St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1943-12-10

35:: Z IL v Z IL IL
w Brooklyn than in
Manhattan, but it
seems so when
one goes there for the first time.
There are beautiful churches in
Brooklyn, some large and some
small, some of them impressive in
their architectural design, ap-
preaching the dignity and grandeur
of cathedral, some are just plain
churches without any particular
distinction.
The cOlored population of Brook
Ign has been growing very rapidly
during the past ten years, as has
the white, for one reason or an
other. Many former residents of
Manhattan moved to Brooklyn
where it was more quiet and not
so crowded, but principally because
there were cheaper rents. The great
mass of cOlOred people who sought
residence in Brooklyn were and are
quiet, law abiding citizens, ambi-
tiOus for economic betterment and
anxious to rear their children in
decent surroundings. With the in
creasing settlement of cOlOred peO-
pie in the Acknowledgements area,
white people in the neighbOrhOOd
began to flee as if from the pres
ence of lepers. But their churches
could not be so readily moved. And
so in few years, the congregations
of these churches, whose parishiOn-
ers formerly occupied the neigh
bOrhOOd, began to dwindle and
where once the pews were filed
there were great gaps of empty
seats at the services.
With the increase of the popula-
ton in the area, for the most part
poor, there was an increase in
crime and delinquency, the inevita-
BILE concomitants of poverty and
Illustration. These social conditions
presented a real challenge to true
Christianity. And a vital church
would not have sought to reduce
the social shock by condemnation
of defenseless people, nor by in
voking the aid of predatory real
estate interests whose greed in the
first instance was responsible for
the so-called Negro invasion and
who now would perpetuate the
ghetto which they created by an
ill concealed appeal to racial preju-
dice.
No, a real Christian church would
not have surrendered its high call
ing to the dictates of racial and
color antipathy. Instead of be-
moaning the loss of it's white con-
gregation it would have opened the
doors of its auditoriums, its Sunday
School rooms, its gymnasiums to
the thousands of cOlOred men and
women who were without the fold.
The divine injunction which sent
the first followers of Him, the an
niversary of whose birth now ap-
prOaches, was: Come ye after Me
and I will make you to be fishers
of men," Not white men, not black
men, but men.
Nothing could have better dem
onstrated how far the Christian
Church has strayed from its origi-
nal purpose than the spectacle of
priest and prelate in Brooklyn in
terror of losing their white COM
municants because Of the presence
of those who by the grace of God
are Of darker hue. If there was a
single church, a single priest or a
single minister in that whole area
who offered to help meet the prob
lem of disease and death, and pow
erty and Illustration, and unemploy-
ment and suffering, I have not
heard of him 1.-THE colored churches
excepted).
If there had been one white cler-
gyman who had been moved to say:
Come to me all ye that labor and
are heavy laden and will give you
rest Come into our churches and
be uplifted by the music of our
magnificent organs and chorus.
Send your children to our Sunday
School and let them learn of Him
who said, Blessed are We when
they shall revile you and prosecute
you and speak all that is evil
against you untruly for my sake "
the Acknowledgements area might
not have become so bad. But there
was none SO filled with spirit of
Christ that he could loose himself
from the color line that binds his
soul, none who paid more than su-
perficial allegiance to the Second
great Commandment: Thou shalt