Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1851-08-09

REPORT ON HOME MISSIONS DIscUssED-FAcTs
Pres. Blanchard's Report on the Conncc
ton of the Churches with Slavery through
their flomo Missions being under discus
sion and the debate becoming somewhat
rambling, Prof Finney rose to call attention
to what seemed to him tho important points;
to wit l1.) Who are guilty of the wrong of
sustaining slavery? (2.) If any Mission
Boards arc shown to bc guilty, what is our
duty in respect to sustaining them? (3.l Is
i right, in the case supposed, to receire their
funds?
Facts being called for, Pres. Blanchard
said he had some to give. "The Report be-
lore you for the most part confines itself to
principles; ,hcre is no lack of facts to which
these principles apply.
"The American Home Missionary Socie-
" has sixty three of its missionaries, (some
documents say fifty six,) in slavchoding
Statcs. Are the churches to which they
minister, slavehoding? ! believe they are
| have conversed very extensively with those
pastors, aud all with whom / hive spoken
affirm that they are. | came to this Con.
yention in company with pastor from Mis-
souri,. lie has ono stakeholder in his church
the lowest number have ever known. An.
licly--Are your members shareholders p
Answered. They would be ifthey had mon.
ey enough TO buy slaves. Elders in our
church hold slaves. Neither public senti-
ment nor church discipline f6rbids it. ]
suppose il safe to say that every one of those
churches in the slave states aided by the Am.
Home Mission Board is n savchoIdinr
Church, at least in discipline and spirit, ii
n nor A. IN, 81 - &, m.
continuing Shareholders, cannot make oath
to it, but believe it to he the case. Mr..
Pierce of Missouri left the State because
northern men of Ant.slavery principles
could do nothing there. He had no slave
holders actually in his church, yet if any had
applied for admittance, their relation as slave.
holders would have been no barrier"
"My belief therefore, resting upon nu-
merous facts, Is that nearly every one of the
fifty six or sixty three churches sustained in
the slave states 10y the American Home Mis-
slonary Society has Shareholders in it. Yet
II only one Of them embraced shareholders in
lls fellowship, and received the Home Mis-
SION Boards endorsements this would cover
Tie principle. Every one of them n,igM
have Shareholders in fellowship ifonc might.
The mission Board that yields the fellow
ship OF its support TO one such church. must,
u consistent, yield it to the whole fifty or
sixty, and indeed Mr.. Badger, Secretary of
This Board, refused 10 take the ground that il
was right to exclude shareholders from
church fellowship.
"Ofthe Baptist Home Mission Board he
had some facts to advance. up to 1915,
'he whole Baptist Church, north and south,
lcted under the same missionary organiza.
ions, both Home and Foreign. Prior 10
hat time the Foreign Board were sustain
ng slaveholding missionary-Mr. Bushy-
head, among the Indians. The first Baptist
missionary who went TO Texas drove his
laves before him MS if they were only cattle.
such facts as these reused some spirit among
he Baplists, and in 1915, there was split |
etween North and South IN missionary ac |
airs. II was managed to let the southern |
'oard take all the slave churches, but still
nc Northern took no efficient action against
lavery. AT best they have scarcely reached |
nc policy OF letting slavery alone"
. In the Methodist body, we sec n church !
'outh and church North, and many sup
'ose the latter TO be free from any sustain
ng Slavery. Such do not know the facts.
The church North laps over upon the Slave
States so that she now has one fifth part as
many Shareholders in her communion as the
,hurch South has in hers. In tho church
North are at this day eight annual conleren-
res which embrace slaveholdng churches
and ministers, and thus in the most emphatic
form endorse the system of slavery.
"ln the New School Presbyterian church,
the great schism took place in 1897. Then
the New School body had but three slave
holding commissioners; now this body has
twenty-five. The Home Mission Board aids
more than $4,000 members in slavehoIding
and these are chiefly Presbyterian
for CongregatiOnaism would work
but qucerly in slaveholling church where
the slave and his master are alike brethren,
with equal ecclesiastical power"
Pres. blanchard called up Mr. Fec of
Kentucky, who sad-" wns connected with
the American Home Missionary Society for
fifteen months, and knop that the Society
did commission missionaries 10 sayeholding
know that members in those
churches did hold slaves / kno,o il to be the
policy of the American Home Missionary
Society 10 extend its aid TO slavcholding
churches in the N. School Presbyterian body.
81 know the same facts to exist with re-
gard to the Baptists.
81 know there are shareholders in tho
church, both the church South
md the church North"
Mr.. Nevin of Cleveland interposcd to
state the case of" a Methodist preacher who
came into his church to get money to buy
himself from another Methodist preacher.-
MIR. Fec knows both the men,"
A member of the Convention rose TO state
a fact. f" Mr. Fec came into possession of
slave with his patrimony, and forthwith set
him at liberty"
Hereupon n Methodist preacher rebukes
Bro. Fee, and compares him to the prodignl
son, who, having received his portion of the
goods sqnandered it in riotous living! This
preacher, of the Methodist Episcopal Church
North, now breaches in Ripley, Ohio--a free
State; unrebuked for his ra6id pro-slayery
sentiments.
DISCUSSION ON CHURCH COMMUNION AND FELL
LOwsuIP.
ln al