Frustrated Fellowship

Download or read book Frustrated Fellowship written by James Melvin Washington and published by Mercer University Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As James Melvin Washington demonstrates in this pathmaking study, the black Baptist struggle for religious freedom was also a quest for identity and community. From the beginning the black Baptists battled "the perverse trusteeship of the slave regime." At every stage their striving was complicated by their relationships with white Baptists. Biracial congregations, formed in the enthusiasm of mission efforts among the slaves, dissolved as Christian doubt and rationalization about slavery increased. White Baptists divided along sectional lines and fought bitterly about missions among slaves and, later, among freed blacks. Even the most sympathetic white Baptists saw blacks as "part of that heathen element that was supposed to be saved and civilized: it was difficult ... to see how blacks could save themselves."