Preaching While Black: The Post Reconstruction Rhetoric of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner-Pt. 3

Last updated on: June 19, 2015 at 9:15 am by Andre E. Johnson

Preaching While Black: The Post Reconstruction Rhetoric of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner-Pt. 3 2015-06-19T09:15:48-05:00 Andre E. Johnson

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Bishop Henry McNeal Turner also had strong criticisms of the church and its ministers. Once when lamenting about the ministers who wanted security in their appointments above anything else, Turner wrote

It is maintained in our Church that nothing can be done for God without a gold mine. It has got so that if you give a man an appointment he will halt to ask you what is there, and if you tell him God and people are there and a great field for work and labor, he will ask you what he has done to be thus punished. He will in addition tell you he has been in the ministry five or six years, and every place he has been the minister before him had ruined the work, and he could do nothing, etc. He thinks it time he was sent to a place where he could have rest for one year. There is a sentiment extant that somebody else must raise a bushel of money before we can ask a soul to come to God and be saved from sin and death. Trust in God is a thing of the past; the old folks did that way, but we can’t. They were fogies anyhow, and had no better sense than to believe God would send them help from on high; but we know better. This is no age of ignorance and superstition. Now I repeat, this sentiment is nearly all through our Church, and it is paralyzing our work at home and abroad. Men seem to have no idea they are to venture on God, pitch in, preach day and night, sing, pray, fast, and work till Christ sends the increase. The ministry is about reduced to a vicarage is in the minds of many (72).

For Turner, while education was important to the ministry, he suggested that the church may have “misconstrued” its efficacy.

Ever since the war we have literally deified learning.We taught our young ministers that if they could get learning, they were fitted for every phase of ministerial life and responsibility. Thus the power of the Holy Spirit and a direct call to preach the gospel from God have been allowed to pass as secondary considerations. The consequence has been that those that are fortunate enough to procure a little book learning thought themselves everything, took the big head in most instances, and those who were so unfortunate as not to get learning on a high scale, concluded they were nobody and sat themselves down to do nothing. The majority of our ministers today stand thus, as wise fools (109).

For Turner this lead to a schism in the A.M.E. church made up of two classes of ministers.

The first class big headed, insolent, self-inflated, treating the fathers with contempt, making fun of the ignorance of the people doing nothing to enlighten them, holding themselves above everybody, preaching written sermons as dry as chips, which God never intending for any soul saving preacher to do, and in short, trying to get people to heaven through mere intellect, where they are not going themselves, for no man can serve God intellectually nor preach a soul saving gospel intellectually; man’s moral nature must be brought into play as well as his intellectual. The second class, or a large portion of them, are going around whining about what they never had, how little schooling they had, yet they can read, write, and have ocean of time to improve and the same time spent in magnifying their weaknesses and disadvantages properly improve, might make them giants in the land (110).

However, for Turner, God and the power of the Holy Spirit should take center stage

Any man that God ever called to preach can take the Bible and hymn book alone, with the holy spirit, and alarm the nation. Old Tony Murphy of South Carolina who would not read anything but the bible and hymn book, and knew the Bible almost by memory was the greatest preacher I ever listened to or expect to. Men of the highest rank and greatest learning hung up on his lips, as God’s word was poured forth from his massive mouth, like children. Old Sankey Taylor, the only man I ever heard that can preach an hour on anything he choose, by strictly quoting scripture, could do the same (110).

Turner also took issue with schemes that many used in the church to raise money. One such scheme was the use of the “Grand Rally.” Turner lamented

“Grand rally” appears to be the craze in the first district. Please come to my grand rally, &c, is the burden of almost every letter and postal card. It is a grand rally for church indebtedness, grand rally for pastors’ salary, grand rally for some old coal or gas bill, grand rally for parsonage rent, grand rally for some improvements which ought to be made, grand rally for a new church whenever they can get far enough ahead, grand rally to buy a new organ or improve the old one, grand rally to raise money for everything except the Dollar money, missionary money, or money’s not for the immediate use of their church.

However, Turner noted that he did not hear the cry for “grand rally go out for certain things.

Strange to say, however, we never hear of grand rally for soul saving, grand rally for revival, grand rally for sinner catching, grand rally for the conversion and justification of transgressors, grand rally for the reclamation of backsliders, grand rally for growth in grace, grand rally to inspire members to fast and pray, grand rally against lying and stealing, grand rally for the overthrow of bar rooms, grand rally against Sabbath breaking, grand rally against blaspheming and cursing and swearing generally, grand rally against the devil and hell, grand rally for god and heaven or anything beyond a little for finance for this or that church. God save our connection or money for selfish ends, and education unsanctified will be its death. Money is an indispensable adjunct to Christianity, we know, but God never intended that Christianity should be a mere adjunct to money, for when the religious power and usefulness of a church dies, all the gold and silver in creation cannot save it, nor can pulpit rhetoric, however much interspersed with classic lore, divested of the holy spirit I do not mean that a grand rally ought not to be had if necessary, but I do mean we ought not to neglect rallying for souls also; both should go together (141).

To be continued…….

Read part 1

Read Part 2

All quotes from Turner come from the forthcoming volume, An African American Pastor After American Reconstruction: The Literary Archive of Henry McNeal Turner, 1880-1892. Volume 4. The Literary Archive of Henry McNeal Turner. Edwin Mellen Press. (2015).

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