The Colored Man in the Methodist Episcopal Church

by L. M. Hagood

“Resolved, That no person shall hereafter be licensed as a local preacher or exhorter, nor shall the annual conference receive any one as a traveling preacher on trial or into the traveling connection, who holds slaves.”

No one will certainly charge that the Methodist Episcopal Church at so early a date was simply caring for her colored members because of their influence and wealth. They had neither. The Church then, as now, desired to benefit the race in every conceivable way. Nor was it obligatory on her to follow up such persons as would rather rule under great disadvantages than serve under the most auspicious circumstances; nor yet offer any extraordinary emoluments to retain those who, at that time, could do no more than increase anxiety and labor on the part of the Church. Rev. R. Allen also mentions the fact that there were others who wished him to unite with them in opposition to the Methodist Episcopal Church. Did Richard Allen consider the work he was then doing opposition to the Methodist Episcopal Church? Whether the question be answered or not, the spirit of secession among our colored members in Philadelphia was rife, as the legitimate outgrowth of his efforts. This fever soon spread, or rather was conveyed, by being carried in the clothes of Rev. R. Allen to New York City as well. Immediately after his election to the episcopacy, the year he organized his Church in Philadelphia, he went to New York City, and disturbed the tranquillity of our colored members, who hitherto had found joy and comfort in worshiping God without reference to their color or ancestors. He succeeded in establishing a small Church there, as the harvest from the seeds of dissension he had sown. His next step was the ordination of a preacher by the name of Miller, to whom he gave the charge of the Church he had formed. This man Miller was taken out of our Church for ordination. Our colored membership in that city then numbered near fifteen hundred souls, among whom were several other local preachers besides Miller—men of piety and talent. This membership was under the care of a white presiding elder. They had regular preaching services every Sabbath, and the sacraments were duly administered to them. The other appointments were filled by their own colored preachers. When the trustees of the white Churches expressed an opinion that some of the expenses should be paid by the colored members as well, some of the colored members began to object. It was but a short time until this became a source of complaints, too. Pretty soon a feeling began to show itself, from some cause, that it was “degrading for them in any way to be dependent upon white folks for the administration of the ordinances and the government of the Church.” During this year, as before, every effort was made by the Church to remove all these complaints. Concession after concession was made, but all to no purpose. The removal of the supposed evil was not the desideratum with the provoking cause. Notwithstanding they were harassed until they left the Church, instead of uniting with Richard Allen’s faction, they chose to establish a Church of their own. Some say they did not have full confidence in Rev. R. Allen. In 1819 they decided to withdraw from the Methodist Episcopal Church. The fact that our Church had not recognized colored men as traveling preachers was the complaint under which they left. By this secession we lost fourteen local preachers, and nearly one thousand members, including class-leaders, exhorters, and stewards. Notwithstanding many strange stories originated with or grew out of these secessions, the Rev. N. Bangs, the second Methodist historian, expresses the feelings of our Church when he said: “We can not do otherwise than wish them all spiritual and temporal blessings in Christ Jesus. Though formally separated from us in name, we still love them as our spiritual children, and stand ready to aid them, as far as we may, in extending the Redeemer’s kingdom among men.”

If these secessions had occurred among those who were in bondage, it might have appeared less strange. If those who led them had even professed the belief that the secession would ameliorate the condition of the suffering millions of the race then in bondage in the South, it might have assumed the role of race pride. But, alas! the condition of the poor slave in the South, whose interests every General Conference, and the one soon to meet in the city of Baltimore, had carefully considered and did all it could to emancipate him, was not written in their bond. Those secessions did nothing toward bettering the condition of the slaves at the South. If they did anything touching human slavery then existing in this country, it was to leave the suspicion of ungratefulness on the face of every struggling slave in the South. It is but a truism to say, it strengthened the belief that the race did not thank the Methodist Episcopal Church for what it was even then trying to do for them, and yet, notwithstanding this, the following was the action of the General Conference of 1824:

“Resolved, 1. That all our preachers ought prudently to enforce upon our members the necessity of teaching their slaves to read the Word of God; and also that they give them time to hear the Word of God preached on our regular days of divine service.

“Resolved, 2. That our colored preachers and official members have all the privileges in the district and quarterly-meeting conferences which the usages of the country, in different sections, will justify: Provided, also, that the presiding elder may, when there is a sufficient number, hold for them a separate district conference.

“Resolved, 3. That any of the annual conferences may employ colored preachers to travel where they judge their services necessary: Provided, they be recommended according to the form of Discipline.

“Resolved, 4. That the above resolutions be made a part of the section in the Discipline on slavery.”

MORGAN COLLEGE, BALTIMORE, MD.

Since nothing aside from the action already taken by the Church on this subject was done until the year 1836, when the General Conference met for its twelfth session in Cincinnati, Ohio, we pass from the General Conference of 1824 to the General Conference of 1836. The agitation of this question went steadily on, however, and the Abolitionists kept it warm. From Maine to Louisiana, from Canada to Florida, it was being agitated. Since so much was said concerning the question at that General Conference, some of which, if not retrogression, was akin to it, we give the following resolutions. In reading the same, and judging them, we must remember that the seeming opposition to Abolitionism was attributable, in a measure, to the aversion to politics; that the tide of agitation was even then so high that the strongest of strong men trembled; that the Church had time and again put itself on record as to the question at issue. Though it, for the time being, condemned the action of the two “lecturing delegates,” it never once relaxed its grip upon the throat of slavery, nor assayed to compromise a single principle of right. So far removed from the scenes that greeted the General Conference that year in Cincinnati, and remembering how thoughtless some advocates of measures can sometimes be or appear, and how easily a zeal without knowledge can injure a good cause, we do not wonder at the action taken in the case of those two brethren. But when the enemies of human liberty construed the condemnation of the action of those two brethren by the General Conference as a weakening by the Church on the question of slavery, the ensuing General Conference disabused their minds of their error, and sent the enemies of liberty to grass again.