| Chapter 1: | Pre-Twentieth-Century Roots of Pentecostalism |
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Also, white Episcopalians in the South only allowed slaves to be instructed in the faith and baptized. They were not included as fully participating communicants of the Episcopal Church. In addition, slaves did not own any buildings or property. If there were a sufficient number of slaves to create a separate congregation from the whites, the slaves were required to worship in the building used by the whites when their service was over.38
African American Episcopalians suffered the “benign neglect” of their white bishops. Although they were able to establish some independent congregations, their pastors were muzzled and were not allowed to participate in church government. Opportunities for advancement in the denominational hierarchy did not exist. By the eve of the Civil War, the Episcopal Church had created a separate entity for many of its northern African American parishioners and acceded to the demands of its influential southern white members to severely limit the participation of slaves. African American Episcopalian minister, George Freeman Bragg Jr., correctly identified racism as the dominant reason for the denomination’s failure to make any substantial effort to fully include African Americans. He wrote, “Whenever the Episcopal Church gives a genuine interpretation with respect to the Negro, of the spirit of the words of St. Paul, ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free … for ye are all one in Christ Jesus’ and treats her Negro priests as men and not as children, then she will reap the harvest among the race destined by Almighty God.”39
The issue of slavery did not officially divide Episcopalians. Southern bishops Leonidas Polk and Stephen Elliott worked with other bishops from slaveholding states to form the Church in the Confederacy in September 1862. However, the northern bishops refused to acknowledge the need for such a development because many northern Episcopalians were sympathetic toward the South.