Journey toward Wholeness

A History of Black Disciples of Christ in the Mission of the Christian Church

Brenda M. Cardwell, William K. Fox Sr.

• Publisher: CBP
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780827217416
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religionsgeschichte

With roots stretching to before the Civil War, the National Convocation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) today serves as the connection between African Americans and the Stone-Campbell Movement. Founders of the African American Convention movement were visionaries, coordinating the opposition to slavery, forced relocation of free African Americans to Africa, and a multitude of social ills. Following emancipation, organizations that later became the National Convocation worked to improve the lives of freed slaves and their descendants. Journey toward Wholeness: A History of Black Disciples of Christ in the Mission of the Christian Church, chronicles the predecessors of the National Convocation and the movement's roots and growth through almost three centuries.

CHAPTER ONE

BACKGROUND FOR DISCIPLES OF CHRIST MISSION AMONG AFRICAN-AMERICANS

Thanksgiving season is a time when our past acts of the year stab our conscience. Like a stinging arrow it gives sudden insight into some tangled area of our living. The American white man has found it is much easier to be prosperous than it is to be civilized...

It would be better if all whites could suddenly turn black and blacks white. Then one group would find out what it means to be in the others place...

Two hundred and forty-five years of labor of the black man without a pay day is not too long for him to give thanks that he is in a country such as we had in 1865. It was the prayers of our forefathers and the few white Christians which gave us our freedom...

—Merle R. Eppse, Black Disciples of Christ historian and editor of “The Christian Plea”, editorial, Fall, 1940.

The National Christian Missionary Convention did not soar out of the plains of church history full blown. Its roots lie deep in the socio-religious milieu of the critically oppressive and dark eighteenth century United States slave culture as well as of the beginnings of the industrial society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Its sprouts spring from the swirling currents of social change which rippled from the historic struggle of the War Between the States. Hard against this backdrop were biblical references like the following which were among the watchwords of every devout Disciple of Christ: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you all are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:27-28).

But African-American Disciples of Christ—like all other Black members in the Christian faith- whether Protestant or Roman Catholic—were born out of struggle and alienation. Their forefathers and mothers were brought against their will to the shores of the New World in North America. They were stripped of their native clothes, language, customs, folkways and religion. And as mortals considered less than human, they were considered material possessions to be battered and bartered, used and enslaved, sold for profit to the highest bidder.

Little wonder that when the Church of that day looked over the world for a fertile mission field, they saw the enslaved Black person in the United States not so much as a child of God to be, but too often as an object of mission to be secured like cattle in order to raise the material value of the Christian estate. A complete understanding of the rationale for the organization of the Christian Missionary Convention and the function of the National Convocation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) requires an appreciation of this slave culture and the prevailing concept of mission effort among African-Americans at the dawn of the twentieth century.

BORN OUT OF ALIENATION AND STRUGGLE

James Blair is most correct when he reminds us that there was a direct relationship between slavery and the Restoration Movement.¹ Benchmarks in the history of the Disciples of Christ in the United States scene are (1) the Cane Ridge Revival of 1801; (2) the Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery at Cane Ridge, which was signed by leaders in June 1804, and (3) the organization of the Christian Association of Washington in August 1809. Each of these signal events in the formation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) occurred during the period of United States slavery.

Records of this dark epoch in United States history show that many of the leaders like Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone, who led during the early years of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), were slaveholders.

By 1850 the Disciples had 310 churches in the South and 543 congregations in the North. The annual report of the American and Foreign Anti-slavery Society says... that the “Campbellites owned 101,000 slaves, the Methodists twice that number, and the Baptists only a few more. If this is true, the Disciples, on a per capita basis, constituted the leading slaveholders in the nation.²

But there had been an accretion of cultural values among African-Americans long before Anglo-American Christians sought to evangelize them. They had gained a high regard for family and blood kinship, a religious mind-set which was wed to a belief in the things of spirit within the affairs of life in the real world; a sense of working together with the spiritual forces in the world, a confidence in the wisdom of the group’s council of elders, and a belief in the medicine man’s solution and treatment of the ills of the body.

However, more than a century before the Disciples of Christ made attempts to evangelize African-Americans, United States Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries had witnessed among Blacks. Blacks had become established leaders of there own congregations and church structures. The religious background of some of the Black Disciples of Christ leaders who organized conventions in the states and later guided the launching of the National Christian Missionary Convention included prior membership in some of these denominational groups, notably Baptists and Methodists. Many others were brought into the Christian Church through the influence of their slaveowners who were members of the Restoration movement.

Andrew Jackson Hurdle, the noted father of Disciples of Christ ministers in Texas, was born into slavery on Christmas Day, 1847. When he was ten years old he was separated from his parents and brought to Texas as the slave of T. H. Turner of Dangerfield who apparently belonged to the Restoration movement. From an unpublished history of the Black Texas Christian Missionary Convention by his son, I. Q. Hurdle, it is not clear as to what church affiliation he had while a slave. But it seems that he became a Disciple through a brush harbor evangelistic meeting.

Sarah Lue Bostick of Little Rock, Arkansas, the noted African-American Disciples pioneer in home missions, joined the Baptist church in 1884 in Monroe County, Kentucky. When her first husband died in 1888 she went to live with some of her family in Arkansas. It was at Pea Ridge Christian Church in Arkansas that she became a member of the Disciples of Christ.

William Alphin, a major force in the establishment of the National Christian Missionary Convention, and later one of its field staff, grew up with his parents as a devout Baptist. But as a youth he became dissatisfied with the idea that Christians had to be called “Baptists” when he discovered they “were called Christians first at Antioch” (Acts 11:26). So he, and later his entire family, joined Beech Grove Christian Church in Tennessee.

Sere Stacy “S.S.” Myers, is a noted African-American Disciples of Christ church strategist and architect of the merger of program and staff services for the National Christian Missionary Convention and the United Christian Missionary Society. He was born September 25, 1898 in Clay County, Mississippi to ex-slave parents who were devout Baptists. Myer’s father, Frank, was a faithful deacon at Hopewell Baptist Church for 52 years and earnestly wanted his son to be a Baptist minister.

S.S. Myers received his high school education at Southern Christian Institute in Edwards, Mississippi and graduated as valedictorian of his class. He joined the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and later was ordained into its ministry.

Robert Hayes Peoples, pioneer African-American pastor, national staff and Convention leader, was born January 25, 1903 in Hollywood, Mississippi, and grew up in the Baptist church. Like Myers, Peoples was introduced to the Restoration movement while a student at Southern Christian Institute. Following ordination he was one of the few Blacks in Christian ministry to prepare for larger Christian service at Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois.

But African-Americans had been heavily influenced by other Protestant bodies many years before the Restoration movement was born! The missionary activities of the various religious groups among slaves during the middle part of the seventeenth century up to the first half of the eighteenth set the background for how the churches responded to slavery and the Civil War, they also showed how African-Americans were to fare within the church following the end of that war. The Church of England under William III, the Moravians, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Friends, and Roman Catholics made special thrusts toward the enslaved African-American people.

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was organized by the Church of England on June 16, 1701. This society sent Samuel Thomas and Dr. Le Jean to South Carolina where they instructed Black people from 1702 to 1714.³

Although Methodists did not come to this country in any substantial number until 1766, Mr. Fillmore, one of their missionaries, reported the impressive assembly of a “number of Blacks” in his meetings. The Great Revival carried on in Virginia and North Carolina between 1773 and 1776 by the Methodists and the Episcopal Church won hundreds of Blacks to Christianity.⁴

In 1779 Methodists joined with the Presbyterians and Baptists in spreading the spiritual fervor of the Great Awakening of Kentucky to slaves throughout the South. Three to four thousand African-Americans were won to Christianity. The Methodists were zealous in their activity. In 1786 they started the idea of a separate roll of African-American communicants. By 1815 they had a Black membership of 43,187.

Baptists were equally as determined in their approach. The first African-American Baptist church was organized in Petersburg, Virginia, in 1776.⁵ by 1803, 18,000 Blacks were enrolled in their communions through direct associations. Many African-American preachers were appointed to serve their own peop...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Prologue
• 1. Background for Disciples of Christ Mission Among African-Americans
• 2. Background on the Call to Organize the National Convention
• 3. Launching the Ship (1900-1917)
• 4. Refining Objectives (1917-1920)
• 5. Implementing the Vision (1920-1930)
• 6. The Convention Develops a Social Conscience (1930 - 1950)
• 7. Movement Toward Partnership Phase I The Convention Employs Staff and Provides Services (1935-1959)
• 8. Phase II: Building Toward Merger of NCMC Program and Services (1952-1960)
• 9. Phase III: The Merger of Program and Servicess (1955-1962)
• 10. Phase IV: New Directions for New Times (1960-1964)
• 11. Phase V: Confronting Merger Realities and the Contemporary Secular Scene (1963-1966)
• 12. Phase VI: Led by the Spirit (1965-1969)
• 13. Working in the Whole Church and the Whole World: The Partnership Begins (1970-1975)
• 14. Working on the Adopted Agenda or the Convocation’s Role in Enabling the Realization of Black Church Priorities (June 1972-Present)
• 15. Partnership in the Mission to “This Ministry”
• 16. Partnership in Mission to Congregations
• 17. Partnership in the Mission for Justice and Equality
• 18. And The Beat Goes On
• Notes
• Appendices
• Index