Although fundamentalists insisted that all people were equal before God, their movement was almost entirely white. Race trumped theology, preventing fundamentalists from forming partnerships with like-minded African American evangelicals. Meanwhile, modernists also shared many of the racist ideas of their fundamentalist counterparts during the interwar era. Nevertheless, African American church leaders watched the unfolding fundamentalist-modernist controversy with great interest, as this editorial in an African American newspaper illustrates.
Our daily papers have been bringing us reports from the Caucasian Church Conferences held in different parts of the country. We have been reading the inner workings of the M. E. Conference, as well as the discussion before the conference of the Presbyterians. We can not escape a kind of quaking of soul, as we read the arguments, differences, declarations, and not infrequently a few insinuations.
In one conference we have the question of bishops…. Feeling is tense. We hear the Negro question discussed. We hear of a reunion of the Church North with the Church South. Marriage is discussed, divorce is treated by learned divines. War is given its day “in court.”
In another conference we hear of Fundamentalism, Modernism, and the Virgin Birth of Christ. Bitter discussions, almost approaching personal insult, have filled the conference, — this conference of America’s most brilliant minds.
The layman stands aghast, while he listens to this bitterness as it belches forth from the mouths of professing Christians, — and more, men called of God. The layman is very much puzzled. He admits that he wants to believe in the church as an institution for good. He wants to feel that God does select His servants of His gospel. He wants to believe that Christ made Salvation easy and not difficult. But, alas!
Most laymen know that Christ lived the simple life, died for us all alike, arose as God’s demonstration of the power of the Spirit over death. Most of us love to think that Christ taught mankind enough while on earth to save the whole world. To most of us the life, the teachings and the death of Christ are all sufficient. If we are ignorant of the virgin birth; if we know nothing of the difference between Presbyterian and Methodist; if we are shut out forever from the mysteries of soul-saving, we are secure in the knowledge that all the denominational strife in the world will not enlighten us on the secret of death and the life hereafter, both of which each man and woman must face for him and herself. There is not one jot of information to be had on the unknown. We are secure in our ignorance, and happy in the thought that God is as near to us, mere laymen though we be, in our ignorance, as He is to the learned and commercial clergy that would distract the world with worthless doctrines for the sake of a control as empty as it is vulgar.
We must look to another than the Caucasian Church for a true and reliable exemplification of the life of our common brother.
Source: “The Church Caucasian,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 31, 1924.
Evaluating the Evidence