WHDL - 00019393
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WHDL - 00019393
One of the aims of this article includes a desire to add to this recent surge in historical scholarship by revealing how issues related to church governance, segregation, and evangelization impacted southern black participation in the Church of the Nazarene (CN) (another predominantly white holiness denomination that emerged out of the 19th century American Holiness Movement)5 during the 1950s and 1960s. Up until now, no religious historian has significantly examined how issues related to segregation, missions, or black autonomy impacted the participation and faith of African Americans in the CN during the middle of the 20th century. Roger Bowman, a former African American minister in the denomination, wrote a popular missionary book over thirty years ago on the CN’s evangelical mission among blacks. In that monograph, he briefly detailed how black Nazarenes worked alongside denominational leaders to start and organize churches, Sunday schools, and other ministries. In a few pages of his work, Bowman briefly outlined how southern blacks ministered under the jurisdiction of the Gulf Central District (GCD). The GCD was a segregated district that governed and oversaw the activities of black churches in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Bowman’s basic thesis regarding the GCD was that it “was not organized as an instrument of segregation but as an instrument of evangelism…that would…hopefully provide for closer supervision and greater support.” As such, he did not examine how other organizational, theological, and racial issues shaped the relationship between blacks and the CN.6
CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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