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The Rise of Black Adventism
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August 1 - The Rise of Black Adventism

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From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. Acts 17:26, NLT.

Adventist outreache to African-American got off to a slow start, partly because Adventism was a Northern church in a nation bitterly divided over slavery and race. Nearly all Blacks in the middle decades of the nineteenth century lived in the South, and even the denomination's evangelism among the Whites in that region did not have much momentum until the late 1870s and early 1880s.

It wasn't that early Seventh-day Adventism had no concern over the plight of African-Americans. To the contrary, the new church was abolitionist at its birth, holding that African slavery was America's greatest sin. Ellen White had counseled disobedience to the federally enacted Fugitive Slave Law, even if it meant going to prison. And such Sabbatarian leaders as J. P. Kellogg (father of John Harvey and Merritt G.) and John Byington (first president of the General Conference) had operated stations of the Underground Railroad on their farms to aid slaves fleeting the South to reach freedom in Canada.

After the freeing of the slaves during the Civil War the General Conference in 1865 recognized that "a field is now opened in the South for labor among the colored people and should be entered upon according to our ability." Unfortunately, the ability of the denomination in terms of both finances and peronnel was very limited.

The first Black Seventh-day Adventists were probably in the North, but we know little about their identity. It wasn't until the denomination began entering the South that it encountered Blacks in any number, and then in a segregated situation.

During the 1870s several individual Adventists made efforts to help the former slaves receive a basic education. A major step forward came when R. M. Kilgore arrived in Texas to help organize churches in the racially inflamed areas. Several times he faced threats of lynching, and on one occasion someone burned his tent down.

How even to preach to the people in the divided South was problematic. One approach involoved speaking to both Whites and Blacks from a doorway that separted their respective rooms. The General Conference sessions of 1877 and 1885 debated the question of whether to create separate churches for the two races, with most speakers believing that to mixed groups in the South, Whites and sometimes Blacks boycotted the meetings. What to do?

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Lord, we humans have made a real mess of the race issue. Help us to realize that we are one people. And help us as Christians to move beyond the prejudices of our cultures.
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