Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
With the celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday just passed and Black History Month upon us, it would be good for us to reflect for a few moments on the state of Dr. King’s vision of racial equality as it pertains to our church. Our PUMC mission statement proclaims that "we are a diverse community" and this is something of which we can be proud, but we must not ignore our past as we build for God’s future.
Did you know?
- John Wesley and the early preachers of the Methodist movement in America were staunchly anti-slavery and licensed several African-Americans to preach. The organizing conference of Methodism in America in 1784 demanded that all Methodists divest themselves of slaves.
- One of the last letters that John Wesley wrote in his lifetime was in support of the abolition of the British slave-trade.
- In 1790, approximately 20% of American Methodists were African-American.
- Racial discrimination eventually made its way into the sanctuary and in many Methodist churches, African-Americans were forced to sit in the balcony. After Wesley’s death and contrary to his convictions, the General Conference of 1816 declared that slavery is a secular issue and not a moral matter.
- In response to this unchristian behavior, several African-Americans unite to create racially separate congregations and denominations. Some of them exist today and are not a part of the current "United" Methodist denomination – the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, the A.M.E. Zion Church, and the Christian (formerly "Colored") Methodist Episcopal Church.
- Denmark Vesey, leader of what would have been the largest slave revolt in American history, was a member of a Methodist class meeting.
- The remaining Methodist churches split over the issue of slavery well before the Civil War in 1844, forming the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Even in the northern churches African-Americans did not enjoy full clergy rights. When the MEC and the MECS reunited in 1939, they did so only on the understanding that "separate but equal" structures would be in place for African-Americans.
- The Princeton Methodist Episcopal Church (precursor to PUMC) admitted Susan Voorhees, described as "Colored" on the church records, on January 2, 1856.
- Oliver Brown, of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas fame, was an A.M.E. Zion pastor.
- Rosa Parks was a deaconess in the A.M.E. church. Alabama governor and arch-segregationist George Wallace was also a Methodist.
- Not until 1958 did the Methodist Church ordain an African-American woman elder.
- At the "Uniting Conference" in 1968 that created the United Methodist Church, the "separate but equal" policies of the past were finally jettisoned and the church proclaimed its inclusiveness.
- In 2004 there were approximately 427,000 African-American members in United Methodist Churches. 16% of delegates to General Conference were African-American. 6% of UMC clergy in the U.S. held cross-racial appointments.
Find more information at Black Methodists for Church Renewal website or the General Commission on Religion and Race of the United Methodist Church website.
The work of inclusiveness and boundary-breaking is not finished. We should continue to ask as a congregation how we, by action or inaction, are perpetuating the legacy of slavery and segregation. May God journey with us in this task.
In Christian Unity,
Tom
