The American Missionary | Page 7

have never doubted that if
the subject once came fairly up for discussion, the Conference
Committee would learn something they did not know before about their
denomination. Encouraged by the indorsement given by the
Presbyterian Assembly to the position we have maintained against the
separation of Christians in the Church of Christ, we shall not neglect
the same conflict going on among the Congregationalists and
Episcopalians.
_From the Christian Union._
The question whether the Church of Christ shall recognize the color
line is coming up to vex in turn each one of the great Protestant
denominations in the North. We say Protestant denominations
advisedly; for we do not believe that the Roman Catholic Church
would for a moment entertain the notion of excluding a man either
from its sacraments, its worshiping assemblies, or its priesthood, on the
ground of color, or would recognize in its worshiping assemblies any
distinction except the broad one between clergy and laity. To do so
would be to violate all its traditions and history.
In the Protestant denominations of the North, the question is
complicated by two considerations: a strong anti-caste prejudice in the
Northern constituency, on which the missionary organizations are
dependent for their support, and a strong ecclesiastical ambition and
spiritual desire, commingled in various proportions, to push on the
work of church extension in the South, where it cannot, apparently, be
pushed forward with early success, if caste is ignored and colored
Christians are admitted to white churches, and colored clergymen to
white ecclesiastical assemblies, on equal terms with their white
brethren. In the Diocesan Episcopal Convention of South Carolina it is,
therefore, proposed to amend the diocesan constitution so as to provide
for two Conventions, a white and a colored. In the Presbyterian Church
the difference of opinion on this subject constitutes one bar to a union

between the Northern and Southern churches, or even to co-operation
between them. This has been for the time removed by a sort of
concordat by which the relations of the colored and the white members
in the two churches respectively are allowed to remain in statu quo, and
the settlement of the problem is relegated to the future. In the
Congregational denomination, the question is likely to come up before
the meeting of the American Home Missionary Society at Saratoga
early in June, and again before the National Council at Worcester in
October. In the State of Georgia, there has been for some time an
Association of Congregational churches mainly composed of colored
people, and largely under the fostering care of the American
Missionary Association. A Congregational work has latterly been
started among the whites under the fostering care of the American
Home Missionary Society. And recently a body of independent
Methodists, really Congregational in the principles of their government,
and having a considerable number of churches in Georgia, and some in
other Southern States, has become also Congregational in name. Both
bodies will have representatives, presumably, at Saratoga, certainly at
the meeting of the National Council at Worcester in October, and the
latter body, if not the former, will have to determine whether it will
recognize two Congregational Associations in one State, the sole
difference between them being that one Association is composed
wholly of white people, and the other chiefly of colored people; unless,
indeed--and of this there is some hope--the Congregational
Associations of Georgia solve the problem by coming together and
forming one body. There have been some correspondence and
conferences to consider the possibility of such a union.
We find ourselves on this subject occupying a position midway
between the radicals on the one side and the conservatives on the other.
In some parts of the South, the whites and Negroes must for many
years to come be educated in separate schools and worship in separate
churches. They need, to some extent, a different education; they desire,
to a large extent, a different kind of religious worship and instruction.
The preaching which appeals to the Anglo-Saxon race appears cold and
unmeaning to the warm-blooded Negro; the preaching which arouses in
him a real religious fervor appears to his cold-blooded neighbor
imaginative, passionate, unintelligent. To attempt to force the two races

into a fellowship distasteful to both, to attempt to require the two to
listen to the same type of sermon and join in the same forms of worship,
is a "reform against nature." Even if the erection and maintenance of
two churches where one would suffice for the worshipers of both
classes involves some additional expense, the expense may not be
greater than the resultant spiritual advantage.
But to close the doors of any church on any Christian is in so far to
make it an unchristian church. To go into the South to establish white
churches from which, whether by a