X RECONSTRUCTION IN THE CHURCHES INTRODUCTION NOT only educational matters but church affairs also were involved in Reconstruction. No more complicated situations arose, no bitterer feelings were aroused, than those involved in the religious tangles growing out of the war and reconstruction. The history of church troubles begins early in the nineteenth century, as one by one the churches divide over the questions of slavery and abolition. By 1861 all of the important organizations, except the Catholic, had divided into Northern and Southern bodies. The negro church members before 1865 were usually attached to the white organizations, or to missions supported by the Southern churches. It is worthy of note that the negro church membership greatly increased after the separation of the churches. The war and its results temporarily weakened the Southern church organizations; the membership was reduced by death; the buildings had been destroyed, or having been used for Confederate hospitals were confis cated; and serious troubles had arisen during the war involving the Southern churches, the Northern churches, and the United States government, or rather some of its officials. This trouble grew out of the attempt of the Federal army officials to regulate the church services in the South and the action of Secretary Stanton, who inaugurated in 1863 the policy of turning over to the var ious Northern churches the buildings and other property of the corresponding Southern denominations. Northern ministers were then appointed to fill Southern pulpits. Out of this action arose disputes that lasted for years and some communities are still divided by them. The military regulation of church worship continued until 1866 and culminated after the war in such affairs as the Wilmer episode and the closing of the Episcopal churches in Alabama. The close of the war did not bring a reunion of the churches. Only the Episcopal and the Methodist Protestant bodies reunited, and those were weak in numbers. On the border some Southern congregations went over to the Northern churches; while former Northern congregations sometimes went over to the Southern bodies. Owing to the irritation over the war policy of the government in the border states the Southern churches were the greater gainers by the secessions in 1865-1866, and after reorganization were much stronger in numbers and in influence than ever before. The Northern churches planned to extend their work into the South, all efforts at reunion having failed, because, as the Southern church people said, of the feeling growing out of the war; because those willing to reunite were asked to make professions of "loyalty" or to comply with irritating conditions; but above all, a cause of failure was the "disintegration and absorption" policy which would take in the members and leave the Southern ministers out. However, some material existed from which the Northern bodies constructed weak organizations in the South: (1) the Southern Unionists; (2) a few preachers who disliked to continue in the Southern organizations; and (3) the negroes. The Stanton policy had given a certain amount of church property into their hands. After reunion of the whites had failed, the Northern and the Southern churches were rivals for religious control of the negroes. The Southern churches, for obvious reasons, selfish and unselfish, wished to retain their negro membership and the influence that went with it; and all the denominations made formal declarations of policy and began mission work among the negroes, long before all the white congregations were again supplied. The general Northern view was that the Southern whites were not safe guides for the blacks in religion any more than in politics and education, and their churches entered the mission field in opposition. As a result of the various religious movements most of the Southern mission work among the negroes was discontinued before 1875 and nearly all their negro members went to the African churches that came down from the North, such as the A. M. E. Zion Church; to the missions of Northern white organizations, such as the Methodist Episcopal Church (North); and to independent organizations formed for the blacks by the Southern white churches, such as the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. During the period of Reconstruction the Southern whites complained of the "disintegration and absorption" policy; they asserted that the Northern missionaries. stirred up strife between the races, taught doctrines of social equality, made the negroes impudent, were “emissaries of Christ and the Radical party," that they gave unfair reports of Southern conditions, and in general were not of sound judgment and some of them not of the best character. The missionaries on the other hand declared that the whites were bitterly hostile to the Northern missionaries, ostracised them socially, murdered them, and burned their churches. The negro members under the guardianship of Southern white churches were ostracised and otherwise mistreated. When the Roman Catholic Church entered the field the Protestant churches of both sections opposed it. |