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Annual conferences confess to racism
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Members of the North Alabama Conference attend a Service of Confession at McCoy United Methodist Church in Birmingham.

July 15, 2005

A UMNS Feature
By Allison Scahill*

United Methodists around the United States are working to reconcile past actions spurred by racism. During annual conference (regional) gatherings this spring, several of the sessions acted to remember and redeem past wrongs.

In Birmingham, Ala., hundreds of people stood outside McCoy United Methodist Church on June 6 for a “Service of Confession and Recommitment to Disciple-Making.”

The service included a confession of the sins of prejudice and discrimination against African Americans.

“I’m a pastor and as a pastor and as a Christian, we’re in the business of naming our sins and asking God for forgiveness, so it seemed to me like something we needed to do,” said North Alabama Bishop William Willimon.

“As a newcomer to North Alabama, I was impressed that this was a big issue for our conference,” he said. “We’ve lost a lot churches in the transitional neighborhoods in the inner-city. I went to work everyday past McCoy Church, and I heard lots of stories of grief, not only of McCoy, but of churches similar to McCoy.”

McCoy Church closed in 1993 as the formerly white neighborhood became predominately African-American. The predominately white church could not keep enough members to support it.

The United Methodists from across North Alabama processed to McCoy, made statements and confessed sin.

 “Our sin of leaving the city. Our sin of not being able to overcome racial prejudice. Our sin of not risking,” Willimon said as he listed the offenses named.

“We pronounced forgiveness and then an African-American leader in our conference stood up and said ‘As forgiven to reconcile people, we will therefore …’ then she read out a whole list of things that we promised to do.”

The promises include starting six new churches. Three will be multi-ethnic.

“We’re learning,” Willimon said. “Alabama is a wonderful place to learn from our mistakes. One of the gifts of being in that conference as a newcomer is we’ve got a wonderful history in black and white -- some great heroic stories and some sad stories.”

During the same week the Mississippi Annual Conference honored 13 retired pastors who 42 years ago signed the “Born of Conviction” statement denouncing segregation.

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Inman Moore is one of 20 pastors driven out of Mississippi due to racism.

“You reached a point where you simply had to stand up, so to speak, and speak your piece,” said the Rev. Inman Moore, Pasadena, Calif., one of 28 pastors who signed the statement.

“It was just so obvious that the church was not speaking out or certainly was not exercising the kind of witness that we felt it should exercise,” said the Rev. Maxie Dunnam, Wilmore, Ky., one of four writers of the statement. “We felt at least some folks within our United Methodist Church ought to be addressing the issue.”

Dunnam said reading the statement today allows those who did not live during the time to realize how life was then.

“When you look at the statement in retrospect it really does … show how traumatically desperate situations were back then, because our statement really was a pretty mild statement if you look at it today,” he said. “But when you think about that statement being made and the fall out and what happened as a result of it, it is a pretty clear indication of what things were like back in those days.”

“It just created tremendous ripple,” Moore said. “It literally created headlines in papers all over America.”

After signing the statement and releasing it in the Mississippi Advocate in January 1963, 20 of the pastors soon left Mississippi, driven out by the reactions of their congregations or threats on their lives.  Moore and his family left for California in April 1963.

“We all had intimidating phone calls and letters. Some of the ministers were locked out of their churches,” he said. “Several of them were without a source of income or a place to live immediately.”

For Moore, the matter became highly personal.

 “My father was a prominent Methodist minister in the conference,” he said. “My father and I never lost communication with one another, but he said, ‘Inman, this is our way of life, why rock the boat?’ I constantly began to find myself in church meetings voting on opposite sides of the fence from my father. I loved him and he loved me … but we were just in a case where it was getting very difficult for me to be opposing my father. So my wife, Nellie, and I decided that the two of us and our four children could do better somewhere else.”

Moore and the Rev. Ed McRae, another signatory, were also recognized for their work and convictions at the California-Pacific Annual Conference later in June. 

Moore said he believes the fight to end racism is ongoing. “The beat goes on, and I don’t think it ever ends,” he said.

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The Rev. Emanuel Cleaver preaches at a worship service honoring African Americans who stayed in the church through struggles with racism.

On June 5, the Missouri Conference honored African Americans who stayed in the United Methodist Church and its predecessor denominations even as they endured racism.

“We do a lot of talking around those who could not stay within the life of Methodism, but what about those who stayed?” asked Monica Jefferson, coordinator of urban and intercultural ministries for the conference “There were African Americans who lived out the struggle, who lived out the blessing, who know what it means to be a United Methodist.”

Jefferson worked with a team to plan the service that celebrated both the African Americans who stayed in the church and those who have inspired anyone to remain in the church.

“I asked people, ‘On whose shoulders are you standing?’” she said. “These people are the reason why we’re Christian. I can remember my second grade Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Stewart, who made Sunday school fun.”

Jefferson said more than 1,600 names were collected during the service. They will be put into a book titled “A Cloud of Witnesses.”

“We reconciled history,” Jefferson said.

Historian Joyce Coleman gives tours of the Underground Railroad in the greater Cincinnati area and northern Kentucky.

One stop is the house of John Van Zandt, a white abolitionist from the 19th century who was excommunicated by the Sharon (Ohio) Methodist Church after he freed his slaves and dedicated his life to helping slaves escape.

In June, more than 140 years later, Van Zandt was reinstated to church membership.

Coleman spent 10 years researching Van Zandt’s life using court records, books and even the classic text “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe. She learned that Van Zandt was the inspiration for the fictional character John Van Trompe, who helped free slaves in the book.

“I did not understand why the church would kick him out,” she said. “I looked into the founding of the Methodist Church. They kicked him out, and he was following the church’s tenets. I thought, ‘That’s not right.’”

On June 18, the Ohio Historical Society placed a historical marker on the site of Van Zandt’s home. Called The Eliza House,  it is now a parsonage for Landmark Baptist Temple in Evendale, Ohio. More than 100 people witnessed the dedication.

Later that afternoon, Coleman and several members of Van Zandt’s family — some have taken the name Van Sandt — placed flowers on his gravesite.

The Reinstatement Service was part of Sunday worship on June 19 at Sharonville United Methodist Church.

“The church was packed,” Coleman said. “Rev. (Jim) Stauffer talked about the importance of that day, and there was also a John Van Zandt re-enactor who came to the church and talked about what happened to him and how he felt.”

The service included reading a letter of reinstatement and presentation of a membership certificate reinstating Van Zandt from Bishop Bruce Ough of the West Ohio Conference.

“That action by the church, a church that he loved, tore this man down. He felt he was doing what God wanted him to do,” Coleman said. “Now, the action of a church being reversed — I feel like there is nothing more powerful.”

*Scahill, a mass communications major at United Methodist-related Baker University in Baldwin City, Kan., is an intern with the Convergence Team at United Methodist Communications.

News media contact: Tim Tanton, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

Audio Interviews

Bishop William Willimon: “Alabama’s a place to learn from our mistakes.”

The Rev. Inman Moore: “Mississippi was a closed society.”

Maxie Dunnam:“The church was not speaking out.”

Related Articles

Taking a stand

Methodists in Alabama repent for past support of segregation

Hero of Underground Railroad honored

Unlocking the Future

Resources

2005 Church Conferences

Act for the Repentance of Racism

General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns

Center for the Healing of Racism