Joel Alvis focuses on the relationships and tensions in the Presbyterian Church, U.S., whose ecclesiastical boundaries never expanded significantly beyond its original territory in the Confederacy and border South. By the time of the civil rights movement, the church was actively involved in ecumenical activities despite its regional isolation, and that involvement created unease in some quarters of the denomination. This concise institutional history traces how the church shaped and was shaped by its regional culture and explores the denomination's own cultural struggle to determine what role race issues would play in the definition of being Presbyterian.
Joel Alvis focuses on the relationships and tensions in the Presbyterian Church, U.S., whose ecclesiastical boundaries never expanded significantly beyond its original territory in the Confederacy and border South. By the time of the civil rights movement, the church was actively involved in ecumenical activities despite its regional isolation, and that involvement created unease in some quarters of the denomination. This concise institutional history traces how the church shaped and was shaped by its regional culture and explores the denomination's own cultural struggle to determine what role race issues would play in the definition of being Presbyterian.
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Overview
Joel Alvis focuses on the relationships and tensions in the Presbyterian Church, U.S., whose ecclesiastical boundaries never expanded significantly beyond its original territory in the Confederacy and border South. By the time of the civil rights movement, the church was actively involved in ecumenical activities despite its regional isolation, and that involvement created unease in some quarters of the denomination. This concise institutional history traces how the church shaped and was shaped by its regional culture and explores the denomination's own cultural struggle to determine what role race issues would play in the definition of being Presbyterian.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817390488 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 11/22/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Lexile: | 1390L (what's this?) |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Joel L. Alvis Jr. is pastor of the St. Pauls Presbyterian Church, St. Pauls, North Carolina. He received the M.Div. from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the Ph.D. in American History from Auburn University. A former staff member of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Department of History, he participated in the Presbyterian Presence study conducted through Louisville Seminary.
Read an Excerpt
Religion & Race
Southern Presbyterians, 1946â"1983
By Joel L. Alvis Jr.
The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 1994 The University of Alabama PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-9048-8
CHAPTER 1
"AN AGONY" FOR THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, U.S.
The committee on Thanks always offered sincere but predictable resolutions of appreciation to the hosts of the General Assemblies. It was never a source of controversy. Things changed, however, in 1942. At this General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, sometimes called the Southern Presbyterian Church, meeting in Montreat, North Carolina, William Bouchelion of Central Louisiana Presbytery was appointed to chair the committee. The appointment of Bouchelion was significant, for he was the first black to chair a General Assembly committee. Although this committee had only a perfunctory task to perform, some members thought that Bouchelion's race made it inappropriate for him to present the report to the gathering. In his place, the stated clerk of the assembly read the report. The black commissioners protested by boycotting the final meeting of the assembly when the thank yous were said, but their absence was noticed only in retrospect. Such was the situation for Presbyterians of African descent who remained communicants in the predominantly white Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS).
The segregated order of which this incident is indicative developed over many years. Race relations were seriously affected by the transformation of black Americans from slaves to freedmen. The religious order of the Southern United States as well as the political, social, and economic structures were profoundly affected by this transformation. Segregation developed to counteract some of these changes. Blacks were denied the civil rights to which their new status supposedly entitled them. American churches cooperated with the segregated system — indeed they contributed to its rationalization. Different segments of the Christian community, however, have always been able to view the same issue from several perspectives simultaneously, and periods of crisis and transition tend to emphasize and exacerbate these differences. The era of the civil rights movement in post–World War II America was such a period.
The PCUS, known also for its geographic identity as the Southern Presbyterian Church, was peculiarly susceptible to such internal conflicts in the 1950s and 1960s as it struggled to understand the "bounds of its habitation." St. Paul's sermon in Athens recorded in Acts 17 contains only one of several texts used to justify segregation: "And [God] hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us" (Acts 17:26–27 KJV).
This proof text is suggestive for the current task. The PCUS had to face a peculiar set of relationships dealing with racial attitudes and actions. These "boundaries" are the history, polity, and theology of the denomination, the racial history of the South as it emerged in the era of the civil rights movement, and the changes that transformed the South and the nation after World War II.
Presbyterian church government is predicated on a system of church court connections. These connections allow for the flow of action and information from the local court, the session, to the highest court, the General Assembly. Ministers of churches and representatives of the sessions, called elders, compose the presbytery. Three or more presbyteries unite to form a synod. The General Assembly is the only court above the various synods. Each court has its own grounds of original jurisdiction, but the actions of a lower court may be passed to a higher court for review and control, reference, appeal, or complaint. Church court jurisdictions cannot impinge on civil jurisdictions, nor can they bind the conscience of a member. The General Assembly and each synod are required to meet at least in regular annual session, but the presbyteries and sessions must meet at least quarterly. Each court has two officers — a moderator and a clerk. The moderator of the session is the minister; those of the other courts may be clergy or laity and are elected for specific terms, as are the clerks. The moderator is responsible for the manner in which the court conducts its business and rules on parliamentary procedures. The rulings may be appealed and overruled by the court. This system has remained essentially the same since the first General Assembly in 1789. Understanding the relations of church courts is critical to gaining an appropriate understanding of Presbyterians and their dealing with race as an issue of church polity and ideology.
Presbyterians experienced both theological and sectional schism in the antebellum period. Theological schism racked the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1837 with the Old School–New School controversy. This debate centered on the New School's advocacy of revivalistic practices and cooperative efforts with Congregationalists. Sectional schism affected the Baptists and Methodists in 1845–46, but sectionalism was not as significant an issue for the Presbyterian division in 1837. Both of the Presbyterian denominations retained the same name — the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. — causing some confusion, but most Presbyterians in the South remained in the Old School, opposing New School revivalism and Congregationalist cooperation. Yet some pockets of New School adherents persisted in the South past the Civil War. Sectional schism came to the New School in 1857 and to the Old School in 1861. It is from this latter group that the Southern Presbyterian Church emerged. The schism resulted from debate over whether or not the Old School General Assembly would support the Union, and this led to the formation of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. The PCUS was not the only Presbyterian denomination in the region, but it was the largest and the one whose origins and history were most intimately identified with the sectional conflict.
One of the notable aspects of Old School Calvinism above and below the Mason-Dixon line was its dependence on Scottish commonsense realism. "Realism was not so much a set of conclusions," Brooks Holifield has written, "as it was a way of thinking that would commend itself to a variety of thinkers." Indeed, many nineteenth-century Americans were influenced by this approach.
This philosophical method developed in the eighteenth century in response to the writings of John Locke and especially David Hume. Bishop George Berkeley also developed this philosophy, giving it a religious form. Together, such thinkers took an empirical approach to understanding human experience that many have called skepticism. Human knowledge may be gained only through sensory data, which cannot be uniform. Such a conclusion raises questions of the reliability, and even the reality, of human experience.
Thomas Reid of Glasgow in the eighteenth century, followed by Dugald Stewart in the early nineteenth century, confronted the skeptics, making critiques of their views with questions of the validity common to human experience (hence the name "common sense"). Stewart elaborated on Reid's work and introduced the inductive scientific method of Francis Bacon. Later, in the mid-nineteenth century, Sir William Hamilton of Edinburgh synthesized this work with Kantian philosophy, which led to his statement, "A learned ignorance is ... the end of philosophy, as it is the beginning of theology."
Scottish commonsense realism migrated to the North American continent with John Witherspoon, president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Through Witherspoon's teaching and influence this approach to knowledge spread throughout the colonies and new nation. Commonsense realism was the dominant method in the 1800s at Harvard, Yale, and Andover seminaries, despite the rather disparate views of Harvard's Unitarianism, Nathaniel William Taylor's effort to maintain the covenant, and Andover's more traditional orthodoxy. Later in the century Charles Hodge of Princeton based his systematic theology, often referred to as "the Princeton theology," on commonsense assumptions.
Southerners of several denominations warmed to commonsense realism. Nowhere was it more fully integrated, however, than in the writings of antebellum Southern Presbyterians such as Robert J. Breckenridge of Kentucky, Robert Lewis Dabney of Virginia, and especially James Henley Thornwell of South Carolina.
God could be experienced in nature, and that experience could be relied on as true. Yet Old School Calvinism also was concerned with the proper relationship of humankind and God. Experience could not answer all questions about the classic Protestant doctrine of "justification by faith" — only revelation could do that. For Thornwell and others, the Bible provided the revelation of God's word. In it were to be found the answers that the empirical data acquired by the senses could not supply. Since the biblical data could be trusted as true and valid, the authority of Scripture became a linchpin of this orthodoxy.
The PCUS came to be marked by its own distinctive doctrine, the "spirituality of the church," in measure due to the commitment to this theological tradition. As much of Southern history was marked by the controversies over slavery, so too was the church. Southern Presbyterian ministers led in the defense of slavery. From this defense a sensitivity to social criticism arose and with it a doctrine as peculiar to post–Civil War Southern Presbyterianism as the defense of slavery was peculiar to antebellum Presbyterianism in the South.
In the wake of defeat as a nation and as a church, Southern Presbyterians needed to have their theology gauge the new realities. The division between Old School and New School groups was healed in the North in 1869. By that time defense of the Union and disparagement of the Confederacy had become so intense that numerous Presbyterians in border states were expelled and joined the PCUS. This development added to the intense animosity between the Presbyterian denominations.
Given this deep feeling, the spirituality of the church came to be a primary defense of the PCUS in every aspect of its operation. Simply put, this doctrine affirmed a dualism between affairs of the world and affairs of the spirit. A Christian could engage in contemporary events as a citizen informed by Christian convictions, but the church could not act solely on the grounds of being a group of Christians. This distinction came to be a fine point, and much if not all of the denomination's history can be written in reference to it.
Policy decisions in the denomination were made by the church courts, but each court had a supporting system of committees (agencies or divisions) that helped implement the policies. The PCUS General Assembly was initially organized with executive committees. This system existed with four major executive committees and a variety of other committees until 1947, when boards were introduced. Divisions then became the operating subunits of the boards. For example, the Executive Committee on Home Missions became the Board of Church Extension, and the Committee on Negro Work became a division of the board. Another major reorganization took place in 1972. At that time the Board of National Ministries (a name adopted for the Board of Church Extension in 1967) became a division of the new General Executive Board (later known as the General Assembly Mission Board). Middle and lower courts did not have similar bureaucracies but usually had a committee structure with corresponding areas of concern and interest.
As the PCUS modified its church government, the other dominant Southern Protestant denominations moved to expand their geographic limits. The Southern Baptist Convention expanded to become a national denomination, and the Methodist Church reunited. Assisted by population migration, the Baptists adopted other areas of the nation for home mission work. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, reunited with its Northern counterpart in 1939. The PCUS did not merge with the "Northern" Presbyterian Church until 1983, after several previous efforts to do so. Thus at the time when the civil rights of black Americans became a major political and ideological issue, the PCUS was the only major religious body that retained its approximate Civil War boundaries. No other major denomination could claim such regional identity.
Southern whites, who composed 98 percent of the PCUS membership, were ambivalent about the plight of black Presbyterians, and this attitude arose in large part from simple indifference. Some tried to establish a separate black Presbyterian Church, but those efforts failed. Black Presbyterians were eventually included in a segregated system of church government. This black remnant perplexed church leaders and formed yet another boundary.
Despite its lack of a national constituency, the PCUS struggled to become part of mainline Protestantism. This trend was countered at numerous junctures by strong opposition that thwarted these efforts in the 1930s. The struggle between larger ecumenical commitments and regional identity was present throughout most of the twentieth century. Being part of the region, however, did not mean that Presbyterians were always identified with the stereotype of poverty. Southern Presbyterians were noted for their collective wealth and privilege and for the power these benefits provided.
Within the PCUS there remained a small group of black Presbyterians. What was the role of these Christians in their denomination? What was their relationship to others of their own race? Gayraud Wilmore has identified divergent desires of black Presbyterians throughout this century. "The prevailing attitude among black members of the Presbyterian Church toward this predominantly white, middle class denomination has been deep and persistent ambivalence." The "desire for African-American cultural identity" was placed over against "a desire for racial integration as an indispensable characteristic of any church that is truly Christian and visibly united." One aspect to note in the development of these events is the playing out of ambivalent feelings and desires by both black and white Presbyterians.
Southern Presbyterian action and ideas toward the civil rights movement traced back to the years before the Civil War. Black slaves were introduced to and frequently adopted Christianity in the antebellum period. Although the races were segregated in worship services, they attended the same churches and listened to the same ministers. After the Civil War, organized religion had to deal with a new set of race relations. Some whites wished to keep relationships as they had been before the war, with former slaves sitting in the galleries. Freedmen thought differently and left their former masters' churches in large numbers. One motivation for this exodus was the desire to develop black institutions and leadership, which in fact happened. But further examination reveals that many whites encouraged this exodus because of racial prejudice. Virtually all black Baptists and Methodists left churches controlled by Southern whites. Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Lutherans retained a remnant of black communicants but did not allow them to hold significant leadership positions. Black and white church contacts became less frequent, and relationships were established through ministers, representatives of institutions seeking funds, and white curiosity seekers attending black church services.
By the 1890s segregation was not only a fact of church life, it was the law as well. The Mississippi Constitutional Convention of 1890 was the first in a series of such conventions that swept through the South and legally disfranchised blacks. Once segregation was legal, state and local legislative bodies wasted no time enacting further restrictions. In the 1910s the Progressive Farmer even called for segregated landholdings. Faced with many unpleasant realities, large numbers of blacks began a great migration from the South during World War I. Times were hard for blacks, and "Judge Lynch's" frequent administration of justice was swift and undeliberative.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Religion & Race by Joel L. Alvis Jr.. Copyright © 1994 The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Illustrations and Tables,Preface,
1. "An Agony" for the Presbyterian Church, U.S.,
2. Jim Crow, Jacob's Ladder, and the Negro Work Program,
3. Ecclesiastical Equivalents for Liberals and Conservatives,
4. Opening Closed Doors,
5. The Civil Rights Movement and the Presbyterian Church, U.S., 1954–1973,
6. Race, Schism, and Reunion,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,