This book - Centro de Estudos Anglicanos

EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN CHURCH 125honor and instead issued a press release, in which he stated that he had no desireto hold a “doctorate in . . . white divinity” from Sewanee. If the University of theSouth were a Christian institution, he declared, it would have abolished its “apartheidpolicy” and defied the segregation laws that most Americans regarded asimmoral. 55 Chastened by Pike’s statements and embarrassed by the adverse publicitythey had generated, the Sewanee trustees voted at their next meeting to openthe School of Theology to African American applicants. 56Because of the scrutiny that the church’s segregated system of theological educationreceived in the late 1940s and early 1950s, liberal Episcopalians began toquestion other aspects of its “Negro work” agenda as well. One particularly tellingcriticism was advanced by Alger Adams, an African American priest in Yonkers,New York. Writing in The Witness (the church’s most socially progressive journal)in the fall of 1951, Adams strongly condemned what he called “Church JimCrow.” He was especially critical of the principles the National Council hadadopted when it instituted the Negro work program in 1943. Due to the officialnature of those teachings, few Episcopalians bothered to question the existenceof parishes that were organized along racial lines. Adams charged that, whereaschurch members ought to have been engaged in advancing the cause of Americandemocracy on all fronts, “our spiritual blindness, our moral cowardice, and ourdouble-tongued . . . mortal sin in not knowing good from evil” were preventingthe racially inclusive teachings of Jesus Christ from being put into practice. 57As Adams was well aware, parishes composed exclusively of African Americansremained a fact of life in major northern cities as well as in most southerndioceses. Since the end of World War II, however, white Episcopalians had takensteps to desegregate the meetings of their diocesan conventions, thereby allowingAfrican American clergy and the lay representatives of black parishes to becomepart of the church’s decision-making process. Only the diocese of South Carolinacontinued to resist this trend. Although the issue of desegregation had first beenraised there in 1945, segregationists were able to block the reform for severalmore years. Finally, with the urging of diocesan bishop Thomas Carruthers at theconvention in May 1954, the white parishes of South Carolina ended the racialpolicy that had been in effect since 1875 by admitting St. Mark’s Church, Charleston,and two other African American parishes into their convention fellowship. 58A far greater milestone in American race relations was reached just two weeksafter the meeting of the South Carolina convention, when the Supreme Courthanded down its landmark ruling on the Brown school segregation case. Thejustices unanimously ruled that separation on the basis of race was an inherentlyunequal arrangement that caused grave harm to black children. Several lay Episcopaliansplayed prominent roles in the research and legal maneuvering that precededthe Brown decision: J. Waties Waring, a federal district judge in SouthCarolina who had initially questioned the constitutionality of the “separate butequal” principle in a court decision in 1951; Thurgood Marshall, the NationalAssociation for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) lawyer who hadled the fight against racial segregation in a series of court cases covering several