The Bible Told Them So
The Bible Told Them So

Author: J. Russell Hawkins

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0197571069

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Introduction: "As old as the Scriptures..." -- Not in our church : congregational backlash to Brown v. Board of Education -- The Bible told them so : the theological foundation of segregationist Christianity -- Jim Crow on Christian campuses : the desegregation of Furman and Wofford -- Natural affinities, mutual appreciation, voluntary consent : the Methodist merger and the transformation of segregationist Christianity -- Focusing on the family : private schools and the new shape of segregationist Christianity -- Epilogue: the heirs of segregationist Christianity.

One Mississippi, Two Mississippi
One Mississippi, Two Mississippi

Author: Carol V. R. George

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-04-01

Total Pages: 443

ISBN-13: 0190231106

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During Freedom Summer 1964, three young civil rights workers who were tasked with registering voters at Mt. Zion Methodist Church in Neshoba County, Mississippi were murdered there by law enforcement and Ku Klux Klansmen. The murders were hardly noticed in the area, so familiar had such violence become in the Magnolia State. For forty-one days the bodies of the three men lay undetected in a nearby dam, and for years afterward efforts to bring those responsible to justice were met only with silence. In One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Carol V.R. George links the history of the Methodist Church (now the United Methodist Church), with newly-researched local history to show the role of this large denomination, important to both blacks and whites, in Mississippi's stumble toward racial justice. From 1930-1968, white Methodists throughout the church segregated their black co-religionists, silencing black ministers and many white ministers as well, locking their doors to all but their own members. Finally, the combination of civil rights activism and embarrassed Methodist morality persuaded the United Methodists to restore black people to full membership. As the county and church integrated, volunteers from all races began to agitate for a new trial for the chief conspirator of the murders. In 2005, forty-one years after the killings, the accused was found guilty, his fate determined by local jurors who deliberated in a city ringed with casinos, unrecognizable to the old Neshoba. In one sense a spiritual history, the book is a microhistory of Mt. Zion Methodist Church and its struggles with white Neshoba, as a community learned that reconciliation requires a willingness to confront the past fully and truthfully. George draws on interviews with county residents, black and white Methodist leaders, civil rights veterans, and those in civic groups, academia, and state government who are trying to carry the flag for reconciliation. George's sources--printed, oral, and material--offer a compelling account of the way in which residents of a place long reviled as "dark Neshoba" have taken up the task of truth-telling in a world uncomfortable with historical truth.

Methodists and the Crucible of Race, 1930-1975
Methodists and the Crucible of Race, 1930-1975

Author: Peter C. Murray

Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0826262473

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In Methodists and the Crucible of Race, 1930-1975, Peter C. Murray contributes to the history of American Christianity and the Civil Rights movement by examining a national institution the Methodist Church (after 1968 the United Methodist Church) and how it dealt with the racial conflict centered in the South. Murray begins his study by tracing American Methodism from its beginnings to the secession of many African Americans from the church and the establishment of separate northern and southern denominations in the nineteenth century. He then details the reconciliation and compromise of many of these segments in 1939 that led to the unification of the church. This compromise created the racially segregated church that Methodists struggled to eliminate over the next thirty years. During the Civil Rights movement, American churches confronted issues of racism that they had previously ignored. No church experienced this confrontation more sharply than the Methodist Church. When Methodists reunited their northern and southern halves in 1939, their new church constitution created a segregated church structure that posed significant issues for Methodists during the Civil Rights movement. Of the six jurisdictional conferences that made up the Methodist Church, only one was not based on a geographic region: the Central Jurisdiction, a separate conference for "all Negro annual conferences." This Jim Crow arrangement humiliated African American Methodists and embarrassed their liberal white allies within the church. The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision awakened many white Methodists from their complacent belief that the church could conform to the norms of the South without consequences among its national membership. Murray places the struggle of the Methodist Church within the broader context of the history of race relations in the United States. He shows how the effort to destroy the barriers in the church were mirrored in the work being done by society to end segregation. Immensely readable and free of jargon, Methodists and the Crucible of Race, 1930 1975, will be of interest to a broad audience, including those interested in the Civil Rights movement and American church history.