Jesus, Thou our guardian be.
Sweet it is to trust in Thee.’
They pass out of the Chapel silently, with a smile and a kind word for each from the master who is at the door to say ‘Good night.’”
“The picture passes from our sight, and the words of the hymn can no longer be heard. We turn to the Chapel as it is today. Most of those old slaves now lie in the graves near by; and the good master, in the parish church-yard not far away.”[11]
With this example in detail, it may suffice to say that, before the war, a like activity characterized every Diocese of the South Atlantic and Gulf States, including Tennessee and Arkansas, and to a less extent Kentucky and Texas where slavery was not prevalent. There were none without plantation churches, and few parishes without negro members, and Sunday Schools for the children.
Such were some of the results of the labors of the early white missionaries. It is needless to add that no such results could have accrued had not the Negro himself possessed qualities out of which character may be built.
At the close of the Civil War, with one consent, the Dioceses of the South set themselves the task of building upon the reduced foundations. No one dreamed of a laissez faire policy. The leader spoke, and the Church, with reduced resources, responded. Some of the Bishops thought the old machinery sufficient for the new day; but most people recognized that the birth of the new era meant the change of the old order. The Negroes themselves had spoken by their actions, in refusing any longer to attend the white man’s Services. Plainly this indicated a desire for churches of their own, with local self-government such as had already been found palatable in political life. More or less of separation for the races in church had to be made, and more and more as time passed.
Gradually, as means could be provided, separate parishes were organized in the larger cities, beginning with St. Mark’s Parish, Charleston, in 1866. At first, white rectors were the rule south of Baltimore. Occasionally, as was true of the pre-war period in South Carolina, negro lay-readers were licensed; but plainly, and quite naturally, the Negroes wanted their own pastors from their own people.
From the establishment of the first negro church in Philadelphia, in 1791, among the free Negroes, the consistently prevailing demand of the freedmen has been for churches and pastors of their own. They first demanded this, and themselves suggested it to their white Bishops. Practically all of the Bishops met this desire with sympathy, Bishops Atkinson and Howe being foremost in meeting this natural ambition of the Negroes.
In 1873, Bishop Howe thus addressed his Convention: “Let a Missionary jurisdiction be erected by the General Convention with express reference to these people, and let a Missionary Bishop be consecrated, who shall give his whole time and thought to this work; who, as the executive, not of a single Diocese but of the entire Church, shall organize congregations, provide them with Church schools and pastors, and in due time raise up from among the colored people themselves, and to minister to themselves, deacons and priests who shall be educated men, and competent to the work of the ministry, and I cannot but think good would result.”