Daily Reading for September 10 • Alexander Crummell, 1898
Although Alexander Crummell and other black Episcopalians could do little to stop white church people in the South from regarding them as inferior, they organized an association (the Conference of Church Workers among Colored People) designed to lobby for recognition and respect in denominational affairs. Crummell believed in a strong racial ministry, and this attitude set the tone for the CCW. Like many white clergy of the time, he lamented the fact that so many African Americans had deserted the Episcopal Church after the Civil War. But rather than blaming African Americans in the South for their exodus from the denomination, Crummell knew (from painful personal experience) that the refusal of whites to encourage and accept the leadership of black men and women was the real cause. If the Episcopal Church adopted an evangelistic plan that allowed African Americans to minister to and uplift their own people, Crummell asserted, it would have a providential opportunity to imbue a significant portion of southern society with its theological and social ideals.
Leading black Episcopalians actually agreed with white paternalists about some of the reasons for bringing African Americans into the church: their denomination had the potential to become a stabilizing and uplifting presence within the black community. They disagreed with whites, however, about who should have the primary responsibility for ministering to the black population in the South. If white Episcopalians were as concerned as they claimed to be about the education and conversion of African Americans, why had they continually ignored the contributions of their fellow church members who were black? Black Episcopalians also opposed white southerners on theological grounds. Skin color, they maintained, could not be used to prevent a priest from exercising the authority, judicial as well as sacerdotal, to which ordination entitled him. No matter what some whites happened to believe, Christian theology taught that race had no bearing on the powers a priest received at his ordination, and black clergy, at least, should be granted seats in the legislative assemblies of their dioceses.
From Episcopalians and Race: Civil War to Civil Rights by Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr. (University of Kentucky Press, 2000).