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Mission To Black America-1
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Nov. 17 - Mission To Balck America-1

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In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. Gal. 3:26, ESV.

A unique aspect of Adventist mission extension during the 1890s was an outreach to Black Americans. Although some Blacks participated in the Millerite movement (including Pastor William Foy, who filled a prophetic role from 1842 to 1844), early Sabbatarian Adventism was largely a White movement. In fact, it was roughly a half century after the Great Disappointment before Seventh-day Adventism got under way among North American Blacks with any real success.

Denominational historians have estimated that only about 50 Black Seventh-day Adventists existed in the United States in 1894, but by 1909 that number had climbed to 900. That growth in Black membership largely resulted from several mission projects aimed at evangelizing Blacks during the 1890s.

The 1870s and 1880s witnessed sporadic work among Southern Blacks in Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, and other states, with the first Black congregation officially organized at Edgefield Junction, Tennessee, in 1886. But White "Yankees" from the North were somewhat at a loss as to how to face the peculiar and difficult racial problems of the South. They not only faced suspicion among Southern Whites for being Northerners (remember these people had recently fought a bloody Civil War related to the race issue), but were in a quandary on how to handle such issues as segregation.

Their work often niet with violence from local Whites who feared that the intruders might be preaching the "dangerous" doctrine of racial equality. Given the difficulties, the Adventist leadership finally concluded that it would be best to follow social convention by establishing separate congregations for the two races. Charles M. Kinny, whom we met earlier in the year as the first African-American ordained as a Seventh-day Adventist minister, concurred with the decision. While Kinny did not see separate congregations as the ideal, he did believe that solution to be preferable to segregating Blacks to the back pews of White churches.

 

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Lord, we pray today and every day for a healing between the various races of the world. If it doesn't happen in the world at large, help it to take place in our hearts.

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