Integration & the Churches

At a press conference called by Arkansas' Governor Orval E. Faubus one day last week, the Rev. M. L. Moser Jr. of Little Rock, Ark. read a statement signed by 80 ministers:

"This statement is not made with any enmity or hatred in our hearts for the Negro race. We have an abiding love for all people . . . We believe that the best interests of all races are served by segregation.

"We resent the implication by certain liberal ministers that it is un-Christian to oppose integration. We believe that integration is contrary to the will of God ... is based on a false theory of the 'universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man.' We believe that integration is not only unChristian, but that it violates all sound sociological principles and is not supported by Scripture or by biological facts."

Big Wheels. The "abiding" love and Scriptural wisdom of Pastor Moser (of the splinter Missionary Baptistic Church) and his co-signers are reflected by many a Southern minister.*Their use of Holy Writ to defend their position does not sit well with many ministers--even in the Deep South. But the fact remains that right now the segregationist clergymen are the ones who are doing the loudest talking. In Little Rock, segregationist clergymen are doing their best to embarrass their opponents by taking newspaper ads to ask why the opponents' own churches are not integrated, if integration is what they believe in. Only big ecclesiastical wheels in Little Rock last week dared go so far as to urge the reopening of schools on an integrated basis--Episcopal Bishop Robert R. Brown, Methodist Bishop Paul E. Martin, Presbyterian Minister Theodore B. Hay and Southern Baptist Dr. Dale Cowling, president of the Greater Little Rock Ministerial Alliance.

Throughout the Bible Belt only a handful of pulpits ring with talk about the brotherhood of man--if brotherhood implies sitting together in a schoolroom. Pro-segregation sentiment is strongest in the areas where the rooted religion is Baptist and where the pentecostal sects flourish.

Underground Work. The denominational churches, including Presbyterians, Methodists and Episcopalians, include far more anti-segregation partisans. Even so, men like Dr. William M. Elliott of the Highland Park Presbyterian Church of Dallas, who has frequently denounced segregation as morally indefensible, and Episcopal Minister Duncan Gray Jr. of St. Peter's Church at Oxford, Miss., who has spoken sturdily for racial tolerance, stand out as exceptions to the rule. Most of the pro-integration work of the Southern clergy of whatever denomination is so quiet as to be almost clandestine.

Said one young Methodist pastor in Mississippi last week: "There are plenty of us, of all denominations, working quietly and discreetly to promote racial tolerance and ease the way for the integration that eventually has to come. But publicity is the worst thing we could have. Christianity needs its martyrs. But it needs its underground, too."

*In essence, their arguments are: 1) God directed that Noah's sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, should found three different races; 2) God gave the races separate languages at the building of the tower of Babel to ensure their staying apart.

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