Race and the Church in Richmond (submitted by Scott Nesbit, April 20 speaker and Associate Director of the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond)
If, as has often been said, Sunday mornings are the most segregated time of the week, why is that the case? And what, if anything, can be done about it? These were the questions at the heart of the conversation I recently led with my friend, Dr. Valerie Cooper, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, "Racial Divisions & the Church in the Wake of the Civil War and Today,” sponsored by the Richmond Center for Christian Study.
It is no surprise that the history of race and the church in the United States is troubled. Black and white parishioners often worshipped in the same institutions under slavery, but this was rarely a matter of choice for enslaved church members. In Virginia and most other southern states, state law forbade African American Christians from meeting together without white supervision, nor were their churches permitted to hold property.
Here in Richmond, the First African Church was a case in point. It was by far the largest Christian congregation in the city, with the largest church building. Yet this building was owned by local whites and used for any number of civic purposes, including, in 1860 and 1861, mass meetings in support of secession and the Confederacy. The First African Church was pastored by Robert Ryland, a supremely talented and devoted Baptist minister who, while carrying out his duties at the church, also founded the school that would become the University of Richmond. When the Civil War came, Ryland continued preaching at the church and offered up his congregation as a model on which black churches might be founded elsewhere in Virginia and the Confederacy.
Ryland’s ministry fell apart with the Confederacy. However earnest his intentions to extend the full, life-giving gospel to enslaved men and women, his ministry was integrally related to the regime of slavery in Richmond. He wholeheartedly affirmed and defended the right of white Americans to own human chattel, even if he worked to soften the peculiar institution’s harshest features. When Union troops marched into the smoldering Confederate capitol in April 1865, they occupied the First African Church, among other buildings. When Ryland returned to preach to the congregation after the fall of Richmond, he was rebuffed by U.S. troops; his services were no longer required in the post-slavery black church.
White and black Christians began worshipping separately immediately after the end of slavery because the social hierarchy that had held them together had fallen apart. Most American Christians saw no rationale at the time to worship in biracial congregations governed by conditions of equality.
American Christians today no longer believe that the body of Christ should be divided on account of racial hierarchies. We often take the Pauline dictum that there is “neither Greek nor Jew, neither slave nor free” to mean that racial divisions should play no role in our public expressions of faith. Yet the demographic makeup of our institutions rarely reflects this belief; racial divisions in our churches persist and often come to seem almost natural, even when they are profoundly unnatural, set in motion by sins long ago yet given shape in the contours of our everyday lives.
Christianity offers a number of resources for thinking about race and the church, and how to reach across persistent divisions. The scriptures have given to us the ministry of reconciliation. This ministry is a command that we reconcile over sins of the past, even sins which we did not commit but in whose wake we still live. The ministry of reconciliation is also a gift of grace, a resource for fulfilling the command to reconcile. As Christ reconciles us to God, he also reconciles us to each other. This ministry of reconciliation can be seen most profoundly, perhaps, in simple acts of friendship. Friendship across any kind of social boundary is not easy. It is often uncomfortable, at least at first. Yet we have both the reason to participate in this ministry and, through grace, the means to do it.
It is no surprise that the history of race and the church in the United States is troubled. Black and white parishioners often worshipped in the same institutions under slavery, but this was rarely a matter of choice for enslaved church members. In Virginia and most other southern states, state law forbade African American Christians from meeting together without white supervision, nor were their churches permitted to hold property.
Here in Richmond, the First African Church was a case in point. It was by far the largest Christian congregation in the city, with the largest church building. Yet this building was owned by local whites and used for any number of civic purposes, including, in 1860 and 1861, mass meetings in support of secession and the Confederacy. The First African Church was pastored by Robert Ryland, a supremely talented and devoted Baptist minister who, while carrying out his duties at the church, also founded the school that would become the University of Richmond. When the Civil War came, Ryland continued preaching at the church and offered up his congregation as a model on which black churches might be founded elsewhere in Virginia and the Confederacy.
Ryland’s ministry fell apart with the Confederacy. However earnest his intentions to extend the full, life-giving gospel to enslaved men and women, his ministry was integrally related to the regime of slavery in Richmond. He wholeheartedly affirmed and defended the right of white Americans to own human chattel, even if he worked to soften the peculiar institution’s harshest features. When Union troops marched into the smoldering Confederate capitol in April 1865, they occupied the First African Church, among other buildings. When Ryland returned to preach to the congregation after the fall of Richmond, he was rebuffed by U.S. troops; his services were no longer required in the post-slavery black church.
White and black Christians began worshipping separately immediately after the end of slavery because the social hierarchy that had held them together had fallen apart. Most American Christians saw no rationale at the time to worship in biracial congregations governed by conditions of equality.
American Christians today no longer believe that the body of Christ should be divided on account of racial hierarchies. We often take the Pauline dictum that there is “neither Greek nor Jew, neither slave nor free” to mean that racial divisions should play no role in our public expressions of faith. Yet the demographic makeup of our institutions rarely reflects this belief; racial divisions in our churches persist and often come to seem almost natural, even when they are profoundly unnatural, set in motion by sins long ago yet given shape in the contours of our everyday lives.
Christianity offers a number of resources for thinking about race and the church, and how to reach across persistent divisions. The scriptures have given to us the ministry of reconciliation. This ministry is a command that we reconcile over sins of the past, even sins which we did not commit but in whose wake we still live. The ministry of reconciliation is also a gift of grace, a resource for fulfilling the command to reconcile. As Christ reconciles us to God, he also reconciles us to each other. This ministry of reconciliation can be seen most profoundly, perhaps, in simple acts of friendship. Friendship across any kind of social boundary is not easy. It is often uncomfortable, at least at first. Yet we have both the reason to participate in this ministry and, through grace, the means to do it.