by Don Haymes
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
By 1963 Richard Nathaniel Hogan has spent almost 40 years whipping the Methodists for "digressions" and deviations from the letter if not the spirit of the Bible. Now he finds and reproduces in the Christian Echo a headline and photograph from the Los Angeles Times that show the Methodist Church to have far exceeded the righteousness of the Churches of Christ in the matter closest to Hogan's own heart. It pains Hogan to admit any virtue in a church other than his own, but this occasion offers him a pretext once again to exhort the Churches of Christ to repentance and to challenge them to positive action.
ASSIGNMENTS ANNOUNCED BY BISHOP
The footnote says "Without Prejudice". It is pointed out [5] in James 2:1-4 that those who have respect to persons are partial and judges of evil thoughts. In verse 9 he said that those who have respect to persons COMMIT SIN. Paul said "The wages of sin is death." Rom. 6:23. But it seems that some of my white brethren had rather accept the wages of sin which is death than to allow the Negro Christian to worship with them or attend school with them.
As I pointed out in the last issue of the Christian Echo that the average white man, in order to keep the Negro out of their congregations and out of their schools will invariably raise the question, "Do you want your daughter to marry a Negro?" This is a time-worn question and is a tool of the Devil to uphold prejudice which is a sin against God. This is absolute proof that the average white man doesn't have any confidence in the white women. He thinks that if the Negro goes to church where the white woman is or attend school where the white woman is that the Negro will get her. I cannot understand to save my life why the white women will not rise up and stop such crack-pots from reflecting on them with such questions. True, a few white men have married Negro women and a few Negro men have married white women and they will continue to do so as long as the world stands.
In the deep south where they hang them, burn them and shoot them in the back a few of them get together and sometime they leave the south and meet in the north or west and marry. A few will continue to do it. But it is a proven fact that the nature of man is to want that which is forbidden him. Inter-marriage of white and Negro will be almost eliminated if the white man will stop trying to keep them apart.
The very idea of a College calling itself a Christian College that will not allow a Negro Christian to study God's word in it or be taught by it that he may be prepared to carry out the great world-wide commission of the Son of God. These Colleges are headed by so-called gospel preachers and they are living in rebellion against God, for God said, "Teach ALL NATIONS". Matt 28:19. These preachers are willing to teach everybody but the Negro. Some of them are blaming the Board of Directors for keeping the Negro out of their colleges, but the Board of Directors are made up of Preachers, Elders and Deacons. If any other man is on the Board, it is because of his prestiege[sic] as a business man or because he has money.
David Lipscomb College of Nashville, Tenn., Freed-Hardeman College of Henderson, Tenn., Harding College of Searcy, Ark. and others are headed by preachers who claim to speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent. But they speak where the Bible does not speak and they are silent where the Bible is not silent. Why are they so silent on James 2:9?,[sic] James 2:1, Jude 16, Eph. 6:9, Rom. 2:11.
They speak where the Bible has not spoken when they say that God endorses segregation. I challenge anyone to find a place in the Bible since the death of Christ upon the Cross, where there is even a hint of endorsement of segregation of God's people. Let any one try it and witness a failure.
Every Christian should stop supporting these schools that deny the Negro admittance in them to prepare for the great work of soul-saving. Young Christians should refuse to attend such schools.
It would be a blessing if we had more Christian men like Brother Gordon Teel, who is the Minister of the Vermont Avenue Congregation in Los Angeles, California. They have a sign in front of their building that says "All Races are WELCOME." They mean it too, for not long ago they appointed a Negro as one of their Deacons. We need more gospel preachers with back-bone like Brother Carl Spain [of] Abilene Christian College. Because of Brother Carl Spain and Christians like him, Abilene Christian College has moved the racial bars and Negroes are permitted to attend school there under wholesome Christian environment.
If the Methodist can appoint a Negro as the minister of an all-white congregation, the so-called Churches of Christ that will not allow a Negro to attend their services should drop their heads in shame. However, the Negro can be consoled with the fact that Christ is not in such congregations, nor with such colleges. It is a pity that our brethren are losing their souls because of their prejudice against people of another race. Jesus said, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.["] Matt. 16:24.
That the appointment of an African American to the ministry of an "all-white church" rates a headline and a photograph in the region's leading newspaper indicates that it is an unusual event in 1963 California and the nation. Methodist polity permits a bishop or district superintendent to impose a minister on a local parish, but we may be sure that this assignment has been very carefully orchestrated. Autonomy of local congregations can work both ways on this issue, as Hogan well knows. The Vermont Avenue church, located in the "changing neighborhood" around Pepperdine College, has in 1963 recognized a black member as a deacon. But within a decade Pepperdine will flee its changing neighborhood for the upscale enclave of Malibu, becoming a "university" for the children of the rich. It will maintain its historic campus in Inglewood for another decade as a kind of academic Siberia, selling it to an entrepreneurial black sectarian named Fred Price in the mid-1980s. Many of the white members at Vermont Avenue will disappear as white flight accelerates in the wake of rioting in nearby Watts. Today its minister is a person of Japanese descent who is said to have been interned in an American concentration camp during World War II. Los Angeles County is today deeply polarized by racial division and a notorious history of blatant racist conduct in the agencies responsible for public order. We may wonder whether the Churches of Christ and Pepperdine could have taken a stand here and altered the destiny of Los Angeles. We may hope that it is not now too late to do so.
A "black minister of an all-white church" is, of course, an oxymoron. Few if any churches in any denomination have been able to approach "racial balance" in membership, although some have made progress in rhetoric. "Color blindness" must, ironically, be preceded by color sensitivity and genuine empathy. That will not happen without conscious desire and conscious effort by all the parties involved. This, as Hogan knows, is the word of Jesus in which we find "life."
May God have mercy.
dhaymes, his mark +