Church work among the Negroes in the South: The Hale Memorial Sermon No. 2Strange, Robert
Religion
Church work among the Negroes in the South: The Hale Memorial Sermon No. 2
Strange, Robert
African American Episcopalians -- Sermons; African Americans -- Missions -- Southern States -- Sermons; Sermons, American
races together; but she has found it impractical, that impracticability
growing more and more clear as the years have run on. The races have
been steadily drifting apart in all social or semi-social life; the
better class of each race is coming less and less into contact with each
other; and race prejudice is increasing and deepening in the great
masses of both the white and the black people. Soon after the war,
wherever the negroes were in great numbers, we found it necessary to
build separate churches for them. We admitted their clergymen and laymen
to the Councils of the diocese on equal terms with the whites; but that
custom has been steadily changing. Some twenty years ago South Carolina
and Virginia, dreading too great an increase of negro clergy and laity,
led the way to new conditions. South Carolina excluded them entirely
from the Diocesan Council, without any further provision for them.
Virginia did not disturb those already having seats in the Council, but
simply refused to let any more come in on the same terms. She erected a
separate Convocation for the negroes, and now allows a certain number to
have seats as representatives from the Convocation to the Council. Two
years ago Arkansas put the negroes aside into a separate Convocation
with no representation in the Council of the Diocese. Georgia last year
formed a separate Convocation; but has allowed them by the act of
separation to come into the Council to vote for the Standing Committee,
the deputies to the General Convention and for the Bishop, whenever one
is to be elected: giving them, you see, legal representation in
important affairs. The Convention of the Diocese of North Carolina is
now discussing the matter of separation, and is only delaying its own
action, while waiting to see what shall be done next fall by the General
Convention. In our own Diocese of East Carolina, the negroes are
formally and legally on the same basis as the whites; but is that
satisfactory? Not at all. The negro laity rarely go to the Council. The
negro clergy go; but they take a back seat; they have nothing to do or
say; they are not expected to show their interest or their will, except
by voting. Instead of its doing them good to come to the Council, it
really does them harm. They are depressed, they feel the difference
between themselves and the white men; they have little or no opportunity
to take responsibility and to develop Christian manhood. Perceiving this
state of things, the clear headed leader of the forces for separation in
the Diocese of North Carolina tells me that he is urging this separation
for the real good of the negro as well as for the growth and influence
of the Church among the white people of the State.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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