ACE RELATIONS AND THE AMERICAN HOLINESS MOVEMENT

RACE RELATIONS AND THE AMERICAN HOLINESS MOVEMENT

James Earl Massey

Some years ago I was privileged to take part in a special conference of Evangelicals, assigned to report about the contributions of African Americans to Evangelicalism — that perennially interesting and mosaic-like spiritual movement. It was not difficult to trace and comment on those contributions because, quite early in the history of the black presence in this land, blacks received the gospel of Christ with openness. They rigorously tested and proved its viability, and began passing on the evangelical witness with concern, creativity, and gusto.

As an African-American Christian, I felt an understandable pride as I handled my assignment.[1] The pride had to do with the three particular contributions I sought to highlight at the time. One was the widespread development of evangelical churches within the African American grouping; a second was the continuing influence on the Evangelical music scene of the black church tradition of celebrative and self-expressive worship music; and the third contribution was the courageously prophetic witness African- American believers have steadily made in calling white believers to become more socially responsible in their concern to evangelize. The 1970s had just ended, and that decade was a pregnant period of years during which Evangelical Christianity had grown faster in America than any other religious movement, with a grouping that then numbered more than forty million. Yes, I felt a distinct pride in reporting about how African-American believers had responded to the gospel, and had eagerly busied themselves in passing on the Evangelical heritage with ready faith, steady creativity, and acknowledged contagion.

Sensitizing Evangelicals

Among the more than forty million reported at that time as comprising Evangelical Christianity in America were many African-American believers. The membership of most of these was in black evangelical churches which gave them a spiritual home, a meaningful social setting, and a political base from which to engage the contrary forces and patterns of a racist society. Their history of organized separateness from white churches in groupings designated as “African Methodist” or “African Baptist,” etc., was due, in the main, to the problematic course of Evangelical Protestantism under the influence of those contrary forces and patterns in a racially partitioned society.[2]

Efforts to sensitize the evangelical conscience about racism and social implications of the faith have been as prolonged, persistent, and necessary as those to stimulate the national conscience. It is a matter of fact, and a matter for shame, that major changes regarding race relations and social action began taking place earlier on the social scene in America than they did within the churches of Evangelical Protestantism. To be sure, some change in evangelical social views was stimulated by Carl F. H. Henry since 1956 through his editorial writings in Christianity Today magazine and in 1964 through his pacesetting book Aspects of Christian Social Ethics. Also in 1968 Sherwood Wirt called attention in his The Social Conscience of the Evangelical to several issues needing a decisively Christian response from evangelicals.[3] But one must not overlook the fact that Carl Henry and Sherwood Wirt, among others, were writing and publishing their views to the church during the era of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Those were the strategic and stressful decades when the American social scene was being impacted by the charismatic presence of vocal and socially active African American leaders who unrelentingly kept calling the nation to make its “liberty and justice for all” motto a lived reality for all its citizens.

As for efforts to sensitize Evangelical believers for greater social and racial openness, I am reminded of something that happened during the first World Congress on Evangelism, a convention that brought evangelical leaders from around the world to Berlin, Germany, for a ten-day gathering in November, 1966. During the convention, those of us who were delegates heard many position papers which treated aspects of the Congress theme, “One Race, One Gospel, One Task.” But, as the Congress continued across those ten days, some of us who were African American noticed that no attention had been devoted in any of the position papers to the fast part of the theme, “One Race.” Nor had any paper on that aspect been distributed to us for a private reading, as had some topics related to other aspects of the general theme. The Congress delegates had been drawn together from across the world, literally, and the vast assemblage represented the largest ecumenical and evangelical gathering of the Church since Pentecost in A.D. 33. Even though it reflected a great diversity of nationalities, geographical locations, and color distinctions, no major statement about the oneness of the human race had been given in any plenary session!

A few of us African-American delegates discussed this omission among ourselves and finally gained audience with Carl F. H. Henry, the Congress Chairman, to voice to him our question about this evident gap in planning. Interestingly, we later learned that some delegates from India, Africa, and South America had also noticed the omission. Chairman Henry listened to us with openness, and soon acknowledged to us that the planning committee had taken the “One Race” aspect of the general theme as a given, and therefore had not assigned anyone to treat it! Aware now of the problem as we had voiced it, he apologized on behalf of the planning committee and asked if we would be willing to work at developing a summary statement about “One Race” which could be included in the final report scheduled to be distributed to the world press as an outcome of the Congress. Although it was rather late in the day for anything like a major paper on the matter, six of us agreed to help develop such a statement.

Jimmy McDonald, Howard O. Jones, Bob Harrison, Ralph Bell, Louis Johnson, and I worked into the late hours of that night. We managed to finish a clearly focused statement on race. Our statement underscored human equality as a biblical principle rooted in the oneness of the human family under God as Creator. We stressed the imperative of agape love in our dealings with all humans, and the need to reject racial and national barriers which forbid full fellowship and cooperative ministry in the Church. As it turned out, the section the six of us prepared about the world-wide problem of racism was undoubtedly the strongest statement evangelicals had ever made on the subject until that time.[4] It was a basic statement that declared our biblically informed understanding about racism as an unjust attitude, a social evil, and a barrier to cooperative ministry as believers. Within another decade, by 1977, Evangelical Christianity in America would comprise a mosaic-like grouping of more than forty million members,[5] but its influence as a leader in fostering racial understanding and social harmony in the land would, sad to say, still remain negligible.

Relations Within the American Holiness Movement

The story has not been very different with the churches which coinprise what I refer to here as the American Holiness Movement. This movement is comprised of those church groups with a history of an emphasis on Christian holiness and with some historical relation to the transmission of this tradition through holiness associations and conventions. In fact, in tracing the patterned story of the Holiness Movement in America one will discover that the number of blacks involved in its life and witness has been even more disturbingly meager than the number of blacks in the Evangelical Movement.

A significant number of black evangelical leaders have had ministries which involved them steadily in both black and white settings throughout Evangelicalism. They comprise a very distinct group whose spiritual concerns and emphases are rooted in the theology and cultus of the Bible school and biblical seminary movement which trained them. Although they have often differed with white evangelicals over how to answer certain social questions, and found it necessary to identify and sometimes redefine the issues for which white definitions were judged inadequate, they nevertheless have been respected and continued to serve as bridgebuilders between the races.[6] The number of such leaders within the American Holiness Movement is considerably smaller. Let me trace the reason or reasons why I believe this has been, and continues to be so.

In my judgment, the black presence in the American Holiness Movement has been comparatively slight because this movement’s major concerns have not seemed as appealing or germane to black believers as has the basic salvation emphasis articulated by the Evangelical Movement. Although it is clear that the Scriptures call for a dedicated life that honors God and the divine will-a call that is indeed known and heralded in the black churches, African Americans have been “grabbed” by other currents of truth and meaning in the Scriptures. One in particular is that strong and steady current in Old Testament thought that accents the importance of social regard and race uplift. When African-American Christians think and witness about renewal and restoration, or about Christian unity, they also envision what these should mean for those who have been victimized by a racist system. In addition, they reason that any personal quest for spiritual depth or closeness to God must inevitably include some concern for bettering the social process in America.

Given America’s racist environment, one of the predominant issues with which African-American believers and their churches have been concerned is social survival. Along with the biblical message about salvation through faith in Jesus, they have been encouraged by the clarifying anthropology taught in the Scriptures, that validating message about all humans being children of God. Given our set of social circumstances in the checkered course of American history, the concern of black believers has been for salvation and survival, with the social implications of the faith being viewed as far more germane than an emphasis on a strictly personal pietistic inwardness. This is not to say that a concern for the deeper life is neglected; it is rather to say that the social and the spiritual are viewed in a more related fashion by black believers than by most proponents of the Holiness tradition.[7]

The concern for freedom, social equality, and general race uplift has so absorbed the energies of black church leaders in particular and black churches in general that sometimes little energy has remained for much else. To sense the extent to which this has been the case, one need only explore the various histories of the black denominations, on the one hand, and the studies which report about black membership in predominately white denominations, on the other.[8]

By and large, African-American believers tend to honor and promote what Peter J. Paris has aptly described as “the black Christian tradition.” As Paris has explained it:

The tradition that has always been normative for the black churches and the black community is not the so-called Western Christian tradition per se, although this tradition is an important source for blacks. More accurately, the normative tradition for blacks is that tradition governed by the principle of nonracism which we call the black Christian tradition. The fundamental principle of the black Christian tradition is depicted most adequately in the biblical doctrine of the parenthood of God and the kinship of all peoples-which is a version of the traditional sexist expression “the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men.”[9]

In contrast with the emphases highlighted in the Evangelical and Holiness traditions, this is the emphatic tradition that became institutionalized in the African-American churches.

To be sure, African American interest in revivalistic religion and a depth relationship with God has not been lacking, as those who have experienced a black worship service can readily testify. Nevertheless, blacks have never accented personal piety at the expense of a needed accent on the social meaning of a religious experience. The development of higher Christian graces, or a “closer walk with God” as it is popularly termed, continues as a concern and advisement among black evangelicals; but the perfectionist emphasis that prevailed in holiness circles in the nineteenth century did not gain as wide an appeal among blacks as among whites. For one thing, Christian perfectionism seemed “too Methodistlike” to those who were Baptist by orientation. For another, it seemed too unattainable to those who did not hear a clear enough explanation about the doctrine.

African-American believers always have insisted that true religion is essentially experiential. It has not been as necessary to blacks that there be a refined doctrinal system to expound this belief. Blacks were in tune with American revivalism at an early point in its development, and benefited greatly from its impacting influences, but they did not get as involved as whites in that wing of the American Holiness Movement which blended Pietism and Wesleyan perfectionism.[10]

The Church of God Movement (Anderson)

The following are holiness-teaching denominations which have had primary and extended contact with African Americans in the course of their history and witnessing in America: The Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, The Church o€ the Nazarene, The Pilgrim Holiness Church, The Holiness Christian Church, The Salvation Army, and the Church of God (Anderson, IN.). These groups are also among the larger Holiness bodies registered in the nation. Although the separate history of each of these groups has not always reflected the best social arrangement with the blacks who became members in them, it is of interest to report that their black members did not break away from these groups to form independent organizations, as did those blacks who experienced segregation in the Methodist Church, for example.[11] Perhaps among the reasons for their not breaking away might be the fact that most of the named groups have had so few black members in comparison with their white majorities.

A word is in order regarding the history of some of these groups in relating to African Americans. The Church of the Nazarene put forth well-planned and organized efforts during the 1940s to promote holiness evangelism among African Americans, but those efforts yielded rather meager results. In fact, during the total history of this group’s contact with African Americans from the late nineteenth century to the early 1980s, there were never more than twelve black ministers associated with it.[12] The Salvation Army has not fared much better in attempts to promote the holiness theme among African Americans. Booker T. Washington, the noted Tuskegee educator and national race leader, was so impressed by the rich history of The Salvation Army in social outreach and group openness that in 1896 he wrote: “I have always had the greatest respect for the work of the Salvation Army, especially because I had noted that it draws no color line in religion.”[13] And yet, despite such an endorsement from a leading black educator and race statesman, The Salvation Army never experienced widespread success in gaining African American members or in holding them.

Among those holiness-teaching groups that have had a rather prolonged contact with African Americans, the one that has been the most fruitful is the Church of God (Anderson, IN). In 1968 there was in this body a black membership of 16,703 within a total United States membership listing of 144,243. By 1974 the number of African American members had increased to nearly 20,000 among a total reported membership of 160,198. In 1980 the Church of God (Anderson) listed 472 predominantly black congregations, with 27,628 black members among a total membership in the United States of 179,137. These figures show a pattern of steady relationship between African Americans and the larger body of Church of God members in the United States and an instructive growth pattern among African Americans associated with the Church of God.

It is most enlightening to compare the race membership percentage in this holiness-teaching group with those percentages reflected within the main-line majority-white denominations, especially during the late 1970s when American Baptists reported a 12% black membership, the Episcopal Church 5%, the United Church of Christ 4.3%, the Disciples of Christ 3.8%, the United Methodist Church 3.5%, the United Presbyterian Church 2.7%, the Lutheran Church in America 1.7%, and the Southern Baptists a meager 1.0%.

African Americans are by far the largest ethnic minority within the Church of God (Anderson). In 1989, of 199,786 members listed for the Church of God in the United States, 37,435 were African Americans. The reason for this significant percentage is historical, theological, and social. It is due in no small measure to the appealing and promising unity ideal that is at the heart of the Church of God message; it is an ideal that has from this movement’s beginning in 1880 been allied in the church’s message and practices with the call to scriptural holiness. As church historian John W. V Smith has explained it: “Many church groups avoided making a strong interracial stance. The Church of God reformation’s message of unity of all believers, however, made a very strong interracial position inherent in the message itself.”[14]

The message voiced by the Church of God about the unity of believers appealed strongly to African Americans who were otherwise restricted and segregated in a racist society. The message of unity provided promise for a needed affirmation of self-worth, on the one hand, and for needed social togetherness, on the other. Unlike other church groups whose doctrinal positions accented non-relational themes, the central theme of the Church of God was, and remains, a relational one: believers belong together, united by love. Although social relations within the Church of God have witnessed the same problems and stresses all other church bodies have faced, the challenge of the biblical insistence on unity has always been present in the group’s heritage and message as a prodding factor toward freeing its life from racist concerns in the national environment and toward reform of its life as people of God called to practice holiness. To be sure, evidences that some persons within its congregations have yielded to prevailing social patterns of race distancing and polarization can be documented in the history of the Church of God just as in the history of other church groups in America. Nevertheless, the unity ideal central to its heritage and reason for being has never allowed such lapses from the ideal to stand unchallenged.[15]

The two worlds of race have not yet disappeared from the Church of God, but some significant strides have been made in recent years which show an increased openness and intent to fulfill this movement’s unity ideal. Among the many available evidences of this, the following will sufficiently illustrate this openness and intentionality. Since the early 1970s, several African Americans have served in full-time posts as staff persons for the major boards and general agencies of the Church of God. In 1988, an African American was elected by the General Assembly of the Church to serve as the body’s executive secretary, a post that is the highest elective office within the church. Reelected following his first term, this leader continues to serve with distinction and wide regard. In June, 1989, the General Assembly of the church ratified an African-American educator, a former pastor within the group, to be dean of the church’s graduate School of Theology. For many years in the recent past, the chair of the Board of Trustees of Anderson University, this movement’s largest school, was a gifted black pastor and campus alumnus.

Like other church communions with a history within the American Holiness Movement, the Church of God (Anderson) is not yet perfected. It stands, along with these and multitudinous other religious bodies in America, between the alternatives of advance and decay, fulfillment and failure, witness and waywardness, significance and selfishness. The twin concerns of holiness and unity beckon us to full openness and obedience to our reason for being. If our obedience is full, and if our experience of holiness is thoroughgoing, then renewal will be the result-and our continuing witness may yet prove convincing to many others. May it be so, to the good of all whose lives we touch, to the good of this socially fractured nation, to a divided Christendom that needs our witnessing presence, and to the greater glory of God.

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