The American Missionary — Volume 37, No. 12, December, 1883Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 37, No. 12, December, 1883
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
The American Missionary Association is not eager to be pushed
forward into the mission work among the whites, but it knows
something of their needs, especially their need of deliverance
from caste-prejudice that mars the symmetry of their piety and
chills their hearts as slavery did, and that perpetuates a race
antagonism that must be crushed before the South can be safe or
prosperous. If the Association should be called to that work, it
has some experiences and facilities that would be helpful. Its past
record would be a guaranty that it would not foster caste. It would
have no temptation to found schools and churches mainly white that
should be rivals of its schools and churches mainly colored, and
it could have no reason to hesitate in establishing both, if both
were needed. It is not “handicapped” for this work except by its
firm and well-known attitude against caste, and any other society
equally faithful on that subject would soon be equally handicapped.
Its large planting of schools and churches, with a value of
property of nearly a million of dollars, gives it a position and an
influence that it would take any other society a long time and a
large outlay of funds to acquire—to say nothing of the facilities
it thus possesses to extend its work among both races. It has a
wide acquaintance with the Southern people, both white and colored,
and has won for itself a large place in their confidence, by its
quiet, unselfish and useful work for both. It has, moreover,
already done something in bringing the two races together in school
and church, and for this reason it is fitted to be a bond of union
and Christian fellowship between them.
This Association, standing on the ruins of slavery, and amid the
schools and churches it has erected thereon for the benefit of the
colored race, and to some extent also for the white, would find it
both cognate and congenial to enlarge its work among the whites,
both the ignorant and the educated, carrying to them a gospel
that is not only uplifting and purifying, but that makes no caste
distinction in the school room or in the house of God.
* * * * *
REPORT ON EDUCATIONAL WORK.
The Committee on the Educational Work of the A. M. A. would
respectfully report that they find the history of the past year
highly satisfactory and encouraging. It is a record of enlarged
accommodations at several of the institutions. Stone Hall, at
Atlanta, the fourth of the buildings erected by the munificence of
Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, has been completed. New buildings, or very
considerable additions to former buildings, have been constructed
at Midway, Macon, Talladega, Williamsburg, Hillsboro, Memphis and
New Orleans; yet from several quarters the call still comes for
more room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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