Methodist History, 54:1 (October 2015) A STEP BACK OR A STEP FORWARD? THE CREATION OF THE CENTRAL JURISDICTION Robert W. Sledge There is an orthodoxy of interpretation among today’s mainstream Unit- ed Methodist historians about the creation of the Central Jurisdiction (CJ) in 1939. This orthodoxy asserts that the CJ was an unwarranted concession on the part of Northern Methodist whites to the racism of the Methodist Epis- copal Church, South (MECS). This orthodoxy holds that the CJ introduced and embedded racial segregation into the Methodist political economy. It is understood to be self-evident that the CJ was a setback for improved race relations. But consensus opinion among historians may not necessarily be true just because other eminent historians have said so. An opinion is expressed and becomes, upon repetition, a fact. After seventy-five years, perhaps it is time for another look at the realities of the decision to create the Central Jurisdiction. The Methodist Episcopal Church and Race, 1864-1936 Racial segregation and slavery are two different matters, even if overlap- ping in American history. People could and did make a strong Biblical case for slavery. That cannot be done for racial segregation; Biblical justifications for segregation were always hollow. Relations between blacks and whites in the American Methodist tradition were mostly defined by the institution of slavery until 1865 and in terms of racial segregation afterwards. The separation of the Methodist Episcopal Church into North and South in 1844 was, according to the northern interpretation, based solely on the slavery issue. Southerners argued that the split of 1844 was occasioned by internal political differences, namely the power of the General Conference vis a vis the Bishops. Both sides were partially correct. The problem, in Northern eyes, was resolved with emancipation. The MECS did not see it that way for several reasons, one of which was indeed the racial divide. In the two decades following 1844, each denomination grew vigorously in its respective section, but with deepening hostility toward each other. The Methodist divorce contributed greatly toward the sectional antagonism that led to secession in 1860 and to war in 1861. As Union forces captured land and population from the Confederacy, the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) moved quickly and decisively into the recent slave territory. In 1864, the MEC general conference set up two new annual conferences, the Delaware and the Washington, each of them in slave-holding border states but within Union lines. Both of these were 5 6 Methodist History made up of colored1 preachers and churches, under white leadership.2 This structure set a precedent which was followed in numerous other cases in the ensuing decade. After the war, the MEC was remarkably successful in attracting freedmen as converts and transfers; it also developed a viable presence among whites, both indigenous Southerners and Northern transplants. As the MEC expan- sion into the conquered states prospered, the congregations of these new MEC members were grouped together into geographic annual conferences, often regardless of race. By 1876, it was clear that the biracial conferences were not working well. Among other things, the arrangement limited the rise of colored leadership. Further, the educational standards for MEC clergy could seldom be met by black preachers who were only a dozen years removed from the mandatory illiteracy imposed by the American slave system.3 It was also obvious that the MEC work among whites in the South was handicapped by the mixed- race annual conference setup. Thus the MEC General Conference of 1876 provided for a division of its southern annual conferences where both races wanted it. Much of the momentum for separation over the next two decades came at the instance of the black Methodists themselves. By 1895, all the MEC annual conferences in the south were racially segregated.4 The bishops noted this in the 1912 episcopal address: “On grounds of expediency and it may as well be said, by mutual preference, in view of all conditions our Negro members have their separate Annual Conferences and local church organizations.”5 Racial segregation was a sensitive matter for the Methodist Episcopal Church, as the language of the Disciplines showed. In defining the bound- aries of annual conferences, the Disciplines of the period gave little or no indication in print as to which were which. The only mention of race in the 1884 Discipline, for example, came when it enabled the Florida annual con- ference to divide itself “when a majority of both colored and white members as any session of the Conference shall ask for such a division.”6 The 1888 1 The preferred terminology varied from period to period, from African to colored to Negro to black to Afro-American. I will generally use the nomenclature of the time, except to have a preference for the word black because of its simple counterpart term, white. 2 Julius E. Del Pino, “Blacks in the United Methodist Church from the Beginning to 1968,” Methodist History 19.1 (October, 1980): 10-11. 3 See, as example, Elaine Parker Adams, The Reverend Peter W. Clark: Sweet Preacher and Steadfast Reformer (Bloomington, IN: WestBow Press, 2013), 6-8. When the Mississippi Mission Conference of the MEC was established in 1865, none of the twelve black ministers present was sufficiently literate to take the minutes of the conference. 4 Del Pino, “Blacks in the United Methodist Church,” 11. 5 John H. Graham, Black United Methodists: Retrospect and Prospect (New York, Atlanta, Hollywood: Vantage Press, 1979), 75 (italics mine). The term “by mutual preference” is absolutely crucial to understanding the attitudes of black MEC members toward the Plan of Union in 1939. In point of fact, motivations for the segregation of the MEC were complex. See, for example, the story of segregation in the MEC Holston Conference in Durwood Dunn, The Civil War in Southern Appalachian Methodism (Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2013), 137-139. 6 Methodist Episcopal Church, Doctrines and Discipline,1884, Para. 521.5. A Step Back or a Step Forward? 7 and 1892 volumes sometimes identified “white” conferences, but seldom if ever used the term “colored.”7 “Colored” does not appear at all in the 1896 or 1900 Discipline, though segregation of the denomination’s Southern con- ferences was now complete. Throughout all this, it appears that the MEC was reluctant to use the language of segregation in print except when abso- lutely necessary, even while the process of segregating by race was going forward at full speed. It was not until 1904 that the MEC finally came out of the closet by openly identifying the “colored” annual conferences in the Discipline.8 This terminology identified the African-American annual conferences in all sub- sequent editions until the 1932 Discipline, where the language changed from “colored” to “Negro.”9 The lack of black bishops put the MEC at a disadvantage when competing with the African Methodist Episcopal (AME), African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) and Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) denominations, all of which boasted black episcopal leadership. A Negro preacher came close to episcopal election in the MEC in 1896, but ultimately was not chosen.10 Eventually, in response to an increasing clamor from the black membership of the MEC for black bishops, the 1920 General Conference agreed to elect two Negroes, Robert E. Jones and Matthew Clair, Sr., to the episcopacy on a separate ballot.11 It was intended that these men would preside only over black annual conferences. Even so, the two could not possibly lead all the nineteen black conferences currently operating, so white bishops continued to preside over most of them. Further, Clair was immediately dispatched to Africa handle only the Liberia Conference. In the next few years, the election of black bishops paid visible dividends. Under the leadership of newly-elected Bishop Jones, black annual confer- ences secured property on the Gulf of Mexico at Waveland, Mississippi, and 7 Methodist Episcopal Church, Doctrines and Discipline,1888, Paras. 438-548. 8 Methodist Episcopal Church, Doctrines and Discipline,1904, Para. 438. 9 Methodist Episcopal Church, Doctrines and Discipline, 1932, Para. 503. 10 Graham, Black United Methodists, 74. 11 It was probably a sign of MEC uneasiness with this obvious racial discrimination that the Disciplines never mentioned this rule, which was so clearly constitutional that it certainly should have been in the denomination’s law book. That this was discrimination for the African- American MEC membership rather than discrimination against them should not detract from the fact that it was racial discrimination. Jones and Clair were not the first Negro Americans to be elected bishop by the MEC. The general conference elected and consecrated Isaiah B. Scott, editor of the New Orleans Southwestern Christian Advocate, to be “missionary bishop” (expressly not a “general superintendent”) to Liberia in 1904. See Nolan B. Harmon, “Missionary Bishops” in Nolan B. Harmon, ed., Encyclopedia of World Methodism (Nashville: United Methodist Publishing House, 1974), 1632-1633. But when Rev. Clair was elected in 1920 to be a bishop for the Negro conferences in the United States, the church sent him to replace the retiring Bishop Scott in the Liberia Conference, though not as a ”missionary bishop.” See 1908 and 1920 MEC Disciplines, both Para. 539. In 1924, the church brought him home to the United States and gave him an episcopal area of his own. It is not clear what the MEC thought it was doing in the 1920 assignment, appointing a “general superintendent” bishop exclusively into the mission field. The inconsistencies displayed by the MEC reflect the ambiguity the church seemed to have experienced on this matter. 8 Methodist History there erected what was called “Gulfside Assembly” in 1924.