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
white members of St. George, and fighting the matter to the end?
But Rev. Richard Allen capitulated. Is capitulation on the part of a
general attacked an exhibition of leadership or prowess? General Sigel,
in the late war, became famous at it; but only among a certain class of
soldiers. When it is remembered that our African brethren were in such a
fort as St. George’s, the capitulation seems to take on the air of
cowardice. Instead of that Church being a monument and outgrowth of a
desire of our white members to _drive_ the black ones out, it is just
the opposite—the outgrowth of an effort to _keep them within our
communion_. Mr. Allen, after reciting his action in the premises,
relates what followed. One conversant with the polity of our Church,
after knowing what had gone before, can shut his eyes and tell what
followed, especially if the presiding elder, Dr. Roberts, and our
pastor, then stationed at St. George’s Church, knew and dared do their
duty. Notwithstanding this, as strange as it may appear, we hear from
the lips of some ministers of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
that their dear African brethren, members of St. George’s Church, “were
pulled off their knees while at prayer in the church, because of their
color;” nearly every young minister entering some of their conferences,
ignorant of Methodist history, gives the above answer to the question,
why he prefers _that_ connection to all others. Of course, the tyro
knows nothing to the contrary. It is known by every one conversant with
our history, that even after the “Allenites,” as they were called, had
gone out and erected a building for Church purposes, the presiding elder
and pastor of St. George’s Church were willing to let them go on with
their separate worship, not exercising, or desiring to exercise, a tithe
as much authority over them as almost any one of their own presiding
elders does over their Churches in this country to-day. The presiding
elder, having an appointment to preach for them one Sabbath, was
surprised to hear them exclaim as he walked up the aisle of their church
that day, “Pray, brethren, pray; here comes the devil!” Such language as
that in God’s house shows the _animus_ that actuated that side of this
question. With such a spirit actuating them, the matter could hardly
have been settled otherwise than it was, or they had to remain under the
supervision of our Church. The question has often been asked if Richard
Allen was in the Church on the occasion when that outcry was made. The
answer has been, time and again, that “_he first began the cry_.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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