The American Missionary — Volume 37, No. 9, September, 1883

by Various

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.