel for their low caste brethren, lest they should have to worship with them. A few years ago a missionary led several low caste Christians into a chapel door, whereupon the high caste occupants hastily scrambled out of the window. * * *
Do I say that caste is broken down? Not quite. Even yet it lingers: and where it lingers chiefest is, it shames me to say, in education and Christianity. To the infinite disgrace of the church, the chief denominations of the South divide on the caste line. The white Christians and churches are put purposely into one denomination, and the colored into another. We have white Methodists and black Methodists; white Baptist associations and black Baptist associations. What denomination is there but the Roman Catholic, the Episcopalian and the Congregational, in which whites and blacks can stand equally before God? In the South both whites and blacks accept this condition, for the most part, as right. It does not occur to them to protest against it. Even the negroes accept the humiliation to which they have become accustomed. No voice of protest is raised. Whites and blacks alike seem satisfied that God’s church united above should be divided below. Why lingers Jerubbaal amid the wheat-threshings of Manasseh? Why comes no Gideon forth, inspired with the zeal of the Lord, to cut down this horrible idol of his father’s house? * * * *
When the colored race were slaves, the color marked the social distinction of service. That is all past now. They may be servants still. Then the social distinction still holds. We cannot break up these right social distinctions. We cannot prevent the existence of classes in society. We choose those of our own sort, with whom we are intimate. But in the name of God, in the name of the hopes and rights of the poor, in the memory of the accursed experience of the ages of serfdom, in the East and in the West, we demand that neither law nor recognized custom shall impose on social conditions the Satanic burdens, the hopeless, crushing weight of impassable caste. It is accursed in the hall of legislation, accursed at the ballot-box, accursed in the court-room, accursed in the church-pews, accursed at the Lord’s table—most accursed when it sets an impassable gulf between high and low, white and black in the school-room.
A QUESTION OF CASTE.
BY REV. HORACE BUMSTEAD, D.D.
It should be remembered that this prejudice in the South is more one of caste than it is one of race. It is in the former relation of master and slave that the distinction between the races has its strongest roots. The personal antipathy on the ground of feature and color—the race prejudice pure and simple—is not so great in the South as at the North, where fewer colored people are met with. I have heard a Congregational pastor, in one of the most enlightened communities of Massachusetts, declare that he did not think he could endure the presence of a colored cook in his kitchen. One of the best Northern teachers in the South confesses that when he first met with colored people in the horse-cars of Washington he would sit as far from them as possible. But Southern men and women who were nursed at the breasts of slave mammies in infancy, have played familiarly with colored children in childhood, and have been served all their lives by the darker-skinned race in a multitude of ways and in the closest personal proximity, can feel little, if any, of this personal antipathy. It is the distinction between a serving class and a ruling class which chiefly causes the separation here. But as the colored people acquire intelligence and property, and the white people learn more of the dignity of labor, this distinction will cease to coincide with the color line.
But it is said that white students will not now attend school with the colored, and that we must take the facts as they are. But the facts are not all on one side. For years the students of Berea College, in Kentucky, have been about equally divided between the two races, and have studied harmoniously together. And why? Simply because, for a large surrounding region, Berea College has offered the best and cheapest opportunity for an education. Let all the institutions of the American Missionary Association be amply endowed and equipped, so that they can offer to the poor whites more and better than can be obtained anywhere else, and the wasteful and needless expedient of missionary color-line schools and colleges will no longer be thought of.
The Congregationalist.
NOT ON ACCOUNT OF COLOR.
EDITORIAL IN INDEPENDENT.
Professor James M. Gregory, of the Howard University, made some capital remarks on the “color line” at the recent banquet in Washington, in honor of Frederick Douglass. “The color line,” as he justly said, “was drawn when the Negro was made a slave in this country,” and the prejudice existing against him is “not on account of color, but by reason of previous condition, his color serving to indicate his identity with a race held as bondmen.” “This prejudice,” he added, “is purely American. Colored men traveling in other countries have not found color a mark of degradation. If they are reminded of their color at all, it is by Americans they meet, who are not magnanimous enough to treat the negro courteously even on foreign soil, where race prejudice is not tolerated.” * * *
Let the practice of the American people be as impartially just as is their Constitution; and our colored fellow-citizens will have no grievances of which to complain. We congratulate them upon the fact that the Constitution has taken them under its charge, and upon the further fact that the day-star of a bright and promising future is gradually shedding its light upon their horizon. The doctrine of equal privileges and equal responsibilities will in the end lift them to the level of an unquestioned and developed manhood; and then the “color line” will wholly disappear.
ONLY HALF TRUE.
A friend, who is familiar with the blacks at the South, writes us that the statement that “the colored people prefer to be in churches by themselves” is only half true. He adds that, so far as it is true, it is because they either shrink from the restraints of a pure and intelligent religion, such as that of the whites, or from the scorn or ill-concealed toleration of their white fellow-worshipers; and that, if sure of a cordial welcome by the whites, they do not prefer to worship by themselves. We are glad to give publicity to this statement, although it is contradicted by that of every one else whom we remember to have heard speak of the matter. Is there not another reason which tends to separate white and black Christians into distinct churches? Do not the latter, even when assured of a cordial welcome by the whites, usually prefer an emotional, hortatory style of preaching which is very dear to them, but which disturbs, if it do not even amuse, the whites? Certainly it is so here at the North.
The Congregationalist.
ONE DESTINY.
BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
There is but one destiny, it seems to me, left for us, and that is to make ourselves and be made by others a part of the American people in every sense of the word. Assimilation, not isolation, is our true policy and natural destiny. Unification for us is life. Separation is death. We cannot afford to set up for ourselves a separate political party or adopt for ourselves a political creed apart from the rest of our fellow-citizens.
The Independent.
CHRIST OR CASTE.
BY H. K. CARROLL.
Shall we go into the South to exalt Christ or to surrender to caste? Shall we go to the Negro as to a being made a little lower than man, and reach down to him, not to lift him up to our plane, but to help him live better and be content on his own lower plane? Or, shall we go to him as to a brother of our own blood, unfortunate, degraded, despised, and strive thus to save him and improve him on Christ’s plan? If we go for Christ, we go inevitably to bear reproach, to submit to ostracism; we go to contend against untold difficulties, to meet with discouragements, to fail, it may be, for many years, of at least great numerical success. * * * The secret of much wrong thinking and wrong practice concerning mixed churches is the idea which both Dr. Curry and Dr. Wheeler seem to regard as universal, that the Church is a social institution. If this be once admitted, Dr. Wheeler is right in contending that the lines of social distinction which are drawn in the drawing-room will inevitably be drawn in the Church. Here is a basis quite sufficient to build white and colored churches upon; but it is just as certainly broad enough for other social distinctions, which Methodism, of all branches of the Church Catholic, has been the least willing to admit. Seeing, as Dr. Wheeler sees, that the employer and the laborer, the rich and the poor, the learned and the unlearned form different and more or less distinct classes in society, we cannot only justify churches organized on the color line, but we must be prepared to justify churches organized exclusively for the rich; churches for the poor; churches for the educated and churches for the uneducated; churches for merchants and distinct churches for clerks. The idea that the Church is a social institution, if rigidly adhered to, would give us a system of class distinctions as intricate as that of India. There are two great facts which make the whole human race absolutely equal, absolutely without distinctive claims or advantages, before the altar. The first is the fact of universal sin; the second is the fact of universal need of salvation. Men of all degrees, from the prince to the peasant, from the millionaire to the pauper, from the most profound scholar to the most unlettered backwoodsman, from the whitest European to the blackest African, meet in church on a common platform. They leave their social distinctions, their rank, and their peculiar privileges outside the church door. Here is the one place where all the sons of God may meet and work together as one family. The Duke of Wellington knelt at the altar with a plain farmer and received the sacrament. “Here,” said he, “we are brothers.” The Church is associational rather than social. It exists in society, is formed from society, and exercises the most powerful influence on society; but its province is neither to break down nor build up distinctions in society. It may inculcate principles, which men and women will carry into their social relations, for the cure of such evils as may exist in society; but it is not its province as an organization to form and regulate society. Its distinct work is to draw all men to Christ and help them to live a righteous and useful life.
The Independent.
THE CHRISTIAN LEAGUE.
BY REV. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D.
“This company must be a clean one, and there is no lack of sound and reputable men in our churches.”
“How about the colored brethren?” queried Mr. Strong.
“The colored brethren must be left out,” was the answer, “not for social, but for ecclesiastical reasons. One of the first duties of this league of ours, if it ever gets into operation, will be the suppression of these colored churches. When the colored people abandon their own organizations, and join the other churches, they may come in as representatives from them. We will have no color-line in the Christianity for which this club stands. I’ll go as far as any other man in fraternizing with colored men; but with colored churches, never. The sectarianism whose only basis is the color of the skin is the meanest kind of sectarianism.”
The Century.
IT DECIDES NOTHING.
BY REV. D. M. WILSON.
We are told that the colored prefer to be by themselves. Were this true, it would decide nothing as to the proper method of church work. The several castes of India would have preferred to remain separate even after nominally embracing Christianity; but this could not be. Among Christians there is but one fold and one Shepherd. The very object of religion is to make men one in Christ and one in Christian fellowship. If this be not done, nothing is done to any good purpose. Our separate schools and separate churches have during the last eighteen years done more to separate and alienate the two races than two hundred and forty years of slavery had done. In the times of slavery both races were in the same churches. Why not now? One thing is too plain for an honest man to deny, and that is the fact that, had the whites treated the colored during these last years with the same courtesy that they extend to a Roman Catholic Irishman and his children, we would never have heard of a colored school or that ecclesiastical monstrosity, a colored church. The results are disastrous to both parties. The colored are left to themselves and the blind lead the blind. Nine-tenths of their preachers have no more fitness for preaching than they have for lecturing upon fluxions. Were one of their churches of average capacity for senseless noise and uproar within earshot of my residence, I would regard it a number one nuisance. But it is not their fault that they are by themselves. A brute only moderately domesticated soon understands when he is not welcome, and acts accordingly. When slavery had disappeared, the colored saw but too plainly that they were not welcome any longer in their old churches, and they went forth into a darkness deeper than they had before know.
The Independent.
MORE AT HOME BY THEMSELVES.
REV. JAS. H. FAIRCHILD, D.D.
The colored church came into existence not because the colored people were not welcomed to all the other churches, nor because a separate organization was desired by those who had been most favored with education and culture, but because considerable numbers of them felt more at home with a style of service and instruction more like that with which they had been familiar.
Oberlin, the Colony and the College.
WHITE AND COLORED CHURCHES.
BY C. L. GOODELL, D.D.
Having lived over ten years in a Southern State and been an interested observer of colored people and a sympathetic helper wherever I could be, I feel a deep interest in the settlement of this question concerning the mixing of the races in the churches.
Whenever there is a call for a church of Christ, let the brethren come together and organize it, and start it off with all the wisdom given them, as to location and other practical matters. It is a little republic ordering its own affairs, with whatever fact and counsel it may seek from sister churches. If it be a colored church, let it take in whatever white Christians may come to its door, in case it would take in a colored Christian applying under similar circumstances and of the same Christian character and fitness. Not many white Christians will come; some might, owing to their peculiar relations to the church, or to the neighborhood, and so on.
If a white church be organized, let it receive whatever colored Christians may knock at its door, in case it would receive white Christians applying under similar circumstances and of the same Christian character and fitness. Let that be the rule. There are always individual cases which must be settled each by itself. Not many colored people will come; some might, owing to their special relations to the church or some member of it, and so on. This law is fundamental in God’s order of society. It applies to Chinamen and Indians and all races in our communities. Take them as they come. Not many will come. They prefer to be together; and it is better they should be as a general thing. * * * Colored Christians ought to have free access and welcome to white churches. As soon as they find out that they are really loved and esteemed, and can come into white churches as brethren, they cease to desire it. They are happy and helped by this knowledge; but they would rather worship together, just as every other race would. They love to exchange fraternal salutations and have many interests in common; but in the regular work and worship of church life they choose to be one of the distinct branches of the great body of whom Christ is the head. I know this from years of practical experience.
The Independent.
THE COLOR LINE IN CHURCHES.
There is no place in the country where the question of the color line can be so easily and so fairly tried as in Washington. Here is a population of 60,000 colored people, with sixty-five colored churches. There are also in the District 124 white churches, nearly or quite all of them having one or two colored members, generally the sexton and his wife. But every colored adult in Washington knows that the Congregational Church is the only one in which he stands on an equal footing with his white brethren and sisters, as their great leader, Frederick Douglass, told them, “only one church in the national capital over whose doors is the beautiful inscription, ‘Freedom to worship God without distinction of color.’” And the pastor of that church, Dr. Rankin, is as much beloved and as much trusted by the colored population of this city as a man can be. And the leaders of the colored people all come here. Hon. J. M. Langston, United States Minister to Hayti, Hon. B. K. Bruce, ex-senator and now Registrar of the Treasury, the professors of Howard University and a few others come; and yet I doubt if there are two dozen colored members in this church. There are two colored Congregational churches in Washington without a white man in them, and to them all the colored Congregationalists go. Nor is it to be wondered at. To the great majority of them the preaching would be over their heads. Their education and position in life deprive them of meeting their white brethren on an equality in parish or prayer meeting. They naturally go by themselves, not that they are forced to, but because they prefer it. The emotional demands of their nature are not met in the cooler atmosphere of the white man’s religion. And so it must be throughout the South. Each race will for the present prefer churches of its own color. If two churches are formed in one place at the same time the whites would not care to sit under the imperfect education and narrow compass of thought of the colored preacher, nor would the darker portion of the audience enjoy the more cultivated sermons or prayers of the whites. Until the average education of the black is more advanced let them keep separate. The mixing of the races is sure to come, but it will require generations to do it. All the present can do is to offer them open doors. If they decline to enter it is their own action. But with growing wealth, with education equal to that of their white neighbors, will come social intercourse, and not till then.
W. R. H. in Congregationalist.
RESOLUTIONS OF A. M. A. AND A. H. M. S.
At the recent annual meeting of the American Missionary Association, held in Cleveland, O., a petition was presented requesting the appointment of a committee to report on the policy of the Association in regard to race or color prejudice in the support of schools and churches. As the Executive Committee, to whom that petition was referred, are entering upon enlarged church work in the South, they feel called upon to take early action on this petition, and make the following announcement:
1. That in accordance with the New Testament doctrine upon which the Association was founded, and by which it has from the beginning been governed, that God has made of one blood all the nations of men, we reiterate the rule, which we believe that fidelity to Christ requires, that all our churches and schools shall open their doors impartially to persons of every class, race and color.
2. That in obedience to the same New Testament doctrine, we shall require that all churches aided by us shall unite with neighboring churches of the same faith and order in Christian fellowship in the same conferences or associations, and in church councils, and in other usual means of fraternity and fellowship, making no distinctions on account of race or color.
3. That this Association will not enter upon any new church work in any city or town where the American Home Missionary Society has already established a church work, without previous conference with the officers of its sister society.
The American Home Missionary Society is taking steps to enlarge its work in the Southern States. Recent statements and inquiries having been made which show a misapprehension, on the part of some, of the methods of its work in that part of the country, the Executive Committee deem it proper to state: That the American Home Missionary Society still adheres to its long-established usage in declining to aid in the support of a missionary to serve any church, whether in the South or North, which refuses to receive to its membership any applicant, solely on account of color. That it still expects, as it has from the beginning, that any church, wherever situated, that receives its aid in supporting a minister, will unite with the association, convention, or other ecclesiastical body of the denomination within whose bounds he is appointed to labor; and by participating in councils, conferences and other customary gatherings for mutual help and edification, will show its Christian fellowship with other Congregational churches. And that, in case of proposals to form or aid churches in cities or towns where the American Missionary Association has organized missionary operations, this society will not enter on such work without first corresponding or conferring with its sister association.
A MISTAKEN POLICY.
BY REV. W. HAYNE LEAVELL.
This is my deliberate conviction, based upon such knowledge of the Southern People as comes from the fact of having been born and bred among them, and from my observation among the more cultivated families that go there from this region.
You will permit me to say, therefore, that in my judgment the proposed policy of our societies is a mistaken one. Most of the reasons that influence our brethren who guide the policies of these missionary organizations I have considered, and largely sympathize with their spirit; and if the plan were practicable, I would see no Christian reason why it should not be carried out. But if we desire to secure a foothold for Congregationalism among the respectable white people of the South, and enlarge our borders in that direction, we must adopt the only policy that will gain this end, and have churches composed predominantly, if not exclusively, of white people, as well as churches composed mainly of black people for the blacks.
We may argue against caste in the churches of Jesus Christ, and resolve that we will not be a party to its perpetuation anywhere under the sun. Very well, then we must not hope for a successful propagation of our denominational principles among the ruling classes of the South, for they will not enter into church relations with the colored people. After the churches are separately organized, and while they are separately maintained, they will affiliate in associations and conventions, but the limit will be drawn at the line of the church. However unrighteous, this is a stubborn fact—and anybody who has good knowledge of the Southern character will know that it is to remain as stubborn for all time to come.
Mixed churches among us, where colored people are comparatively few, and in the South, where colored people are so numerous, are very different things. For among us the predominant element in the churches will remain predominant, and it is an easy matter for 500 white Christians to associate with five of another race and color. But for 250 white Christians to associate in churches on equal terms with 250 “colored” Christians is another, and by no means a comfortable thing. Before the war, negroes and their masters were in the same churches and enjoyed the association, but the negroes sat in the galleries, and in other ways were not put upon an equality.
WHO SHALL WORK SOUTH?—THE QUESTION STATED.
BY REV. L. W. BACON, D.D.
A gravely important and difficult question as to the future policy of the Society (A. H. M. S.) was submitted in behalf of the executive. It was one technically within the competency of the executive to decide, but too important to be so decided, without larger counsel: Shall the Society’s system of operations with missions and superintendencies be extended over the Southern States? In favor of this measure are urged (1) the desire to make the field of the Society’s work co-extensive with the nation; (2) the duty we owe to white people, as well as black, at the South; (3) the alleged demand for the Society’s aid to communities of Congregationalists who have moved to the South. Against it are (1) the measureless inadequacy of the Society’s present or probable resources for the urgent instant demands of its present field; (2) the wastefulness of organizing and supporting a second system of superintendencies over the field already occupied by the superintendencies of the American Missionary Association, and the chances of friction or collision between the two systems; (3) the impossibility of drawing any line of demarkation between the two systems of missions on the same ground, except a color line: the emphasizing of the color line, in the most obtrusive and offensive manner, not only by two orders of missionaries, one to whites and one to blacks, but by two orders of mission churches, one for black people in which whites shall be tolerated, and one for white people where blacks shall be tolerated with not so much as a common superintendency to co-ordinate them; and thus the danger of indelibly fixing the color line, fortifying it by new vested interests, and defeating any kindly tendency toward the effacing of it from the Christian Church. Such considerations as these led the congregation (we can hardly say the Society), after deliberation and debate, and especially after the very able speech of Mr. Blakeslee, to decline committing itself to this great and not easily revocable step, and to leave it for a year’s consideration, and though a later and less considerate vote was obtained in a form which seemed to throw doubt upon this decision, nevertheless the reluctance toward the new policy was of such a weight and character that a prudent executive may be trusted to keep it in view and move with caution, in a matter that does not press for instant action.
The Advance.
A QUESTIONABLE PROCEDURE.
BY REV. HORACE BUMSTEAD, D.D.
The American Missionary Association and the Am. Home Missionary Society have both announced their purpose to enter upon enlarged church work in the South. Is it not questionable whether it is best for the Home Missionary Society to enter the Southern field at all? Does that Society propose to do the same broad work for all races and classes which the A. M. A. aims to do, and in good measure has done? If so, why duplicate missionary machinery for this region? Or is it proposing to do a work less broad, and if so, are its friends ready to support it in so doing?
The Congregationalist.
THE OHIO IDEA.
RESOLUTION OF CONGREGATIONAL CONFERENCE AT AKRON.
Whereas, During the past twenty years the work of the Congregational churches for the needy millions of the South has been performed in a manner that is fast winning the respect and sympathy of all classes; first, by its being based upon Christian needs without too evident attention being paid to denominational advantages; second, by its uncompromising fidelity to Christian principles in respect to the spirit of caste;
Resolved, That we, the members of the Congregational Association of Ohio, do earnestly deprecate the adoption of any permanent policy by which Congregational churches shall be established in the South, practically, though not professedly, on the basis of what is called the “color line;” and that in our judgment two distinct Congregational Societies, the one working mainly for the white and the other for the black race, in the same field, will inevitably tend to perpetuate race prejudice, set at variance Congregational brethren themselves, and so defeat the end of true religion.
WHAT IS A COLOR-LINE CHURCH?
BY PROF. C. G. FAIRCHILD.
The State Conference of Ohio recently protested against the establishment by Northern missionary funds of churches based “practically, though not professedly, upon the ‘color line.’” What is a color-line church? A church at the North composed largely or exclusively of colored members, following naturally a race line of cleavage, as do the Irish or German, is not in this sense a color-line church. Most white churches at the North have only white members; but probably there is not one of them but would receive a colored member without hesitating in the slightest about his color. These are not color-line churches. There are many important white churches at the South that have had for many years colored members; but the colored members must wait for the communion until the whites are served, and must occupy special seats. Such churches are color-line churches. Churches at the South composed of blacks, with a few white teachers and their friends, who would welcome with tears of gratitude any Southern white families who would show their love and sympathy by identifying themselves with them are not color-line churches. A church at the South, composed of whites, in the midst of a large colored population, or in close contiguity with a church of kindred organization and sources of support, and where the advent of the first colored member would be deprecated, not welcomed, is a church based practically, though it may not be professedly, upon the color-line. * * * * *
It is always wise to consider facts. The first fact is that this color distinction is the most potent factor, politically, socially and religiously, in Southern society. This should dominate every plan for Christian effort at the South as much as the existence of the rebel army dominated plans for the “On to Richmond” during the war.
In the ultimate solution of Southern problems, natural race lines of cleavage may largely prevail; but it lies within the realms of reasonable expectancy, and not fancy, to believe that the time will come when color will not be thought of in the admission of a person to any hotel, railway car, school, or church. We have no right yet to let go of this Christian and patriotic hope; but for the present at the South color places upon a man a more damning and ineffaceable stain than does murder or political treason, and the present establishment of white churches as above described would seem to be an obeisance to this most potent and evil influence.
The Independent.
THE TENDENCY IS TO RELAX.
EDITORIAL IN INDEPENDENT.
The natural bent of Southern whites is to separation from colored members, and white congregations willing to open their doors to all alike will not spring up in great numbers. The tendency, the temptation is to relax a little on the principle, under trying circumstances, for the sake of immediate results. We have pointed out how signally some of the Friends’ schools in the South have failed to keep their first principles intact. The same lowering influence has been at work among the Northern Methodists. It is worth a generation of endeavor, and perhaps it will require it, to establish an influential constituency on the solid basis of true Christian Brotherhood.
THE SOUTHEAST.
SEC. BARROWS’ REPORT AT SARATOGA.
How soon shall the Society have a superintendent in this region? It is for you to decide. The executive officers are convinced that the time has already come for this forward movement. During the past winter we have had a general missionary at work in Florida, with encouraging results. At our next anniversary there will doubtless be present a representative from the Florida Association of Congregational Churches. The Society also has missionaries in Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia—and appeals are constantly received urging us to enlarge this work.
It is not the purpose of this society to foster the spirit of caste. It was to remove all suspicions on this score that a friendly conference was lately had with our brethren of the American Missionary Association, and with the results of that conference you are all familiar. It is our idea to form churches at the South, like Dr. Rankin’s in Washington, and Dr. Goodell’s in St. Louis, churches open to the colored people and to which they will be made welcome if they see fit to join. The only difficulty will be to find enough colored people willing to join to save the principle—the uniform experience hitherto having been that they prefer to be in churches of their own.
But we have too long ignored the fact that there are several millions of poor whites at the South who need our help, and must have it if they are to be fitted for citizenship on earth or in heaven. They have claims upon our Christian sympathy equal to those of the colored people, for they too are the victims of slavery, and are despised by the old slaveholding aristocracy—and even by the negroes. A Southern man said in our hearing a few days ago, “There are as many white people at the South who need your help as there are colored people, and they must be reached by similar means, viz.: the Christian school and the Christian church.”
Let us now ask the question—Have we been doing our duty by these people? We know we have not. God forgive us for having neglected them so long, and may we now show by our actions that our repentance is genuine! Do you wish the Home Missionary Society to organize an agency to do this work?
REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON DR. BARROWS’ PAPER.
But why ask the Home Missionary Society to plant these churches and commission these missionaries? Simply because the endeavor is one which no present organized agency can successfully accomplish.
The work of the American Missionary Association is noble, and its field is wide. But broad as are its principles it cannot, as a practical matter of fact, cultivate the whole of that needy part of our Lord’s vineyard. That which has been the pride and the strength of the American Missionary Association, the thing it has printed on its publications and blazoned on its banners, that it was organized for the help of the despised races of America, to some extent honorably incapacitates it for some of the work which, nevertheless, needs to be done. Not in this generation, nor in the next, can men and women, between whom not history and habit only, but nature and providence, run lines so deep as between the races of the South, be made to any considerable extent to blend in comfortable and harmonious church relationship.
The ignoring of this fact will cost limitless labor and limitless disappointment. Why not take up the case as we find it, and in those places where the hand of invitation now so obviously beckons, respond to the call? What need of trespass, what occasion for misunderstanding, if the Home Missionary Society and the Association thus at some points work side by side?
The Home Missionary.
DR. WALKER’S ADDRESS.
There is no man in this house who has, to the limit of his ability, done more cordial and earnest work for the American Missionary Association than I have. There is no man who maintains a more cordial relationship with the secretaries and officers of that society than I do. Personally, each one of them is my friend. But I do feel, Christian friends, that we have here a question that we must meet; and the best way to meet it is in the spirit of frankness and openness, giving it the deliberation which it requires. The American Missionary Association, as has been suggested in the paper which has been presented to you, is, in my view, handicapped for doing a part of the work which is necessary to be done. * * *
Now the question is: Is it not expedient for us to enter upon that work? I am met by the objection: “Why, you are doing the same work that the American Missionary Association is doing. Why have two societies, side by side, doing essentially the same work?” They are not doing the same work, in the fact that the subjects for which they labor are providentially made distinct. It is impossible in this generation, and in the generation to come, for the American Missionary Association to plant Congregational churches to any considerable extent through the South. Now, the plain and practical question is: Is it wise for us to neglect the present opportunity and, for the sake of what may be proved after all to be but sentiment, let the present moment pass, a moment so freighted with consequences to the future? Is it wise for us to insist upon the strength of ecclesiastical ties as sufficient to hold men together, whom we cannot counsel to come together by strength of natural ties? We cannot advise marriage among the races; why insist upon a kind of work that forces them together in ecclesiastical relationships to which they are equally unfamiliar and averse?
The Home Missionary.
NO CLASHING MUST BE ALLOWED.
EDITORIAL IN ADVANCE.
What the American Missionary Association has done, and is doing, is only the prophecy of what it is to do in the near future, if it is promptly sustained in its noble work. And while we are on this subject, we wish most emphatically to say:
There is not to be, there must not be, any clashing in the work between this society and the American Home Missionary Society.
The American Missionary Association was organized for a specific work, broadly and definitely understood to be for the uplifting of the colored races on this continent. To that work they are pledged, for that money is given to them, and they are very wisely administering the trust committed to their hands. To criticise that society because it does not organize what are known as white churches is the height of folly, and for it to attempt to force mixed churches on the South would be equally absurd. The American Home Missionary Society should not go down South with the idea of starting white churches. It should be allowed, and must be allowed, to go there and organize churches just as it does in Iowa, Dakota, Missouri and Kansas, saying nothing at all about the race question or in any way excluding colored people from its membership; giving them that freedom which is theirs, to come in, and the freedom also to stay out, and to have their own churches, and their own social circles, just as they please. Any one who undertakes to force such things out of their natural and proper course will only work confusion and loss.
NO TROUBLE NEED BE BORROWED.
EDITORIAL IN CONGREGATIONALIST
As for the matter of the entrance of the Home Missionary Society upon work in the South, that may be trusted to take care of itself. The two societies mutually have agreed upon a policy of comity and consultation. Unless there be a real and imperative demand for its services at the South, the Home Missionary Society probably will find all that it can do in its present field. If such a demand arise, the Society will do its best to meet it, not in rivalry of, but in co-operation with, the Missionary Association. There may be localities where the former can work in the same line to better advantage than the latter. Nobody need borrow trouble on their account, for both are pledged, and honestly, we are sure, to keep out of each other’s way when necessary, and together to erase “the color line” as fast as possible.
CRITICISMS NOTED.
EDITORIAL IN ADVANCE.
We fear that many of those who are criticising the policy of the society (A. H. M. S.), in pushing its work in the South, know little or nothing either of the New West or of the South. We call the attention of Dr. Bacon, and the minority which he represents, to a few facts. In the first place, the American Missionary Association cannot reach the white people of the South. In proof of this we appeal to agents of that society, who are in the field—Dr. Roy and the missionaries down South. One of the missionaries has just been in this office and gave his testimony most freely, while we were reading the proof of Dr. Bacon’s article. He said: “I have been three years in Alabama. I am pastor of a colored church there. We are prosperous. We were never more so. The Southern people are coming more and more to labor with us, and to co-operate with us in every way for the education of the negro. But there must be a colored church for colored people, and a white church for white people, and this will be done without saying anything about it. Both races prefer it, and it is a natural method. Our society cannot reach the white people, we ought not to attempt to do so.” * * *
There is a call for the work of the American Home Missionary Society in the South. To refuse to go there would be wicked. That society has just as much right to build a church in Mississippi or Georgia, and to give it aid, as it has to aid a church in Iowa or Dakota. No other society has a right to bid it keep north of Mason and Dixon’s line.
WHO SHALL WORK AT THE SOUTH?
BY REV. J. E. ROY, D.D.
To the Editor of the Advance:
In your response to Dr. Bacon on this question, you said: We appeal to Dr. Roy. I did not understand you as committing me; but finding that some brethren took you as setting me down to the theory that the A. M. A. could not do the work among the white people there because of its relation to the colored, I wish to disavow it, for I never held that view, never expressed it. I think that the A. M. A. could do that work if the constituency shall so direct, though, as our experience among the mountain people of Kentucky proved, it would require patience, wisdom and fortitude, and would be a slow process.
The Advance.
RESOLUTION AT SARATOGA MEETING.
Voted, That a committee of five be appointed who shall consider our denominational work in the South and confer with the secretaries of the American Missionary Association, or any committees appointed by that society, in reference to the same, and report at our next meeting.
Committee to confer with the American Missionary Association—Rev. Drs. J. E. Twichell, G. L. Walker, Lyman Abbott, C. L. Goodell, and A. S. Barnes, Esq.
The Home Missionary.