An Ex-colored Church: Social Activism in the CME Church, 1870-1970Mercer University Press, 2004 - 246 pages The Christian Methodist Episcopal Church was an important part of the historic freedom struggles of African Americans from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights movement. This fight for equality and freedom can be seen clearly in the denomination's evolving social and ecumenical consciousness. The denomination's very name changed from "Colored" to "Christian" in 1954, but the denomination did not join the struggle late. Rather, the CME was a critical participant from the days following the Civil War. At times, the Church was at odds with their white Methodist counterparts and in solidarity with other African-American denominations on issues of racial desegregation and the role of social protest in religion.Raymond Sommerville's important book discusses the relationship between Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the CME. While King and others received most of the headlines during the Civil Rights Era, the CME proved to be involved at all levels and equally important in all they did. With its strategic location in the South and its long history of ecumenical involvement, the CME Church emerged as a leading advocate of ecumenical civil rights activism. Previous interpretations asserted that the CME was apolitical and accomodationist or that it was more progressive than it was. Sommerville presents a more nuanced account of how a church of largely former slaves emancipated itself from the constraints of white Methodist paternalism and Jim Crow racism to emerge as a progressive force of racial justice and ecumenism in the South and beyond. Sommerville examines major centers of the CME -- Nashville, Birmingham, Memphis, Atlanta -- and selected leaders inthe South in charting the gradual metamorphosis of the former CME as a largely nonpolitical body of former slaves in 1870 to a more politically active denomination at the apex of the modern Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. |
Contents
10 | |
The Paine College Ideal CME Responses to Racial Injustice 19001954 | 43 |
The CME Church and the Birth of the Civil Rights Movement 19541960 | 75 |
The Sacred Call to Activism CMEs and the Student Activism of the 1960s | 110 |
There Is a Balm in Birmingham The CME Church and the Birmingham Movement 19611964 | 138 |
Implementing Justice and Righteousness The Apex of CME Activism and Ecumenism 19641968 | 172 |
Summary and Conclusion | 203 |
Bibliography | 210 |
Index | 237 |
Other editions - View all
An Ex-colored Church: Social Activism in the CME Church, 1870-1970 Raymond R. Sommerville Limited preview - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
ACMHR activists African-American African-American churches African-American Methodists Alabama Albany Albany movement American AMEZ Atlanta Birmingham campaign Black Church Booker Bunton Carolina Christian Index Civil Rights movement CME Church CME leaders CME social CMEC colored members Colored Methodism Colored Methodist Episcopal Committee Conference Council of Churches demonstrations denominational desegregation Ecumenical Movement Education evangelical Fraternal Council Freedom Freedom Rides Georgia Gomillion Henry History Hollowell Holsey Jim Crow Johnson King's Lakey leadership Luther King Jr Martin Luther King MECS Memphis merger Merriweather Methodist Church Methodist Episcopal Church Miles College ministers mission Montgomery bus boycott NAACP Nashville Negro Churches nonviolent organization Paine College Paine College Ideal participation pastor Phillips Pitts political president protest race relations racial justice racial segregation Reconstruction Religion religious Reverend Robinson Ruby Doris schools SCLC segregation Seminary Shuttlesworth sit-ins slavery slaves Smith SNCC South strategy struggle Tennessee theological Tobias Tuskegee Union Washington William women York
Popular passages
Page 18 - Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974); Leslie Howard Owens, This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); Herbert G.