Longing for “a solidly straight church”

Deeply divided Methodists vote to embrace tradition of bigotry

Union Baptist Church, formerly a “Do as you please” Union Church.

“Bishop John Christian Keener told the 1890 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South that ‘we now have a solidly white church, for which we thank God.’” — Peter C. Murray (2004)

Anative of Baltimore and a member of the first graduating class of Wesleyan University (1835), John Christian Keener parted with John Wesley on the issue of slavery. He joined the Alabama conference in 1843, and remained in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MEC,S) when the denomination spit over the slavery question in 1844. Superintendent of so-called Confederate chaplains west of the Mississippi River during the American Civil War, “Jefferson Davis thought him one of the best-informed men of his acquaintance.”

“Intensely and aggressively Southern in every fiber of his being,” Bishop Keener “feared any movement that looked toward organic union with anything or anybody” and “never apologized for a single act” (Bishop Galloway, 1906). Thirty-three years after he died (1906), the MEC,S finally reunited with the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) in 1939, prompting yet another separation and the…