The Colored Man in the Methodist Episcopal ChurchHagood, L. M. (Lewis Marshall)
History
The Colored Man in the Methodist Episcopal Church
Hagood, L. M. (Lewis Marshall)
African American Methodists; Methodist Episcopal Church
We question very much whether a single _proper_ delegate to that General
Conference was “innocent and generally very ignorant” enough to miss the
truth as far as he seems to have missed it, and for the same purpose. He
also says: “The colored men feel that there is an incongruity, an
unfitness, a something that causes them to desire to be freed from his
presence and government. They have but little respect for the whites who
remain among them.” If that is so, it is _too bad_. If it is not so,
then—? When a witness testifies to one thing, and then contradicts
himself, if he is adjudged sane, the court will throw out his testimony,
declaring him either ignorant of the truth of the facts he would relate,
or else a perjurer. If the former, he should be reprimanded for meddling
with matters he knew nothing about; if the latter, the law would punish
him. If the colored men within the Methodist Episcopal Church feel “that
there is an incongruity, a something that causes them to desire to be
freed from his presence [the white man] and government,” it could arise
from no better source than that such men persist in remaining within the
Church who abuse them.
“They have but little respect for the whites that remain among them.” We
think no man who understands our work in the South will deny that Drs.
J. C. Hartzell, J. Braden, and A. Webster, “remain among them.” But Dr.
Hartzell was for five years or more the secretary of the Louisiana
Conference, where the colored men are in the majority. He has repeatedly
been elected to the General Conference by his brethren, and usually on
the _first ballot_. Rev. John Braden, D.D., president of the Central
Tennessee College, at Nashville, Tennessee, has been there for nearly
twenty years, and as a member of the Tennessee Conference has been
treated by his conference brethren like Dr. Hartzell, of Louisiana
Conference. Dr. Alonzo Webster, of the South Carolina Conference, being,
we believe, _the only white man_ in it, has been treated by his
conference brethren just as the brethren of the Tennessee Conference
treated Dr. Braden. Without multiplying illustrations, we ask, what
becomes of Brother Wright’s argument? It follows, that his darts fall
futile at the door of a Church that by law knows “no word white.”
Again: “The General Conference must yet decide whether colored ministers
can be educated so as to continue in the Church. If not, the lesser [the
colored man, of course] must suffer; or whether, when they are prepared,
they will not do more good by being transferred to some branch of the
African Church.” When did our bishops receive authority to “transfer”
ministers into another Church? When the time for that transferring
comes, would not the members of the General and annual conferences be
privileged to vote upon it?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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