Dear Sisters and Brothers,

While other journals continued to ignore Carl Spain's 1960 ACC Lecture, the Christian Chronicle followed its report with an editorial and the publication of two letters. Four more letters would appear in subsequent issues. Only one of the six opposed the stand that Spain and the CC had taken.

Predictably, the CC editorial focuses on the person and work of Marshall Keeble. Remarkably, it relies on a view of Keeble from beyond the Churches of Christ and the South: an editorial in the Marshalltown (Iowa) Times Republican.

The brotherhood had its attention sharply focused on the issue of church and school integration by Carl Spain of the Abilene Christian College Bible faculty at the February lectures here.

This lecture delivered by one of the most respected preachers and teachers in the church today, has caused considerable thought in an area which we have tended to minimize and overlook.

Several other brethren have long been guiding lights in pointing up the fact that God can use a black man as an efficient and effective tool in spreading his kingdom.

One of these was Nigerian evangelist C. A. O. Essien, the founder of the work in that country who probably converted 10,000 himself. He died in February.

Another on our own doorstep is Marshall Keeble, the 81-year-old dean of the Negro cause among our brethren in the United States. For years he has been quietly sowing the seeds that will eventually break down the barriers that cause mistrust among Negro and White.

Keeble is the former president of Nashville Christian Institute, a school for Negroes in Tennessee, and he has held gospel meetings all over the country. It is of somewhat more significance that he is probably the only Negro evangelist to regularly appear on predominantly white lectureships of the Christian colleges. It is said he has baptized 30,000 himself.

He is in the news again this week because of a proposed evangelistic trip to Nigeria. . . . But we'd like to point up what the outside world thinks of him as was portrayed in a recent editorial in the local paper at Marshalltown, Iowa, where Keeble was conducting a meeting (The Rev's are deleted):

"There is an evangelist in Marshalltown who deserves more than the attention usually given in church circles. He is Marshall Keeble of Nashville, Tenn., a Negro minister who can be heard at the Coliseum on Sunday at 1:30 a.m. and at the Anson Pavilion week nights at 7:30, under the auspices of the Church of Christ.

"Keeble is past 80 (preaching 60 years) and has a long record of holding meetings and organizing churches for the colored people. Many people will enjoy his originality and simple eloquence in interpreting the Bible.

"He is an example of the deep spiritual faith found largely among Negroes of the South and he makes friends for the Negro wherever he goes. There will be no racial agitation nor hate in his path.

"He is typical of those Negro Moderates who understand and sympathize with the error and sins of the whites. His message is so much more inspiring than that of such Negro leaders as the Rev. Luther King, the Alabama boycott expert, who has spoken in Iowa.

"Many whites have come to realize that Negro leaders like Keeble, and the leaders of the National Urban League, deserves[sic] all the encouragement that can be given them."--Marshalltown Times Republican, March 12, 1960.

"If judged strictly in terms of the immediacy and intensity of audience reaction," Banowsky writes,

Spain's iconoclastic lecture must be viewed as the most spectacular speech ever delivered in Abilene. Although his published manuscript was an erudite statement of philosophical morality standards ranging from dialectical materialism to existentialism, Spain drew a sharp bead upon the more practical social injustices encompassed by his assignment. Charging that racial inequalities stemmed from a concept of political naturalism, he boldly challenged the leaders of the brotherhood's schools to justify the theory of racial supremacy which held sway on their campuses. . . . it was Spain's speech which had jolted the church. Spain's 1960 remarks had been received with mixed and extreme feelings. As he spoke, murmurs of approval rippled through the packed auditorium. He received lusty "amens" at crucial junctures, like when he shouted: "If the shoe fits and pinches, there is nothing I can do about it." [384-385, 387]

In the CC editorial we can see Marshall Keeble from yet another perspective--from beyond the Churches of Christ and beyond the South. The invidious comparison of Martin Luther King to Marshall Keeble is ironic; only in retrospect could most people in white America begin to understand the depth of Christian commitment in King's nonviolent movement. Only when they could no longer evade the burning anger ignited by 350 years of injustice could most white Americans begin to appreciate what King had done for them. In his way--the way of indirection, motivating whites to "do the right thing" and teaching blacks how to work with whites--Keeble had helped to make possible King's movement of "direct action." Indeed, even as the Iowa editorial writer is recommending Keeble's way as the preferred alternative to King, it is Keeble's disciple Fred Gray who is keeping the movement alive in the courts and keeping King out of jail. If Fred Gray had not learned the way of Keeble, he might never have practiced law in Alabama. And if there had been no Fred Gray, there would have been no bus boycott in Montgomery. All this the writers of editorials in Marshalltown and Abilene cannot know in 1960. We, on the other hand, may ponder the inexhaustible grace of God, who in all things works for good with those who love him.

May God have mercy.

dhaymes, his mark +