Ecumenism and Civil RightsĪlthough they maintained cordial relations with the MECS, CME church officials sought a wider network of support and fellowship during the first half of the twentieth century. By emphasizing educational uplift, ecumenism, interracial cooperation, and cautious civil rights activism, the CME Church pursued a pragmatic strategy that enabled it to prosper amid the impending hostility of the Jim Crow South. Indeed, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, church elders resisted efforts to forge closer ties with more politically active Black Methodist bodies, preferring instead to maintain a cooperative, albeit subordinate relationship with the MECS. The “Paine College Ideal,” as it came to be known, ensured that the second generation of CME leaders would stay the course of accommodation and political neutrality established by the denomination’s founders at the inaugural General Conference. The Paine Institute’s founding established a practical model for interracial cooperation that CME officials would subsequently apply to all aspects of the church’s administration. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration However, because conservative MECS officials retained financial leverage over the school’s administration, Paine College also helped to perpetuate certain aspects of interdenominational paternalism. For the CME leadership, the school’s founding was both a source of pride and a testament to the possibilities of interracial cooperation. The MECS granted Holsey’s request, and in January 1884 the Paine Institute (later Paine College) opened in Augusta. In 1882 Georgia native and CME bishop Lucius Holsey appealed to the MECS for financial support in establishing a school to train Black preachers and educators. In any case, whether motivated by sincerity or expediency, the CME Church’s decision to forsake political activity for the support of the MECS created a tension within the denomination between paternalism and autonomy that remained unresolved until the twentieth century. Given its uncertain circumstances, the new church had little choice but to submit to MECS demands. MECS financial support was based on the condition that the CME Church remain politically neutral. What the CME Church’s critics dismissed as mere paternalism, however, was at least in part a calculated bid to secure the transfer of church property to the new denomination. Claiming to be the true redeemers of formerly enslaved people, members of the AME Church, AME Zion, and the northern Methodist Episcopal Church questioned the new denomination’s fidelity to the MECS and referred condescendingly to the CME Church as “the rebel’s church.” The CME Church’s decision to maintain close ties with the MECS in the aftermath of the Civil War (1861-65) earned the new church the enmity of northern Methodist denominations hoping to attract new members from among the freedmen. “We most sincerely pray, earnestly desire, and confidently believe,” reads an early resolution, “that there will ever be the kindliest feelings cherished toward the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.” Four years later, forty-six Black delegates and a committee representing the MECS convened in Jackson, Tennessee, to establish the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, the first African American denomination established in the South.Īt the inaugural conference in 1870, Black representatives of the new church expressed their commitment to maintaining a cooperative relationship with the MECS, as well as their desire for continuity with Methodist theology and polity. In order to prevent further losses, the MECS resolved in 1866 to support the creation of a separate Christian Methodist Episcopal Church Black denomination. Most joined one of two independent Black denominations from the North, the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME Church) and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Zion (AME Zion), where they enjoyed greater autonomy and freedom of expression. Paul CME Church Photograph by Katie Korth Founding and Early Historyīetween 18, more than two-thirds of the Black membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church South (MECS later United Methodist Church) left that church to join other Methodist bodies then competing for the membership of freedmen.
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