Crusty Old Dean Tom Ferguson writes,
This at times willful refusal to look at our own history of race and racism has shaped some of the received historical narrative of the Episcopal Church.
Here’s one: “The Episcopal Church is the only/one of the few denominations that didn’t split over slavery.”
My response to this is usually something like, “Blithely asserting the Episcopal Church did not split over slavery, when, in fact, it did, has been our own version of the Lost Cause: a whitewashing and rewriting of the past by those in power to avoid confronting systemic racism.”
There are a number of problems with asserting the Episcopal Church did not split over slavery….
And
We see the Episcopal Church’s version of Lost Causism reflected in another piece of folk history. It’s often stated: “The Episcopal Church quickly and seamlessly reunited after the Civil War, denominations like Methodists and Presbyterians took decades to reunite, and some never did, like Northern and Southern Baptists.”
… Sure, three bishops attended the 1865 Convention. The rest didn’t, and one Southern bishop had been under house arrest by occupying Federal troops because he told his clergy not to pray for the Union, since he considered the Confederate government to be the legitimate government in his state. …
… That reunion was at the expense of the marginalization and oppression of freed African American Episcopalians.
Read it all.