125 years of the CME church: group founded by ex-slaves celebrates rich, spiritual legacy

Ebony, Jan, 1996 by Lisa Jones Townsel

FIVE years after the Civil War, a group of Black Methodists, who closely followed the teachings of the White-led Methodist Episcopal Church, South, grew weary of continuing in the same religious tradition that White men and women had used to justify slavery. Bent on finding their own spiritual destiny, about 40 ex-slaves decided to set up an independent denomination controlled by Blacks and "patterned," as pioneer Isaac Lane once said, "after our own ideas and notions."

Those ideas and notions included the betterment of the Black community by way of higher education, employment, spiritual growth and community outreach. The church that Lane and others envisioned was the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America, which, after much prayer and deliberation, was founded in Jackson, Tenn., on Dec. 16,1870.

At the end of the decade, the CME Church was 78,000 members strong. The first two men to become bishops of this new denomination were William Henry Miles of Kentucky and Richard H. Vanderhorst of Georgia. Lane, Lucius H. Holsey and Joseph A. Beebe were installed as bishops three years later.

Today--125 years later--the CME Church, which now stands for the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (the church's general conference voted to change the name in 1954), is ten times as strong. With more than 3,000 churches and 3,200 preachers organized into 34 U.S. conferences, the CME church has more than 800,000 communicant members in the U.S., the Caribbean and Africa.

The CME Church has attracted several prominent Blacks, present and past, including the late author Alex Haley, who was a devout parishioner at the CME Church in his hometown of Henning, Tenn.

When the church founders met with the White Methodist establishment to discuss their independence in the 1800s, they didn't have wealth, social status or education on their side. Nevertheless, they believed in a brighter future grounded in Christianity for their children and for their children's children. They believed that one day their ministry would stretch from the Pacific to the Atlantic and far beyond.

The early CME Church, which grew from brush arbor gatherings and house prayer meetings, set higher education as its primary goal, and in its first 50 years established 12 schools and colleges. Four of the colleges are still in operation. They include Lane College in Jackson, Tenn., Paine College (co-founded with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South) in Augusta, Ga., Texas College in Tyler, Texas, and Miles College in Binningham, Ala. In 1944, the church founded the Phillips School of Theology and later moved it to Atlanta as part of the consortium that makes up the Interdenominational Theological Center.

As the world around it changed, so did the CME Church's goals and objectives. Spirituality and education remained chief priorities, but in the '50s and '60s the church played a major role in the liberation struggle, lending its name, limbs and properties to the Freedom Movement. During these decades, CME colleges, churches and homes became meeting sites and voter registration centers, and CME ministers became marchers and activists. Miles College, in particular one of the key Birmingham institutions that helped provide funds and bail bonds for members of the historic Birmingham Movement. "Many times during those marches we had to violate the injunctions that were placed on us, but we knew that we would have the backing of the school, our president and our bishops," says CME Senior Bishop Nathaniel L. Linsey, a grade-school friend of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and one of many CME ministers who joined in the Civil Rights struggle.

During this period, the CME Church moved its headquarters from Jackson, Tenn., to Memphis and resumed its ministry abroad, organizing and re-establishing denominational conferences throughout Ghana, Nigeria and Liberia.

The church contributed food, clothing and money to South Africa and aided Ethiopia, Rwanda, Liberia and Somalia during times of social and political unrest. CME missionaries provided special assistance to the Liberalism civil wax refugees in Ghana and Nigeria. The church built a 40-bed hospital in Nigeria and erected day care centers throughout Ghana and Nigeria.

Beginning with the '70s, greater emphasis was placed on community outreach within and outside the doors of the CME Church. In 1994, for instance, the CME Church adopted the "One Church, One School" project, which links schools with churches that provide school programs and monetary support. The national outreach project, which has paired more than 60 school/church partnerships over the past three years, is headed by founder and CME minister Dr. Henry M. Williamson Sr., pastor of Carter Temple Church in Chicago.

The church has also confronted tough issues like drug abuse and has implemented plans to open a rehabilitation center in Holly Springs, Miss.

The CME Church has also grappled with the issue of gender equality. As was the case in many Black and White denominations, female members of the early CME Church were mostly seen and not heard. Nevertheless, they played key support roles in the building of the denomination. Tired of being in the shadows of their husbands, brothers and fathers, a few women dared to go against the grain as early as the 1880s by demanding to be counted among the church's general delegates and to set up their own organizations. At first their demands were ignored, but eventually they convinced the church's male-dominated governing body to found the Women's Missionary Society, the first of many women's groups to emerge. Helena B. Cobb, who openly fought for the rights of CME women at the turn of the century, led the church's Board of Women's Work. later, Dr. Mattie E. Coleman founded and presided over the Women's Connectional Missionary Council, now called the Women's Missionary Council.