The church tread has been less trod, less traveled, than the trade tread of American history has been traveled, by historians, clergy, laity.
These thoughts occur to me as I read: "Slavery and Schism: The Rupture of the American Home Missionary Society in Pre-Civil War Missouri," by Scott N. Morse, Esq., in MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW, Vol. 111, No.4, July 2017.
This deft scholarly essay is an easy, logical, informative examination of broadening differences in polity, and doctrine of Presbyterian and Congressional Churches in wake of their institutional expansions into Missouri, a new slave state, that was also western, via the American Home Missionary Society's efforts.
Slavery strained, tested, snapped the former bonds of fidelity existing between and among their mutual Christian fellowships, the foremost educated of those of American Protestant denominations--Baptists and Methodists having been less rigorously educated. But, educated or not,there were splits, not only within their denominations, but also within the American Home Missionary Society, itself, nee the American Missionary Society, before the Civil War, definitively divided the states, churches, even families.
Scott Morse writes early-on about the implied dangers of the slaves' education in Missouri that even Sabbath School represented to state slaveholders:
"[A]s he wrote in 1847, 'ninety-nine hundredths of them receive no instruction, not even in a Sabbath school.' Public sentiment in Missouri against teaching slaves amounted to a 'prohibition equally effective.' In fact, in 1847 the Missouri legislature enacted a statute making it illegal to 'keep any school' to educate blacks. Violation of the statute was punishable by fine or imprisonment for a term of six months. Some blacks received oral instruction but usually from 'preachers of their own color.' Reverend Hill found them to be 'lamentably ignorant--scarcely able to read a sentence much less able to comprehend and explain its truth.' The slaves' preference for black preachers perhaps arose because white preachers spent so little time with them. However, if white preachers did otherwise, they might raise the suspicion of being abolitionist .
"To Hill's dismay, slaves were almost never included in family worship. Often when he prayed with a family , Hill's heart would sink as his mind wandered into 'that dark kitchen where the slave must remain.' To that slave, 'no Bible is opened; for him, no prayer is heard.' Only a very few slaves ever attended preaching . They were kept at home on the Sabbath 'to cook, feed stock, catch and take care of horses and carriages for the family.' If their master allowed them to attend church, it was often the white church and was motivated by a desire to keep them from associating together outside of his watchful eye."
African American theologian, Dr. Howard Thurman in his profound book JESUS AND THE DISINHERITED (1949) has poignantly expressed similar facts with respect to slave masters' insecurities and to the slaves' own particular preferences for their own black preaching and preachers in his native South Carolina, similar to those of Scott Morse.
"Protestant Christianity dominated American public life during the antebellum period. The Calvinist denominations, the Congregationalist and Presbyterians in turn dominated establishment Protestantism."
Christianity is well over a thousand years older than the United States of America, or of homegrown-American racism. Christianity in fact came to America before racism was conceived and constructed here as the expedient, cultural, economic, legal, political, religious paradigm, that it became, after the American Revolution, and Thomas Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia .".
The uprooting of American racism, whose extremes were exemplified in 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina and most recently in Charlottesville, Virginia, therefore, requires re-traveling "the road less traveled," to quote poet Robert Frost. American racism's complete extirpation requires being true to the Christian religion, not false to it. True to its teachings were: General Toussaint L'Overture of Haiti, Prince Hall of the African Lodge Masons, Class Leader, Denmark Vesey, Bishop Richard Allen in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Bishop Absalom Jones in the Episcopal Church and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Baptist Church, and many unnamed others. Christian truth "will make all the difference," as Robert Frost intimates in conclusion.
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
EARLIEST RELIGIOUS RIGORS IN MISSOURI
Earliest Religious Rigors in Missouri
The church tread has been less trod, less traveled, than the trade tread of American history has been traveled, by historians, clergy, laity.
These thoughts occur to me as I read: "Slavery and Schism: The Rupture of the American Home Missionary Society in Pre-Civil War Missouri," by Scott N. Morse, Esq., in MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW, Vol. 111, No.4, July 2017.
This deft scholarly essay is an easy, logical, informative examination of broadening differences in polity, and doctrine of Presbyterian and Congressional Churches in wake of their institutional expansions into Missouri, a new slave state, that was also western, via the American Home Missionary Society's efforts.
Slavery strained, tested, snapped the former bonds of fidelity existing between and among their mutual Christian fellowships, the foremost educated of those of American Protestant denominations--Baptists and Methodists having been less rigorously educated. But, educated or not,there were splits, not only within their denominations, but also within the American Home Missionary Society, itself, nee the American Missionary Society, before the Civil War, definitively divided the states, churches, even families.
Scott Morse writes early-on about the implied dangers of the slaves' education in Missouri that even Sabbath School represented to state slaveholders:
"[A]s he wrote in 1847, 'ninety-nine hundredths of them receive no instruction, not even in a Sabbath school.' Public sentiment in Missouri against teaching slaves amounted to a 'prohibition equally effective.' In fact, in 1847 the Missouri legislature enacted a statute making it illegal to 'keep any school' to educate blacks. Violation of the statute was punishable by fine or imprisonment for a term of six months. Some blacks received oral instruction but usually from 'preachers of their own color.' Reverend Hill found them to be 'lamentably ignorant--scarcely able to read a sentence much less able to comprehend and explain its truth.' The slaves' preference for black preachers perhaps arose because white preachers spent so little time with them. However, if white preachers did otherwise, they might raise the suspicion of being abolitionist .
"To Hill's dismay, slaves were almost never included in family worship. Often when he prayed with a family , Hill's heart would sink as his mind wandered into 'that dark kitchen where the slave must remain.' To that slave, 'no Bible is opened; for him, no prayer is heard.' Only a very few slaves ever attended preaching . They were kept at home on the Sabbath 'to cook, feed stock, catch and take care of horses and carriages for the family.' If their master allowed them to attend church, it was often the white church and was motivated by a desire to keep them from associating together outside of his watchful eye."
African American theologian, Dr. Howard Thurman in his profound book JESUS AND THE DISINHERITED (1949) has poignantly expressed similar facts with respect to slave masters' insecurities and to the slaves' own particular preferences for their own black preaching and preachers in his native South Carolina, similar to those of Scott Morse.
"Protestant Christianity dominated American public life during the antebellum period. The Calvinist denominations, the Congregationalist and Presbyterians in turn dominated establishment Protestantism."
Christianity is well over a thousand years older than the United States of America, or of homegrown-American racism. Christianity in fact came to America before racism was conceived and constructed here as the expedient, cultural, economic, legal, political, religious paradigm, that it became, after the American Revolution, and Thomas Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia .".
The uprooting of American racism, whose extremes were exemplified in 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina and most recently in Charlottesville, Virginia, therefore, requires re-traveling "the road less traveled," to quote poet Robert Frost. American racism's complete extirpation requires being true to the Christian religion, not false to it. True to its teachings were: General Toussaint L'Overture of Haiti, Prince Hall of the African Lodge Masons, Class Leader, Denmark Vesey, Bishop Richard Allen in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Bishop Absalom Jones in the Episcopal Church and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Baptist Church, and many unnamed others. Christian truth "will make all the difference," as Robert Frost intimates in conclusion.
The church tread has been less trod, less traveled, than the trade tread of American history has been traveled, by historians, clergy, laity.
These thoughts occur to me as I read: "Slavery and Schism: The Rupture of the American Home Missionary Society in Pre-Civil War Missouri," by Scott N. Morse, Esq., in MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW, Vol. 111, No.4, July 2017.
This deft scholarly essay is an easy, logical, informative examination of broadening differences in polity, and doctrine of Presbyterian and Congressional Churches in wake of their institutional expansions into Missouri, a new slave state, that was also western, via the American Home Missionary Society's efforts.
Slavery strained, tested, snapped the former bonds of fidelity existing between and among their mutual Christian fellowships, the foremost educated of those of American Protestant denominations--Baptists and Methodists having been less rigorously educated. But, educated or not,there were splits, not only within their denominations, but also within the American Home Missionary Society, itself, nee the American Missionary Society, before the Civil War, definitively divided the states, churches, even families.
Scott Morse writes early-on about the implied dangers of the slaves' education in Missouri that even Sabbath School represented to state slaveholders:
"[A]s he wrote in 1847, 'ninety-nine hundredths of them receive no instruction, not even in a Sabbath school.' Public sentiment in Missouri against teaching slaves amounted to a 'prohibition equally effective.' In fact, in 1847 the Missouri legislature enacted a statute making it illegal to 'keep any school' to educate blacks. Violation of the statute was punishable by fine or imprisonment for a term of six months. Some blacks received oral instruction but usually from 'preachers of their own color.' Reverend Hill found them to be 'lamentably ignorant--scarcely able to read a sentence much less able to comprehend and explain its truth.' The slaves' preference for black preachers perhaps arose because white preachers spent so little time with them. However, if white preachers did otherwise, they might raise the suspicion of being abolitionist .
"To Hill's dismay, slaves were almost never included in family worship. Often when he prayed with a family , Hill's heart would sink as his mind wandered into 'that dark kitchen where the slave must remain.' To that slave, 'no Bible is opened; for him, no prayer is heard.' Only a very few slaves ever attended preaching . They were kept at home on the Sabbath 'to cook, feed stock, catch and take care of horses and carriages for the family.' If their master allowed them to attend church, it was often the white church and was motivated by a desire to keep them from associating together outside of his watchful eye."
African American theologian, Dr. Howard Thurman in his profound book JESUS AND THE DISINHERITED (1949) has poignantly expressed similar facts with respect to slave masters' insecurities and to the slaves' own particular preferences for their own black preaching and preachers in his native South Carolina, similar to those of Scott Morse.
"Protestant Christianity dominated American public life during the antebellum period. The Calvinist denominations, the Congregationalist and Presbyterians in turn dominated establishment Protestantism."
Christianity is well over a thousand years older than the United States of America, or of homegrown-American racism. Christianity in fact came to America before racism was conceived and constructed here as the expedient, cultural, economic, legal, political, religious paradigm, that it became, after the American Revolution, and Thomas Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia .".
The uprooting of American racism, whose extremes were exemplified in 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina and most recently in Charlottesville, Virginia, therefore, requires re-traveling "the road less traveled," to quote poet Robert Frost. American racism's complete extirpation requires being true to the Christian religion, not false to it. True to its teachings were: General Toussaint L'Overture of Haiti, Prince Hall of the African Lodge Masons, Class Leader, Denmark Vesey, Bishop Richard Allen in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Bishop Absalom Jones in the Episcopal Church and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Baptist Church, and many unnamed others. Christian truth "will make all the difference," as Robert Frost intimates in conclusion.
