Race and the Roots of the Presbyterian Church in America, no. 1
Over at Justin Taylor’s blog at the Gospel Coalition, I contributed to a historians’ forum that sought to answer certain questions on southern evangelicals and their failures on Civil Rights. My answer particular focused on southern Presbyterian conservatives, many of whom would form the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).
Of course, a 900 word blog post (I was over the requested amount by a 100 words!) can’t do justice to a complex issue–especially when I was trying to offer a little bit of nuance into the overall discussion: namely, a) not every southern Presbyterian conservative was a hardboiled segregationist and b) there was change over time, especially for the younger generation that would lead the steering committee that produced the PCA.
In my forthcoming book, For a Continuing Church: The Roots of the Presbyterian Church in America, which will be published later this year by P&R, I devote a lot of space to southern Presbyterian conservatives and race. However, I have offered shorter summaries of that material in many open forums, from the University of Arkansas-Little Rock and the University of Southern Mississippi to the PCA General Assembly. One such shorter summary, done this past summer at a pre-GA conference sponsored by the PCA Historical Center, was called, “Race, Civil Rights, and the Southern (Presbyterian) Way of Life.”
Because the audio of the meeting costs $25 and because some feel that PCA historians are not forthright on these issues (although I talked about these issues also in Robert Lewis Dabney: A Southern Presbyterian Life), I am going to post this paper in four parts here and then follow it with a final application post. I hope that by telling the truth about the past–both its ugliness and its hopefulness–we can begin an important conversation about our future, both in my own denomination and in evangelicalism at large.
From
the time the Southern Presbyterian
Journal was founded in 1942, it had stood steadily for several key
commitments shared widely by southern Presbyterian conservatives. Best
articulated by long-time contributor J. E. Flow, these commitments included the
“old school” interpretation of Scripture and the Westminster Standards; the
Presbyterian form of church government; the grassroots principle of church
oversight, symbolized in the role of diaconal care; the spiritual mission of
the church; and “the purity and integrity of the White man of North America
upon whose shoulders are laid the burdens of the world.”[1]
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the magazine had run scores of articles and
editorials that had defended racial solidarity and segregation as part of a
larger conservative religious and political worldview, which linked together
anti-integration, anti-communism, and anti-centralization. Racial conservatism
was a factor in the defeat of reunion with the northern Presbyterian church in
1954 and it continued to be an issue that divided the Presbyterian Church in
the United States (PCUS) in the years that followed.[2]
However,
new winds were blowing in the church as well as the culture at large. In 1952,
in Jackson, Mississippi, southern Presbyterian favorite and Nelson Bell
son-in-law Billy Graham announced that he would integrate his crusades, a
promise he kept the following year at Birmingham, Alabama. Southern Presbyterian
conservative Bill Hill continued to pursue an integrated ministry in his
churches in Hopewell, Virginia. And a younger generation of conservative
ministers was beginning to realize that racial segregation was a betrayal of
the Gospel and served to undercut missions at home and abroad. That did not
mean that the conservative worldview that had marked southern Presbyterians
would change quickly; it did mean, however, that the future trajectory was
toward racial inclusion and interracial exchange and away from racial
solidarity. Sadly, the change has come slowly and has been betrayed at
countless points along the way.
No one
better embodied some of the contradictions and possibilities of this era than
G. Aiken Taylor, who became editor of the Journal
in 1959. Born in 1920 to missionary parents in Brazil, Taylor returned to the
United States when he was fifteen to complete his education. He graduated from
Presbyterian College in South Carolina in 1940 and spent the war years in the
Army as a captain and company commander in the 142nd infantry. After
the war, he graduated from Columbia Theological Seminary and then Duke
University with a Ph.D. degree with a focus on John Calvin and religious
education. When he was at Columbia, Taylor had served a church in Smyrna,
Georgia, and while he was at Duke, he served the Northside Presbyterian Church,
Burlington, North Carolina. After his graduation from Duke, he would go to
serve the Presbyterian church in Alexandria, Louisiana, for five years before
he was approached to take on the editorship of the Journal.
One of
the questions that he had in taking on this role was whether he would have to
agree with and promote the Journal’s
aggressive position on racial segregation. Growing up on the mission field
caused Taylor to have a different attitude about segregation than most
southerners. He told Nelson Bell, “I don’t like agitation on the social
question from either side. I am not an integrationist, neither am I a
segregationist. My position on this issue is that a view point of whatever kind
should not be made the criterion for determining the place or the worth of a
man…or a church paper.” In reply, Bell assured him that there was a range of
opinions on segregation among the board of directors for the magazine and that he
would not be required to hold to a particular party line. That said, the older
man also counseled him not to push his more moderate racial views either: “I
feel you would be utterly foolish to come to the Journal as editor and make
race an issue–certainly at this juncture. There are so many more important
things which need to be faced.” As it would happen, Taylor’s position on race,
as evidenced in his writing and editorial practice, would largely harmonize
with Bell’s own racial views: downplaying forced segregation, dismayed by
outside agitators who stirred up the racial issue, and concerned not to let
racial politics divert attention from the largely doctrinal and social issues
of the day.[3]
The
first notice of race relations after Taylor became editor of the Journal actually came from Nelson Bell.
Once again, he worried about the effects of “interracial marriage” and
“mulattos,” issues that he had raised many times over the past fifteen years.
But there was a new note as well: “We believe that we who live in the South
must come to terms with changes which, while having taken place gradually, are
now actualities. To those who have made educational and economic progress to
the place where they need public services, these should be granted, not
grudgingly but as a matter of course.” In addition, Christians needed to view
blacks as those who have souls “as precious in God’s sight as that of any other
person.” Evangelism was being hindered by the racial agitation; justice needed
to be done.[4]
At the
same time, conservatives needed to make sure that such racial moderation would
not divide the church. Taylor urged the church to vote down to overtures coming
to the 1960 General Assembly, seeking to reopen reunion conversations with the
northern church. Among his reasons were pronouncements by the northern church
on race issues: “Some of the pronouncements, such as those on race relations,
have been sufficiently explosive to produce a wide-open split in a Church such
as ours.” Racial moderation did not necessarily mean advocacy for integration
nor did it commit individuals to agitate the church on the issue.[5]
[1] J. E. Flow, “Positive or Negative?” Southern Presbyterian Journal (29
September 1954): 8-9 (hereafter SPJ).
Strikingly, these issues, including segregation, were cited in a recent essay
by a participant in these struggles: see Morton H. Smith, “The Southern
Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church in America,” in Interpreting and Teaching the Word of Hope,
ed. Robert L. Penny (Taylors, SC: Presbyterian Press, 2005), 206-12.
[2] On this see, Sean Michael Lucas, For a Continuing Church: The Roots of the
Presbyterian Church in America (Phillipsburg: P&R, forthcoming),
chapters four and five.
[3] Paul Hastings to G. Aiken Taylor, 17 March
1954, G. Aiken Taylor Papers, Box 114, folder 22, PCA Historical Center, St.
Louis, MO; G. Aiken Taylor to L. Nelson Bell, 29 May 1959; L. Nelson Bell to G.
Aiken Taylor, 15 June 1959, L. Nelson Bell Papers, Box 75, folder 16, Billy
Graham Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton IL.
[4] L. Nelson Bell, “One Southerner Speaks,” Presbyterian Journal (hereafter PJ) (13 April 1960): 9, 18.
[5] G. Aiken Taylor, “Church Union an Issue,” PJ (20 April 1960): 11.
