Similar statements, indeed, have been legion. An unsigned article in the News and Courier editorial page reminded readers that Jesus “advised all Christians to seek contentment, rather than advancement, no matter where Providence had placed them.” Such advice, intimated the article, might well be followed by Negroes seeking integration.[223] Echoing these sentiments and adding a few twists of his own, E. Robert Rowell, a “Lay Reader” of the Trio Methodist Church, declared that it was “against God’s divine will for the races to be destroyed by intermarriage and the bearing of offspring by such marriages.” In the segregation fight, thought Rowell, the end justified the means because God’s will was at issue. For this reason he gave unqualified endorsement to such practices as economic boycotts and pressures not only “against the Negroes who sign desegregation petitions or who are members of the NAACP,” but also against “those who are in sympathy with such people.” He favored refusal by his church “to receive or support any minister who believes in the false doctrine of mixing the races.”[224]
Others, too, were concerned with showing God’s approval of segregation. A close study of the Bible, declared the Right Reverend A. S. Thomas, a retired Episcopal Bishop of Wadmalaw, revealed a “plain implication” that segregation was not only consistent with brotherly love but had been ordained by the “appointment of God.” Anyone who attempted to “facilitate and expedite the amalgamation of the Negro race with other races” might well be “frustrating a great purpose of God.” Racial segregation per se was in no wise unChristian. Its unChristian aspects were due to “man’s fallen nature, not to segregation itself.” Integration would please only unnamed leaders of the nation who wished “to appease atheistic Communism.”[225]
If God approved segregation, then logically integration was the work of the devil. Mrs. Edna M. Smith of Charleston blamed the integration drive with its “fear, confusion and despair” on “Satan” who was “using all these weapons to gain more power, because he knows his power is coming to an end and he wants to take all that he can with him when he goes down into destruction and death.” The Reverend Paul M. Pridgen, pastor of the First Baptist Church of North Charleston, announced that “there is no room in Heaven for the NAACP or any other organization that stirs up race hatred.” The News and Courier took issue with Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s statement that heaven was “completely unsegregated.” No one knew “for sure” what heaven would be like, declared the News and Courier, since “no eye-witness” had returned “to give us the direct word.” However whites were reassured: “Surely in Heaven there will be no compulsory sharing by incompatible elements.”[226] Apparently someone had returned and had imparted this information to the News and Courier.
On occasion, a voice of protest has been raised against the use of religion as a justification for segregation. The Morning News attacked the statement by a candidate for the State House of Representatives who had said that if God had intended for the races to be mixed he would have made all people the same color. “Using the same syllogism,” said the paper, “it could be argued that if God had intended for people to wear clothes, people would be born clothed; or if God intended for people to ride, they would be born with wheels rather than feet.”[227] A similar protest came from a Charleston non-conformist. How long, asked H. B. Clark, would the South fail to see “that any denial of a fellow human’s rights” constituted “a violation of Christ’s supreme commandment that we love our neighbor as ourselves?”[228]
The News and Courier has leveled some of its most bitter editorial blasts at those church leaders and groups who have taken a stand against segregation.[229] The attitude of this paper is a clear indication that leading segregation spokesmen recognize in the church a potential and powerful defaulter from the solid front against desegregation. In seeking to counteract clerical criticism of segregation, the News and Courier editorials constantly have advised church leaders to steer clear of such a controversial issue as race segregation. According to these strictures, segregation is right and desirable, and something for which no Southerner has to be apologetic. “To upset time-honored balances that keep the peace” would be both wrong and scandalous. Attempting to dispose of the moral and psychological implications of racism, the News and Courier insists that Southern whites should entertain no sense of guilt in connection with segregation policies. “It was God who created people with different physical characteristics. Who is to say that the races He created separate and distinct should now be scrambled?” If separation on the basis of race were sinful, so was separation by faiths and creeds. The trouble was that “well-meaning reformers” were confusing “religious principles with individual social customs.” “Just as morals are not meant to be observed only on Sunday, social customs also operate seven days a week.”
The mounting criticism of segregation from non-Southern religious sources, particularly from the National Council of Churches, is especially resented in South Carolina. Such ill based criticism, asserted the News and Courier, constituted a part of the general assault on “the three bulwarks of American decency ... the church, the school and the home.” Those who engaged in such criticism might themselves be guilty of religious bigotry. “No church” had “sole possession of the last word either in religious faith or moral rectitude.” God had not yet revealed His “precise purpose” in creating people with different racial characteristics. In more ominous tones, the News and Courier declared “well-meaning” but “misguided” religious leaders were treading “on dangerous ground in pointing critical fingers at an entire region’s social structure.” Southerners would “fight and die” for the freedom “to pick their own associates.”
The News and Courier has suggesed a complete renunciation by the church of all interest in the race issue. “Those of the white clergy who have been busily promoting the mixture of the races,” it asserted, could better serve their congregations by returning “to the religious and moral aspects of their high calling and leave sociological and psychological politics to the politicians.” Concurrently, if the Negro clergy “would devote more time to inspiring their flocks to improve their morals, and less to inciting them to get in with the white folks, they would be performing a better service for their people.”
That these attitudes are popular among South Carolinians of all stations is illustrated by the fact that on frequent occasions they have been heartily endorsed in letters to the editor. As a case in point Archibald Rutledge, poet laureate of South Carolina, viewed “with misgiving the church’s stupid attitude toward segregation.” He regarded the News and Courier’s policy as “so fair, so calm, so profound,” a policy notable for its “clarity” and “justice.” Rutledge was especially happy with the paper’s “distinction between religion and ancient and salutary social customs.” “I KNOW you are right,” he concluded, “and it is high time that religious leaders realize how wrong, even how wicked, they are.”[230]
Concerning the race issue then, South Carolina churches generally give at least indirect endorsement to a continuation of segregation. In large part both church organizations and individual ministers attempt to steer clear of the issue, preferring to concentrate on less controversial sins.