Commentary: Reunion provides time to reflect on segregated era
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The Rev. Gil Caldwell |
Sept. 2, 2004
A UMNS Commentary
By the Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell* Some
of us have warm personal memories of the Central Jurisdiction. Although
I never received an appointment in the Central Jurisdiction, I am the
“pk” (preacher’s kid) of a Central Jurisdiction minister. My family
followed my father, G. Haven Caldwell, from St. Paul Church in
Winston-Salem, N.C., to St. Paul Church in Dallas. From
there, we went to Wesley Tabernacle in Galveston, Texas, and then to
Samuel Huston College in Austin, Texas. My father was the director of
religious activities; my mother was secretary to President Robert
Harrington. It was there I began to hear God calling me into ministry. Many
of us have memories of the Central Jurisdiction, some spiritually
profound, some less so. I will never forget that at Gulfside Assembly in
Mississippi — a former Central Jurisdiction center — I caught my first
fish. I put it in a jar filled with formaldehyde and took it from city
to city until my mother could no longer stand the smell and threw it out
without a decent burial. Central Jurisdiction, thanks for the memories. The
Aug. 27-29 Central Jurisdiction reunion in Atlanta provided a time to
reflect on the past, to remember that period from 1939 to 1968 when the
church was racially segregated. The reunion also was a time to redirect
our attention to concerns facing us today, not only as African Americans
but United Methodists. Our
Jewish brothers and sisters have no qualms about remembering the
Holocaust. They have built into their liturgy opportunity to remember
the exodus from Egypt. The historical statement in our Book of
Discipline has a section titled, “The Slavery Question and Civil War,
1844-1865.” I have wondered how obligatory is the study of slavery and
the church for confirmation classes, adult membership classes and the
preparation for ordination. If
we do not remember the less-than-positives of the African-American
experience, our celebrations of the positives will have the sound of “a
noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Is
it too strong to suggest that a few people believe the God who was
present with the children of Israel in their march to freedom was not
present in the march of the children of Africa to freedom? We run the
risk, as we teach and preach the Bible, of conveying the impression that
the “God of the Book” no longer “writes and hears and acts all of the
time” because the book is closed (from the spiritual “My Lord’s
A-Writin’ All de Time”). If our experience of God has no contemporary
reality, then we have no “Living Word.” I
spoke recently to two of my longtime colleagues: the Rev. James Ferree,
who was a member of the North Carolina-Virginia Conference of the
Central Jurisdiction, and the Rev. Claude Edmonds, formerly a member of
the Delaware Conference. Both of them led churches in the Central
Jurisdiction and had other leadership roles.
Jim Ferree
reminded me of the approach to the merger of the two South Carolina
Conferences when the denomination was desegregated in 1968. The leaders
of the South Carolina Central Jurisdiction Conference inserted into the
merger process an expectation that there would be a certain number of
black district superintendents and conference chairs of committees. He
suggested that the racial demographics of South Carolina Methodism were
such that merger without agreed-upon guarantees would be suspect. Claude
Edmonds and I served together as district superintendents in the
Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, and he was senior minister of Tindley
Temple Church in Philadelphia two different times. He is deeply
concerned about the black United Methodist Church — its declining
membership, the inability of some bishops to value the historic
importance and current possibilities of these churches, and the demands
and pressures that weigh on our ebony bishops. The entire denomination must be involved in addressing those issues. I
suggest that every African American United Methodist church have access
through the denomination to the resources that Bishop T.D. Jakes and
The Potter’s House in Dallas have as a single church. Regardless of
whether we, our churches, and our denomination have disagreements with
Bishop Jakes and his ministry, he has developed significant resources
that sustain the ministry of The Potter’s House. The
United Methodist Church has a publishing house, a sophisticated
communications apparatus, access to TV, radio, the Internet and print
media, and a “presence with integrity” in Africa and around the world
that The Potter’s House and some TV ministries covet, despite the
biblical admonition not to covet. If
we are a connectional church, then the wealth of resources we have as a
denomination ought to be available to black churches and all churches. In
September 2001, Bishop Jakes was on the cover of Time magazine and
named “America’s Best Preacher.” As gifted as he is, his appearance on
the cover of Time did not happen without promotion. I envision the day
when black United Methodist churches gain national recognition because
of the quality of their ministries and promotion by agencies of the
church. “It
is easier to remove a racial structure than it is to overcome the
social forces that caused the structure (Central Jurisdiction) in the
first place,” Bishop James S. Thomas wrote in Methodism’s Racial
Dilemma, The Story of the Central Jurisdiction (Abingdon Press, 1992). To
assume that, because the structure has been removed, the social forces
that caused the structure have also been removed, is to engage in an act
of denial that subsequent generations will have to face because we did
not. I know that in writing this, some will say I do not realize we are
living in a post-Freedom Movement time, or I am too much of a race man
in the 21st century; that I do not understand that “the way to get along
is to go along,” or that I have a racial chip on my shoulder. All of
this may be true, but if we believe that the significant presence of
African Americans at every level of the church means that racially
insensitive, sometimes racist, social forces have been overcome, we do
not appreciate the contemporary accuracy of these words from Bishop
Thomas. A
test of the acceptance of racial diversity in our denomination would be
for United Methodist leaders of every race to challenge situations such
as the racism in Florida’s election system, which made it difficult for
many black people to vote. The
preface to our United Methodist Social Principles begins with these
words, “The United Methodist church has a long history of concern for
social justice. Its members have often taken forthright positions on
controversial issues involving Christian principles.” If the price we
have paid for a racially inclusive United Methodist church is that of
timidity in the presence of injustice, the price is too high and the
product we have bought is not worth it. It
is time we claimed more publicly the black United Methodists who
represented all of us in “the Movement,” which transformed the South,
the nation and the world. It
is risky to call names, but I will mention four people who have gained
recognition beyond the denomination because of their civil rights
involvement: Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro
Women; Joseph Lowery, co-founder and former president of the Black
Leadership Forum; Evelyn Lowery, founder of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference’s Women’s Organizational Movement for Equality
Now; and James Lawson, president of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference for 14 years, the organization founded by Martin Luther King
Jr. to end segregation by nonviolent protest. They were not the only ones, but the consistency of their witness brings pride to us all. We
must remember structures may crumble, but systemic insensitivity has a
way of continuing to live. Systemic evil must go! And generations to
come must know that black United Methodists were among the leaders of
the greatest social transformation movement the United States has ever
known. *Caldwell is a retired United Methodist pastor living in Denver. News media contact: Tim Tanton, (615) 742-5470 or newdesk@umcom.org.
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