Race and the Roots of the Presbyterian Church in America, no. 3

[For an explanation of the series and the first post, see here; for the second post, see here]

Other
churches were not as interested in dialogue. Second Presbyterian Church,
Memphis, Tennessee, drew national attention for its refusal to admit mixed-race
groups to corporate worship services. One of several Memphis churches targeted
in early 1964 by the local chapter of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for its “kneel-ins,” Second Church
reacted the most negatively. The groups were refused admittance and church
officers patrolled the narthex and the front of the church looking for those
who would seek to “integrate” the services. The Second Church kneel-ins drew
media attention not only because of their racial component, but also because
the congregation was scheduled to host the PCUS General Assembly in 1965. As a
result, several presbyteries and synods, along with the liberal Presbyterian Outlook, protested allowing
the Memphis church to host the assembly; by February 1965, the assembly’s
moderator, Felix Gear, a former pastor of Second Church, made the decision to
move the coming meeting to the denomination’s assembly grounds in Montreat.[1]

Conservatives
felt that the situation at Second Church, Memphis, was profoundly unjust. At
one point, Aiken Taylor claimed that the reason that this church was receiving
such negative attention was merely “to embarrass the pastor’s brother, Senator
Richard Russell,” a noted segregationist who fought Civil Rights legislation.
Later, Taylor observed that Second Church was being singled out because it was
“a great evangelical congregation with a tremendous…evangelistic and missionary
testimony.” As a result, young liberals in the PCUS were trying to “alienate
and divide, to punish and to destroy” the reputation of this church. It did not
help, of course, that the key Second Church ruling elder that opposed the
kneel-ins, Horace Hull, was a long-time leader on the Presbyterian Journal board of directors. Others tried to defend
Hull and his position. Nelson Bell claimed that Hull was really a racial
moderate; his position was that “the question of seating Negroes in the
congregation should not be forced.” However, Hull’s actions were decisive not
only in preventing Second Church from admitting members, but also in splitting
the church and creating a new congregation, Independent Presbyterian Church.[2]

It was
from this sense of being under siege by northern liberals that led Conservative
Presbyterians to protest the National Council of Churches’ “Delta Project” that
started in 1964 and continued through 1967. The Delta Ministry dealt with
poverty and racial injustice in the Mississippi Delta; it also focused on voter
registration in south Mississippi towns like Hattiesburg and McComb. As
conservatives, they disliked the “outside agitators” coming into their areas to
stir up the racial situation; as Presbyterians, they did not care for the fact
that their own tithes and offerings were being used to support outsiders
(through the National Council of Churches) coming into the South to work for
racial justice. As the program progressed, the Journal wagged its head at every potential association the Delta
Ministry had with Communists and unionizers, signaling the leftward political
and racial purposes of the program. When the Delta project leaders encouraged
African Americans to stage a “live in” at the deactivated Greenville,
Mississippi, Air Force base, it was another sign of the lawless aims of the
program.[3]

This
fear of liberalization, both socially and theologically, motivated conservative
Presbyterians’ a deep distrust of Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr.
When the PCUS Board of Christian Education’s Division of Christian Relations
invited King to speak to its August 1965 conference at Montreat, racial
conservatives sought to rescind the invitation on the floor of the General
Assembly. And the Presbyterian Journal
gave full coverage to his appearance, highlighting his responses to questions
about his involvement with Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, which
conservatives had connected to Communism, and about whether the Civil Rights
movement had Communist connections. For the next three years, whenever King was
mentioned, it was always in connection with his supposed Communist-leanings,
making in a more subtle fashion the same connections between integration and
Communism that were so effective in the previous decade. When King was killed
in 1968, Aiken Taylor admitted frankly, “Martin Luther King was not a man we
admired” because of his alleged Communist connections as “documented” by the
FBI. His death was the result of the principles of civil disobedience that he
defended: “Those who have advocated (or excused) civil disobedience share the
blame for the death of Dr. King.” Justice will not come through injustice, no
matter how effective or eloquent the messenger.[4]

And
especially when the messenger was unworthy or threatening, church and society
should withstand the message. That was Taylor’s take on James Forman’s “Black
Manifesto,” first presented at Riverside Church in New York City in May 1969.
Throughout the summer of 1969, the manifesto was presented in several
congregations; the manner of presentation–with the interruption of services
especially in congregations that had television broadcasts–caused churches to
take precautions in case black militants should arrive. Meanwhile, the PCUS
Council on Church and Society urged the church to take seriously the reparation
demands of the black militants and to understand the context from which these
demands came. However, Taylor and other southern Presbyterian conservatives saw
the manifesto and the PCUS response as largely Marxist–focused on the
redistribution of wealth–and unworthy of serious attention. The messenger and
the message were too radical to be heard.[5]