THE BROTHERHOOD OF SEGREGATED MEN
The ministers to our forefathers had the Bible,
but not Socialism; and for them segregation
was compatible with Christianity. Our modern
ministers have the Bible and Socialism; and
for them segregation is incompatible with
Christianity. The only difference is Socialism.
The Bible hasn’t changed; and, if Socialism is
omitted, segregation and Christianity are still
compatible.--_S. Emory Rogers_
During the 1850’s the church provided one of the bulwarks in the
Southern defense of slavery. In that decade pro-slavery theologians
prepared elaborate treatises “proving” slavery divinely authorized.
The 1950’s finds the churches of South Carolina dangerously close to
taking a similar position--only this time on segregation. Religious
groups of the later period, however, are less unanimous or enthusiastic
in support of “traditional race patterns.” In South Carolina, in fact,
a small number of ministers and laymen have opened the most important
crack in the solid wall of white segregationist sentiment. The
importance of their protest should not be overemphasized; in many cases
it is little more than academic. Protestant church organizations have
given no direct endorsement to the abolition of racial segregation. The
Methodist Church’s condemnation of the use of economic coercion against
Negroes by the Citizens Council has been to date the outstanding
criticism of white supremacy efforts by any Protestant group.
On the national level the church represents perhaps the most segregated
of all public institutions as Reinhold Niebuhr has so well pointed
out. Only a small fraction of church members, even in the North, is
associated with integrated churches. Nonetheless, national church
organizations outside the South have been making rapid progress in
removing all official barriers to church integration. This is also
true of most South-wide church organizations. The Southern Baptist
Convention, the Southern Presbyterian Assembly, and the Southeastern
Jurisdiction of the Methodist Church, for example, have all gone on
record as opposed to segregation based on race. These organizations
are much ahead of their South Carolina affiliates. Many leading
segregationists, who have always considered themselves staunch church
supporters, consequently are caught in a squeeze between church
leadership and their own attitudes toward segregation. This patently
unhappy situation has led some outspoken “Christian segregationists”
to question the church’s taking a stand on the issue. The _News and
Courier_ wistfully hoped “that religion could be held above the
complicated social, political and economic features of the present
debate over race.” It was difficult enough “to fill churches with
worshippers and to insure financial support of religious work” even
when people were not being “alienated by social conflicts.” The
“pressure in the churches” for an end of segregation was “only one of
the symptoms of a sick world” which “plain people, guided by their own
sure instincts, must resist with all their might.”[183]
In the best tradition of the Social Gospel, the _Morning News_
initially took the opposite view, holding that the church certainly
“should become interested in segregation. So long as we limit
ministers to talks of home, mother, God and country,” wrote Editor
Jack H. O’Dowd, “we won’t have a Christian nation, but a nation that
tolerates the seeds of Christian thought and influence.” More churchmen
were needed who were willing “to tie the power of Christianity to
the problems of living.” Yet in less than three months O’Dowd was
criticizing the Reverend Edward L. Byrd of Florence for attacking
segregation. He argued that while segregation could not be justified
“on the basis of Christianity and absolute morality,” it was “easily
defended on the grounds of public good and social expediency.” Religion
was of “greatest benefit” only when its application would “enrich
the people. An immediate application of the theory of segregation’s
immorality would not be a blessing to our Southland.” Disparaging
Byrd’s call for “courageous and Christian leadership” in facing the
problem, the _Morning News_ stated that leadership was neither “a
matter of blowing the bugles of war from the rear” nor “a matter of
leading your people into destruction for a cause being fought the wrong
way at the wrong time.”[184]
Among the various Protestant religious denominations opponents of
integration have been either strong enough to prevent any action
from being taken or able to place the church on record as favoring
a continuation of racial segregation. The Methodist Church provides
perhaps the best example of a division of opinion. In October, 1954,
the annual conference of South Carolina Methodism by a vote of 289
to 148 adopted a resolution stating that the question of racial
integration in the public schools could “best be resolved on the state
or local level.”
It is apparent to us [said the resolution] that an attempt
to integrate the races in our public schools without regard
to their relative numbers would work grave injustice to
many innocent persons, and in the present instance we fear
the Negro would suffer most, as he has often when those
far removed from his every day problems have undertaken to
speak in his name.
Consideration must also be given to the large number of
Negro teachers and administrators in our public schools,
lest they be denied leadership among their people.
To compel a parent, whether white or Negro, to send his
child to school and at the same time to compel the child
to live under conditions which the parents regard to be
detrimental to the highest interest would, in our judgment,
introduce problems of serious import.[185]
The _News and Courier_ applauded this statement as “a strong and
fearless stand,” “a common sense approach,” and “a more truly
Christian attitude than the twisting of ‘equality’ to mean forced
association.”[186]
The following year, however, the Methodist Church’s annual conference
pulled the rug from under its more ardent segregationist friends. On
that occasion the conference officially recorded its opposition to the
Citizens Councils as organizations “formed for the express purpose of
exerting economic pressure.” This statement, introduced by the Reverend
A. McKay Brabham, Jr., of Aiken, and the Reverend J. B. Murray of
Orangeburg County, drew only scattered negative votes.
Reaction throughout the state was almost unanimously hostile. The
Methodists’ resolution, declared the _News and Courier_, “is not
necessarily a full reflection either of the facts or of the sentiments
of most churchmen in South Carolina. It is one thing to regard our
fellowmen as all God’s creatures. It is quite another thing meekly
to submit to pressure against customs and convictions held by our
people these many centuries.”[187] L. B. McCord, a former Presbyterian
minister, thought it “not unChristian to fire or not hire anyone whose
conduct is not wholesome and [does not] contribute to the best interest
in the home or wherever that person may work.”[188] The Kingstree
Methodist Church, in an especially strong condemnation of its parent
body, was still more emphatic. It charged that “too many leaders and
ministers in our Methodist Church have been saturated with propaganda
and even made to have a guilt complex with reference to the question
of integration of the races and have used their high offices as
ministers and writers, though innocently we hope, for the purpose of
disseminating propaganda which we believe is inspired by Communist or
Communist-front organizations.”[189]
The extent of the opposition in some areas to the resolution is well
illustrated by the action of the Reverend J. B. Murray’s congregation
in forcing his removal from his Orangeburg County charge. In announcing
Reverend Murray’s transfer, Dr. Pierce E. Cook, the Orangeburg District
Superintendent for the Methodist Church, stated that the Citizens
Councils were “not as bad” as the resolution implied. The Councils,
he said, were “trying to do something our people in this area are in
sympathy with.”[190]
Another example of pressure on supporters of the resolution was the
case of the Reverend E. S. Jones of St. Paul’s Methodist Church of
Orangeburg. Less than two weeks after adoption of the resolution,
Jones, one of its prominent backers, felt constrained to declare
publicly: “I have from the beginning felt that it was unwise for the
races to be thrown together in the public schools, and I have not
changed from that position. It is my conviction that the Church and its
ministry must always be positively Christian, not only in its ends but
in the ways and means adopted to attain these ends.”[191]
Only the maverick _Morning News_ found any merit in the Methodist
stand. The Conference’s action, wrote Editor O’Dowd, “was proper and
timely ... [and] to be commended.” Segregation extremists, he thought,
would have a hard time labeling this as the action of “communistic and
brainwashed” outsiders.[192]
On the local level several Methodist churches, generally in the
low-country, have exhibited concern about growing integration support
among church elements. The Hemingway Methodist Church adopted a
statement condemning the Supreme Court ruling as “groundless and
defenseless,” an “improper interpretation of the U. S. Constitution”
and an “unholy invasion of State’s Rights.” To place the white and
colored children together in churches and schools would be “to
guarantee the loss of the sense of biological difference” between
the races which would becloud “our fair land with a mongrelized,
second-rate people cancelling five or more centuries of progress.”
Integration was being accomplished “by propaganda and open advocacy
and by the cunning of idea infiltration.” The Methodists of Hemingway
graciously conceded “the Negro to be human just as the white man,
to be a growing citizen and entitled to equal cultural and economic
advantages.” The “mixing” of the races in church and school, however,
should be “allowed to die and remain so forever.”[193]
The Women’s Society of Christian Service of the Kingstree Methodist
Church insisted that “voluntary separation” of the races was no denial
of the “Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man.” The Society
desired “the advancement of Colored People, but not through the agency
of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.” In
the spirit of humility and soul searching, the ladies resolved that
“we desire to continue to work out our way of worshipping God and
in helping our Colored Brethren to do the same for themselves. All
sections of our great country are not the same, and what is best for
one section may not be best for another. We believe that in the sight
of God we have been working out our problems in a way acceptable to
Him, even though that way be not perfect, perhaps.”
“In some areas of Brotherhood” Church elements favoring integration
were “moving too fast,” continued the Kingstree ladies. “The coming of
the kingdom of God is gradual. We should concentrate on some of our
sins of greed, selfishness, worldliness, etc., before we attempt too
great a change otherwise.”[194]
The Manning Methodist Church adopted a resolution which affirmed belief
in the divine origin of man and the principle that all men “stand on a
spiritual equality.” But the Manning Methodists asserted that “certain
social, economic and cultural factors exist which make it impractical
and undesirable that members of the Negro race be received into and
made a part of this congregation.” Should the South Carolina Methodist
Church adopt a policy of racial integration in its churches, the
Manning Methodists would find it “impractical” to continue connection
with that body.[195]
The closeness of the division of opinion amongst South Carolina
Methodists toward the question of church integration was dramatized at
their annual conference in August, 1957, when by a vote of 287-261 it
was agreed to permit the denomination’s Negro churches to affiliate
with white Methodists where both agreed. Presiding Bishop Nolan B.
Harmon of Charlotte, North Carolina, was careful to point out that
the new course of policy had nothing to do with integration so far as
individuals were concerned and emphasized that no white church was
obliged to take in anyone. J. C. Holler of Columbia, conference lay
reader and one of the authors of the proposal, declared that “the
object of the plan was to take the race issue out of church law.” It
solidified local control as represented by States Rights, he asserted.
But opponents of the proposal thought differently. A Methodist layman,
D. D. Brown of Hemingway, warned that the plan was “a highway to
integration--a sedative to keep us quiet while the integration plan
is put into force.” Such proposals, he added, played into the hands
of “subversives” and would hasten the “mongrelization” of the races.
The Reverend B. Rhett Turnipseed, a retired clergyman from Greenville,
delivered an impassioned speech against the proposal. At the time of
the unification of the Northern and Southern branches of the Methodist
Church, said the Reverend Turnipseed, he was assured by two bishops
that the question of integration within the church would not arise.
“Brethren,” he declared, “I have kept the faith. My position hasn’t
changed.... It is unfortunate at this time for a denomination to
register itself for a paper like this. This is my swan song.”[196]
The Baptist Church, the state’s largest denomination, faced, or
more accurately dodged, the race issue at its annual convention in
November, 1954. The convention received a report from its Social
Service Commission urging Baptists to “protect the public school system
and seek to strengthen it in all possible ways.” Noting that “these
are the times that try men’s souls,” the Commission offered several
“guideposts” for Baptists to follow “in this crisis.” “God’s will”
should be “earnestly and prayerfully” sought. White Carolinians should
recognize and “humbly confess” that “in spite of strenuous efforts, and
because of inherited traditions ... adequate educational opportunities
for all our children” had not been provided in the past. And finally,
Baptist action should be based upon the recognition “of every person
as an individual, precious in the eyes of God.”[197] The Baptists,
by receiving a noncommittal statement of principles rather than in
adopting a formal resolution, deftly sidestepped the issue.
Individual Baptist ministers who have spoken out too strongly against
racial segregation have not been immune to pressure. The most widely
publicized incident involved the Reverend G. Jackson Stafford, pastor
of the Batesburg Baptist Church. The Reverend Stafford’s case was
particularly notable because Federal District Judge George Bell
Timmerman, Sr., and his son, Governor George Bell Timmerman, Jr., were
members of his congregation. Judge Timmerman, who has the hard face
of a Puritan elder, was chairman of the board of deacons. Stafford’s
difficulties arose from his vote in favor of a resolution adopted
by the Southern Baptist Convention endorsing the Supreme Court’s
desegregation decision. As a result, opposition to the minister
rapidly developed within the Batesburg congregation and finally forced
his resignation. With rare courage Stafford refused to renounce his
convictions “regarding Christian race relations.” He charged that his
resignation was made necessary by “several highly placed members of the
Batesburg church playing politics” with religion.[198]
One of the most notable and quoted addresses against integration
by a minister was delivered before the state Baptist conference on
evangelism in 1956 by the Reverend Dr. W. A. Criswell, president of the
Southern Baptist Convention and pastor of the First Baptist Church of
Dallas, Texas. Dr. Criswell told the Carolina evangelists:
That thing [integration] they are trying to ram down our
throats is a thing of idiocy and foolishness. Any man who
says he is altogether desegregated is soft in the head.
I’m a segregationist when it comes to whom my daughter is
going to associate with. I know some white trash I don’t
want my daughter running with.
I’m a segregationist when it comes to the woman I take home
at night. I pick out one, and that one is my wife. We are a
segregated family. We don’t invite everybody to come home
with us. If we did, we would not have a home, and the same
thing applies to the church....
Who is stirring up all this stuff? Is it God’s people or is
it somebody else? I happen to know it is somebody else....
This [resistance to desegregation] is part of the ordeal by
fire. When a true minister stands up and is true to God he
will have to face these pressures. But God will not let us
down.
They may put your feet to the fire, they can cut off your
head, but you can’t quit. You might want to be dead, but
you can’t quit. God has called you and you must go on.
God help us to be absolutely honest and absolutely fearless
in the things we believe, saying with Martin Luther, “Here
I stand, I can do no other.”[199]
The day after delivering this oration, the Reverend Doctor Criswell
was invited to address a joint session of the state legislature. In a
speech similar in tone and content to that quoted above, he told the
solons: “Sometimes you can get broad and liberal and it doesn’t matter
... but there are other things that are precious to you such as whom
are you going to marry and who is it that daughter of yours is going to
marry.”[200]
South Carolina Baptists, of course, are affiliated with the Southern
Baptist Convention. The latter was organized in pre-Civil War days
in protest against abolitionist activities of Northern Baptists.
Now one of the nation’s largest denominational groups, the Southern
Baptists have prospered and spread over most of the country. (The
Convention’s 1957 annual meeting, for example, was held in Chicago.)
In recent years the Convention has wandered further and further
away from the “traditional Southern viewpoint” on race relations,
especially since the 1954 Supreme Court decision. The Convention’s
action in forthrightly condemning racial segregation and approving
the Court decision has placed South Carolina Baptists in a quandary.
Increasingly local churches and church groups have been prone to
criticize the national Convention. Shortly after the 1957 Convention’s
condemnation of racial segregation the congregation of the First
Baptist Church of Orangeburg, one of the largest in the state, passed
a resolution offered by its Laymen’s Class which not only criticized
the Convention’s action but declared that “if such practices are
continued by the Southern Baptist Convention it will be for the best
interest of the Baptist Churches of the South to withdraw from the
so-called Southern Baptist Convention and organize an association with
churches” which favor racial segregation. Baptist churches in Olar,
Denmark, Manning, Sumter, Andrews and Branchville adopted similar
resolutions.[201]
South Carolina Episcopalians, who have a central jurisdiction for both
white and Negro churches, took a wavering stand on the segregation
issue at their 166th annual convention in 1956. By a vote of 94 to
43 they resolved “that there is nothing morally wrong in a voluntary
recognition of racial differences and that voluntary alignments can be
both natural and Christian.” The resolution continued that it was “the
sense of this convention that the integration problem caused by the
Supreme Court decision of 1954 as it applies to the Episcopal Church
should not be characterized as Christian or un-Christian, by reason of
the fact that it is either inter-racial or non-inter-racial. In such
choices, Christians may wisely exercise personal preference.”[202]
In adopting this resolution, the convention rejected “by a large
majority in a voice vote” a substitute resolution that would have
urged Episcopalians “to employ at diocesan and parochial levels a
strong degree of calmness and mutual toleration and respect for
disagreement.”[203]
The endorsement of voluntary segregation by South Carolina
Episcopalians was scathingly denounced by _The Living Church_, official
organ of the national Protestant Episcopal Church. Comparing the
resolution to the “Aryan Paragraph” which Hitler attempted to force on
all German churches, _The Living Church_ declared that “Christians do
not have the right to exercise personal preference to keep other people
out of the church.... It is one thing to be gentle and understanding
about sin; it is another thing to pass resolutions commending sin on a
‘voluntary’ basis ... open church membership is a first principle of
Christianity. When the church door is closed to a man because of his
race, a sin has been committed. When the church says that it is all
right for this to be done a heresy has been enunciated.”[204]
The intensity of opposition of many Episcopalians to integration is
illustrated by a resolution adopted by Episcopal women’s groups of
Sumter, Kingstree, Summerton, Statesburg, and Hagood. In fulfillment
of what they considered to be their duty “to see that those in
high offices in our government are not influenced by Communist
doctrines,” these women, whose mastery of dialectical materialism
might legitimately be questioned, pointed out for all to know that
integration was “a plan of the Communist Party,” a party which
acknowledged “no God except Communism.”[205]
The most overtly pro-segregation religious group in South Carolina is
the Southern Methodist Church, made up of those Methodists who had
refused to agree to the union of the Northern and Southern branches of
Methodism in the 1930’s. Headed in 1955 by the Reverend Lynn Corbit
of Bowman, it is relatively small numerically, comprising but three
conferences in the entire state. In 1955 the Southern Methodists
stated their position in the following terms: “The Southern Methodist
Church stands for continued racial segregation in the schools, state
and federal installations of all kinds, churches, and all ways of
life where it has always been practiced. We wish further to go on
record approving any law-abiding organization that has as its aims the
upholding of segregation in a peaceful manner.”[206]
In the _News and Courier_, a member of the Southern Methodists, S.
J. Summers, Jr., of Cameron, described his church as being composed
of “a dauntless group of congregations” which believed “ardently in
the rightness of the Southern Way of Life” and “in the kinship of
mankind under God but with the separations and differences He Himself
instituted and established.” He noted Southern Methodism’s belief that
“the Bible teaches of the decay and ultimate destruction of nations as
the inevitable outcome of decadent faith and mongrelized bloods.”[207]
Other denominations have been less outspoken in their views.
Presbyterians simply have continued their policy of segregation in
churches and educational institutions.[208] In Summerton, the late
Reverend Henry Rankin, Northern-born and Princeton-educated, was one of
the most active members of the Citizens Council. He sought to impress
Negroes “about the fallacy of trying to get their rights by going to
court.” Other Presbyterian ministers, as will be noted later, have
upheld the Court’s decision as being in line with the basic concepts
of Christianity. An unofficial Lutheran position was presented by H.
Odelle Harman, Lexington School Superintendent and delegate to the 1956
biennial convention of the national Lutheran church. In opposing a
resolution commending integration, Harman told the convention:
The Lutheran Church in South Carolina will not integrate.
Resolutions of the kind before us, then, can only serve
to hinder the progress and mission of our great church
and undo much of that which has been done in the South to
promote good will and better relations between the two
races.... The Christian church has done much to bring about
the confusion and bitterness that we are experiencing in
our racial relations in America today.... I do not believe
that segregation is basically a religious question.[209]
Among religious groups only the Catholics have given endorsement to
the Court decision and to the integration efforts of Negroes. The
missionary South Carolina Catholic Church has held that there is no
segregation before God; therefore, there should be none in the church.
The attitude was given tangible expression by the enrollment of five
Negro and 29 white pupils in St. Anne’s parochial school in Rock Hill
in the 1954-55 term, the only example of school integration in South
Carolina.[210] The Catholics, however, did not desegregate their other
schools or hospitals. The number of Catholics in the state is small and
only a tiny percentage of their membership is Negro.
Individual ministers frequently address themselves to the race issue.
Several condemn segregation as contrary to Christian teachings
concerning the brotherhood of man, though a much larger number holds
the continuation of segregation desirable. The Reverend Gaston Boyle,
a Presbyterian minister from John’s Island, declared that segregation
was “totally dependent upon the theory of a ‘superior race,’” a concept
which could not “be supported by science, Scripture, or any other
fact” and hence had to be upheld “by half-truths, misquotes and unjust
insinuations.” Dr. Carl Pritchett, pastor of the First Presbyterian
Church of Anderson, considered desegregation “not a troublesome
problem but a period of painful democratic growth.”[211] The Reverend
Edward L. Byrd, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Florence, was
especially outspoken. The decision of the Supreme Court, he said, was
“fundamentally right” and “doubtless legally correct.” Answering those
who used the Bible as authority for perpetuation of segregation, he
declared that “anyone who seeks shelter in the Bible for his racial
prejudice or his defense of segregation is walking on thin ice and
takes a position that cannot be soundly defended.” According to the
Reverend Byrd “no honest scholar and no honest minister can find
grounds for racial segregation in the Bible.” The Reverend Fred V.
Poag, pastor of the Shandon Presbyterian Church in Columbia, expressed
a similar view: “There is but one position for a Christian. I believe
the Church must be open to all regardless of color.”[212]
Clergymen endorsing segregation find it perfectly compatible with the
fundamental teachings of Christianity. The Reverend J. M. Lane, pastor
of the Tabernacle Baptist Church of Orangeburg, declared, “I think the
Bible teaches segregation and I believe it is the best for both races.
I feel that the work of the Citizens Councils, without violence and
force, is the Christian method of dealing with the move by the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People to force integration
in the public schools.”[213] The Reverend L. B. McCord of Clarendon
feared “mongrelization.” “Some people feel that segregation is a
sin,” he declared. “That isn’t true. Integration of the races would
definitely be sinful.” The Reverend J. J. Patrick, a retired Methodist
minister of Ruffin, stated that the South desired segregation “because
the best white and colored people believe in God and the Bible.”
Writing in the _News and Courier_, he declared,
We were all living in peace and contentment until that old
serpent, the devil, that beguiled Adam and Eve to disobey
God and eat the forbidden fruit, led the NAACP to scatter
propaganda down here and a few (big heads) were beguiled to
follow their teachings....
They [the politicians] with the communists and the NAACP,
with some of the socialist preachers, influenced the U. S.
Supreme Court Judges to try to nullify the Constitution and
force us to consolidate the schools and place our little
children in classes with Negro children, contrary to God’s
law.
God created the different races and set their bounds and
habitation. God commanded, demanded and taught segregation
from the Flood right on down until the Bible was
written....[214]
The aged and gravel-voiced Dr. Bob Jones, fundamentalist par
excellence, founder of the Bob Jones University in Greenville, and
one of the state’s best known Baptist clergymen, objected to making
segregation a Christian issue when Christianity was not involved.
Like Patrick, he said that any plan for “the intermingling of the
races” was the work “of the devil.” The Christian educator criticized
“agitators from outside the South and demagogue politicians” who
were “only interested in the colored vote.” Christians of both races
should “tell the folks who come in with all this foreign influence
to get back where they came from.”[215] In like manner, the Reverend
Edward B. Guerry, Rector of the lowcountry St. James’ and St. John’s
Episcopal Parishes, denounced the Supreme Court desegregation decision
as “unrealistic,” “unfortunate,” and conducive to “discord, confusion,
and ... sharp conflict” among the American people. Integration would
simply “deepen” any “sense of inferiority” the Negro might have. The
rector did not believe it was “in keeping with the mind of our Lord
Jesus Christ to force the Kingdom of God on people either by judicial
edict, or legislative action, or ecclesiastical pressure.”[216] Still
another proponent of segregation, the Reverend E. R. Mason, a retired
Columbia Methodist cleric, decried integrationist assaults on “those
institutions that we must have or we perish,” e.g., “God, your church,
home and schools.” Integration’s “true motive,” he declared, was
“infiltrating the Black race into the White race.”[217] The Reverend
M. A. Woodson of the Bethel Baptist Church of Olanta told the Lake
City Citizens Council that the connection between the Communists and
the NAACP had been “conclusively established.” The Citizens Councils,
he said, were the right hands in the fight for constitutional
government and states rights. “We must strive to leave our children a
constitutional form of government and a segregated society that works
in harmony.”[218]
Pro-segregation clergymen have not evolved a systematic theological
basis for defense of their position. Rather each minister has developed
his own. Sermons and statements upholding traditional Southern race
patterns abound with quotations of Biblical authority. In a sermon that
might well have been delivered in the 1850’s in defense of slavery,
Dr. E. E. Colvin, pastor of the Immanuel Baptist Church of Orangeburg,
asserted that
... the Old Testament scriptures recognize the existence of
things as they are. We find that also in the New Testament.
Jesus did not attempt to change or reform society in his
day by the use of force. There was slavery in his day.
There were many other civil and social ills in his day but
never did Jesus attempt to use force or advocate force. In
the centuries that have passed since then the teachings of
Jesus have brought to pass tremendous changes.
Paul sent Onesimus, the slave, back to his former owner,
Philemon. Paul didn’t write to Philemon and say, “You have
no right to own this man.” Not at all. Paul respected the
law and the right to private property back in that day.
In the New Testament we find instructions given to slaves
and to masters telling them what to do. “Servants, be
obedient unto them that according to the flesh are your
Masters, and ye masters do the same things unto them, and
forbear threatening; knowing that He who is both their
Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no respect of
persons with Him.” Ephesians 6:5,9.
We find no attempt whatever to overthrow slavery suddenly
and by force. “Let each man abide in that calling wherein
he was called. Wast thou called being a bondservant? Care
not for it: nay, even if thou canst become free, use
it rather. For he that was called in the Lord being a
bondservant, is the Lord’s freeman: likewise, he that was
called being free, is Christ’s bondservant. Ye were brought
with a price; abide with God.” I Corinthians 7:20-24. The
light of the Scriptures shows that we know by experience,
that social changes take time.
The solution offered by the Doctor was for “our Negro friends” to
“listen to reason and continue the practice of segregation on a
voluntary basis” so that “peace and harmony” might prevail. Should “the
spirit of hatred” induce them to seek integration, they would create
a condition which would “do as much damage in the long run as the War
Between the States did a hundred years ago.”[219]
Similar opinions are frequently expressed by others--from both the
clergy and laity. In a letter to the editor of the _Independent_,
James B. Davis of Anderson found scriptural sanction for opposition to
integration in Leviticus 19:19: “Ye shall keep my statutes, Thou shalt
not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind, thou shalt not sow thy
field with a mingled seed.” Citing this authority he wrote: “Oh yes,
we are careful about our pure cattle, poultry, dogs, etc., but we have
advocates in our government who would crossbreed the people, whom God
has put definite marks of color, build and features into, for their own
glory. I have seen a few half breed Negro and white, that is mingled
seed, and God pity an unfortunate child that must face the world a
bastard, with a mingled color in his skin and hair. And he is a bastard
because God has designated nations and languages, and directed us to
go to our father’s people for a husband or wife.” Davis felt that the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was a “malignant growth on a
righteous document.” The Constitution should never have been amended.
“Like our Holy Bible, it was good enough” in its original form.[220]
Another letter writer, Margaret L. Bostwick of Charleston, believed
that a cardinal message of the Bible was “that Israel--ALL Israel,
not just Judah” had been punished and was still being punished “for
having disobeyed the many severe injunctions against the mixing of
races.”[221] Similarly Lawrence Neff of Atlanta noted in the _Morning
News_ that “even the very elect may sometimes be deceived, or deceive
themselves.” According to Neff, “Jesus was the most consistent and the
most inflexible segregationist the world has ever known.” As “proof”
he asserted that Jesus, “in commissioning the 12,” had said to them,
“Go not to the Gentiles and into any city of the Samaritans enter
not....”[222]
Similar statements, indeed, have been legion. An unsigned article in
the _News and Courier_ editorial page reminded readers that Jesus
“advised all Christians to seek contentment, rather than advancement,
no matter where Providence had placed them.” Such advice, intimated the
article, might well be followed by Negroes seeking integration.[223]
Echoing these sentiments and adding a few twists of his own, E. Robert
Rowell, a “Lay Reader” of the Trio Methodist Church, declared that
it was “against God’s divine will for the races to be destroyed by
intermarriage and the bearing of offspring by such marriages.” In
the segregation fight, thought Rowell, the end justified the means
because God’s will was at issue. For this reason he gave unqualified
endorsement to such practices as economic boycotts and pressures not
only “against the Negroes who sign desegregation petitions or who are
members of the NAACP,” but also against “those who are in sympathy
with such people.” He favored refusal by his church “to receive or
support any minister who believes in the false doctrine of mixing the
races.”[224]
Others, too, were concerned with showing God’s approval of segregation.
A close study of the Bible, declared the Right Reverend A. S. Thomas,
a retired Episcopal Bishop of Wadmalaw, revealed a “plain implication”
that segregation was not only consistent with brotherly love but had
been ordained by the “appointment of God.” Anyone who attempted to
“facilitate and expedite the amalgamation of the Negro race with other
races” might well be “frustrating a great purpose of God.” Racial
segregation _per se_ was in no wise unChristian. Its unChristian
aspects were due to “man’s fallen nature, not to segregation itself.”
Integration would please only unnamed leaders of the nation who wished
“to appease atheistic Communism.”[225]
If God approved segregation, then logically integration was the work
of the devil. Mrs. Edna M. Smith of Charleston blamed the integration
drive with its “fear, confusion and despair” on “Satan” who was
“using all these weapons to gain more power, because he knows his
power is coming to an end and he wants to take all that he can with
him when he goes down into destruction and death.” The Reverend Paul
M. Pridgen, pastor of the First Baptist Church of North Charleston,
announced that “there is no room in Heaven for the NAACP or any other
organization that stirs up race hatred.” The _News and Courier_ took
issue with Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s statement that heaven was
“completely unsegregated.” No one knew “for sure” what heaven would
be like, declared the _News and Courier_, since “no eye-witness” had
returned “to give us the direct word.” However whites were reassured:
“Surely in Heaven there will be no compulsory sharing by incompatible
elements.”[226] Apparently _someone_ had returned and had imparted this
information to the _News and Courier_.
On occasion, a voice of protest has been raised against the use of
religion as a justification for segregation. The _Morning News_
attacked the statement by a candidate for the State House of
Representatives who had said that if God had intended for the races
to be mixed he would have made all people the same color. “Using the
same syllogism,” said the paper, “it could be argued that if God had
intended for people to wear clothes, people would be born clothed; or
if God intended for people to ride, they would be born with wheels
rather than feet.”[227] A similar protest came from a Charleston
non-conformist. How long, asked H. B. Clark, would the South fail
to see “that any denial of a fellow human’s rights” constituted “a
violation of Christ’s supreme commandment that we love our neighbor as
ourselves?”[228]
The _News and Courier_ has leveled some of its most bitter editorial
blasts at those church leaders and groups who have taken a stand
against segregation.[229] The attitude of this paper is a clear
indication that leading segregation spokesmen recognize in the
church a potential and powerful defaulter from the solid front
against desegregation. In seeking to counteract clerical criticism
of segregation, the _News and Courier_ editorials constantly have
advised church leaders to steer clear of such a controversial issue
as race segregation. According to these strictures, segregation is
right and desirable, and something for which no Southerner has to be
apologetic. “To upset time-honored balances that keep the peace” would
be both wrong and scandalous. Attempting to dispose of the moral and
psychological implications of racism, the _News and Courier_ insists
that Southern whites should entertain no sense of guilt in connection
with segregation policies. “It was God who created people with
different physical characteristics. Who is to say that the races He
created separate and distinct should now be scrambled?” If separation
on the basis of race were sinful, so was separation by faiths and
creeds. The trouble was that “well-meaning reformers” were confusing
“religious principles with individual social customs.” “Just as morals
are not meant to be observed only on Sunday, social customs also
operate seven days a week.”
The mounting criticism of segregation from non-Southern religious
sources, particularly from the National Council of Churches, is
especially resented in South Carolina. Such ill based criticism,
asserted the _News and Courier_, constituted a part of the general
assault on “the three bulwarks of American decency ... the church,
the school and the home.” Those who engaged in such criticism might
themselves be guilty of religious bigotry. “No church” had “sole
possession of the last word either in religious faith or moral
rectitude.” God had not yet revealed His “precise purpose” in creating
people with different racial characteristics. In more ominous tones,
the _News and Courier_ declared “well-meaning” but “misguided”
religious leaders were treading “on dangerous ground in pointing
critical fingers at an entire region’s social structure.” Southerners
would “fight and die” for the freedom “to pick their own associates.”
The _News and Courier_ has suggesed a complete renunciation by the
church of all interest in the race issue. “Those of the white clergy
who have been busily promoting the mixture of the races,” it asserted,
could better serve their congregations by returning “to the religious
and moral aspects of their high calling and leave sociological and
psychological politics to the politicians.” Concurrently, if the Negro
clergy “would devote more time to inspiring their flocks to improve
their morals, and less to inciting them to get in with the white folks,
they would be performing a better service for their people.”
That these attitudes are popular among South Carolinians of all
stations is illustrated by the fact that on frequent occasions they
have been heartily endorsed in letters to the editor. As a case in
point Archibald Rutledge, poet laureate of South Carolina, viewed “with
misgiving the church’s stupid attitude toward segregation.” He regarded
the _News and Courier’s_ policy as “so fair, so calm, so profound,” a
policy notable for its “clarity” and “justice.” Rutledge was especially
happy with the paper’s “distinction between religion and ancient and
salutary social customs.” “I KNOW you are right,” he concluded, “and it
is high time that religious leaders realize how wrong, even how wicked,
they are.”[230]
Concerning the race issue then, South Carolina churches generally
give at least indirect endorsement to a continuation of segregation.
In large part both church organizations and individual ministers
attempt to steer clear of the issue, preferring to concentrate on less
controversial sins.