View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Vanderbilt Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive FROM SEGREGATION TO INDEPENDENCE: AFRICAN AMERICANS IN CHURCHES OF CHRIST By Theodore Wesley Crawford Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Religion August, 2008 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Dr. Dennis C. Dickerson Dr. Kathleen Flake Dr. John S. McClure Dr. Lucius Outlaw To my father, who helped make this possible but did not live to see its completion and To my wife, Kim, whose support is responsible for this project ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………. ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS…………………………………………………….. v INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………… vii Chapter I. UNDERSTANDING CHUCHES OF CHRIST……………..……………. 1 Denominational Organization…………………………………………. 1 Churches of Christ Journals………………………………………….... 7 Churches of Christ Schools………………………………………...….. 21 Churches of Christ Lectureships………………………………………. 34 Conclusion……………………………………………………………... 38 II. SEGREGATION…………………………………………………………... 40 White-Imposed Segregation…………………………...……………… 41 The Life and Ministry of Marshall Keeble…………...……………….. 61 Conclusion…………………………………………………………….. 83 III. INDEPENDENCE………………………………………………………… 84 The Foundation of Independence..……….…………………………… 85 African American Independence……………………………………… 98 White Responses to the Civil Rights Movement……………………… 117 A United Effort: The Race Relations Workshops…………………….. 128 Conclusion…………………………………………………………….. 134 iii IV. THE CLOSING OF NASHVILLE CHRISTIAN INSTITUTE…………… 137 Nashville Christian Institute: Concealing the Secret.…………………. 138 The Aftermath of Nashville Christian Institute’s Closing…………….. 147 Conclusion…………………………………………………………….. 161 V. GREATER SEPARATION COMING……………………………………. 162 African American Churches of Christ………………………………… 163 Jack Evans………………………………………………………… 163 Southwestern Christian College…………………………………... 170 African American Lectureships and Journal……………………… 176 Denominational Estrangement—Viewed Through Biblical Hermeneutics………………………………………………………….. 182 The Historic Stone-Campbell Hermeneutic………………………. 183 A Hermeneutical Shift…………………………………………….. 194 A Clash of Cultures…………………………………………………… 212 Conclusion……………………………………………………………. 219 EPILOGUE……………………………………………………………………….. 221 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………. 226 iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AME Church Review AME Ch Rev American Christian Review ACR Atlantic Monthly Atl Mon Baptist Message Bapt M Baptist Standard Bapt St Bible Banner BB Century Magazine Cent Mag Christian Baptist CB Christian Chronicle Mid-South Edition CC MS Christian Chronicle Supplement CC Supp Christian Chronicle CC Christian Echo CE Christian Evangelist C Ev Christian Index CI Christian Leader CL Christian Standard CS Christian Studies C St Church History Ch H Contending for the Faith Cont F Firm Foundation FF First Century Christian FCC Gospel Advocate GA Journal of Blacks in Higher Education JBHE Journal of Negro History Journ Neg Hist Journal of Presbyterian History Journ Pres Hist Journal of Southern History Journ Southern Hist Lard’s Quarterly LQ Light Light Millennial Harbinger MH Mission Mission North American Christian NAC Presbyterian of the South Presb S Presbyterian Journal Presb J Presbyterian Outlook Presb Out Presbyterian Quarterly Presb Q Restoration Review Rest Rev Restoration Quarterly RQ Royal Service Roy Serv South Atlantic Quarterly SAQ Southern Presbyterian Journal SPJ v Voice of Missions VM William and Mary Quarterly WMQ Wineskins Wineskins vi INTRODUCTION Race matters. Even within a religious body that at times has claimed virtual immunity from the pressures of its social and historical context, the ever present and powerful confrontation between white and black has greatly affected the formation of Churches of Christ identity. Without a convention to make official pronouncements on race relations or a conference to declare the formation of two denominations along the Mason-Dixon Line some may believe Churches of Christ have escaped the grasp of perhaps the most volatile issue in American history.1 Nevertheless, one of the few denominations established on American soil did not avoid the effects of America’s most intractable dilemma.2 A history of segregation within the Churches of Christ has obscured their evolution in the late 20th century towards de facto denominational independence of their African American congregations. Predictably, much of that independence can be traced to the cultural and political effects of the Civil Rights Movement at mid century. This project seeks to recover that history. In addition, this project seeks to prove that Churches of Christ journals, colleges, and lectureships shielded from view the full measure of the separation between African American and white members of the denomination. 1 Jess O. Hale Jr. argued that slavery did not divide the Stone-Campbell Movement as it did other American denominations during the Civil War in “Ecclesiastical Politics on a Moral Powder Keg: Alexander Campbell and Slavery in the Millennial Harbinger, 1830-1860,” RQ 39, no. 2 (Second Quarter 1997): 65–81. 2 The “encounter of black and white” has been described as one of three central themes of American religious history. David W. Wills, “The Central Themes of American Religious History: Pluralism, Puritanism, and the Encounter of Black and White,” in African American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture, ed. Timothy E. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau, 7–20 (New York: Routledge, 1997). vii This study contributes to the study of American church history in two ways. First, it challenges the illusion of racial unity among those congregations associated with Churches of Christ. African American and white members of this predominantly southern branch of the Stone-Campbell Movement mirrored the white-imposed segregation of their regional peers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and, following the American Civil Rights Movement, the denomination remained divided as African Americans formally declared their independence from white paternalism and control. Second, this study reveals the power of unofficial denominational bodies to mask significant division existent within a radical congregational denomination. Lacking centralized authority, Churches of Christ sought to mediate their theology through denominational journals, colleges, and lectureships. As the only centralized voices of the denomination, these entities failed to address the division between African Americans and whites, thereby providing a false veneer of cohesion to insiders and outsiders of Churches of Christ. These three bodies not only failed to cohere African Americans and whites, they also helped maintain the illusion of racial unity within Churches of Christ. Race and Racism At the outset of this project, one must become familiar with two key terms: race and racism. “Race” is a socially constructed phenomenon; therefore, one is incorrect to speak of the “white race” or the “African American race” as if lighter skinned individuals are necessarily and by nature classified separately from darker skinned individuals. In 1887, a Presbyterian leader made the statement, “The distinctions of race are drawn by viii God Himself.”3 He was wrong. Society has drawn the boundaries of race, not God. Such a statement may seem curious, for human beings are certainly born with different physical characteristics, such as skin color. To recognize the social construction of race, however, is to acknowledge that only certain physical features aid in race classification. As Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith point out, though people have all sizes of feet and shapes of ears, those physical features are not used to classify one race from another.4 Society has chosen only certain physical features among many as racial determinants. It not only uses a select group of physical features to determine race, it also attaches social meaning to only certain physical characteristics.5 For example, a person with a large nose or red hair does not automatically have to fight the stereotypes of mental inferiority or financial hardship. A person born with black skin, however, often has to fight both. Those members of society who have exercised their hegemonic power have attached significant meaning to white and black skin color. In his discussion of “scientific racism,” Brad Braxton reminds his readers that countless white scientists, in their efforts to support the myth of white intellectual superiority, have attempted to prove that the skulls of white persons were larger than the skulls of black persons.6 These quasi- scientific efforts, however, followed centuries wherein society attached positive connotations to white and negative connotations to black. 3 C. R. Vaughan, “The Southern Assembly,” Presb Q 1 (July 1887): 147. 4 Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (New York: Oxford, 2000), 7. 5 Ibid. 6 Braxton, No Longer Slaves: Galatians and African American Experience (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), 8. ix Some scholars have suggested that white racism toward African Americans began on another continent, arguing that even before American colonization began, the English had certain views of white and black. Of that time and place, wrote Winthrop Jordan, “white and black connoted purity and filthiness, virtue and baseness,