This Week in Texas Methodist History  August 25

Continuing our series in honor of 175 years of Methodism in Brenham

How we choose to organize the space in which we worship says a lot about us.   Methodism grew like a brush fire in 19^th century America, and the main engine of that growth was a movement called revivalism.  The era of revivals began with outdoor communion services by college students in western North Carolina, but soon swept the frontier with camp meetings under brush arbors.  The meetings centered on powerful preaching calling upon sinners to repent of their sins and accept the pardon and mercy that God offered.  The appeals were quite emotional and filled with warning of the fate of those who did not repent.  A 19^th century Methodist revival was a noisy affair.  Methodists were known as “Shouting Methodists” because many of them were so overcome with either the despair of eternal damnation or the joy of salvation though God’s mercy, that they could not contain themselves.

When Methodists became prosperous enough to construct their own houses of worship, they brought their revivals indoors.  The preaching was still the central part of the service, and the pulpit was placed in the center of chancel.

The highest architectural expression of the emphasis on preaching was the Akron Plan church, so named because the first one was built in Akron, Ohio.  It featured a central pulpit with a fan shaped auditorium.  In pre-amplifier days, that structure brought more people closer to the preacher.  It also fit well with other trends.  The late 19^th century was also known as the Sunday School era.  For the first time graded Sunday Schools became common as denominational presses published graded Sunday School literature.  The ends of the fan-shaped auditorium could be isolated with sliding panels to serve as Sunday School rooms and opened to provide addition auditorium seating.   It was also the era of building more churches in cities, and the Akron Plan worked very well because the style could be fit into a city block with the choir and pulpit in a corner.

In 1879 the MECS in Brenham built a magnificent building just south

downtown on Church Street and named it Giddings Memorial. 

Even though it was beautiful, it was snakebit from the start. One Saturday night one of the exterior walls collapsed—foundation problems are nothing new in Brenham. 

Meanwhile the German speaking MEC church built a more modest church building on 4^th Street and worshiped there. 

By the 1930’s the 1879 structure was in really bad shape.  The two congregations, MEC and MECS, merged in 1938—a year before the unification of 1939—and continued to worship in the 4^th Street Church. 

Part of the merger agreement was that the merged congregation would build a new sanctuary in a new location—not previously owned by the predecessor congregations.  Another provision of the merger was that the new church would be built before the 1940 session of Annual Conference to be held in November—a two year lead time.

That deadline was not met, and that delay had a profound effect upon the design of the sanctuary in which we now worship. 

After World War II there was a huge need for new church construction.  Very few churches had been built because of the Depression and World War II, and the churches were growing rapidly because the post-war Baby Boom parents wanted to raise their children in church. Most late 19^th-early 20^th century church buildings were too small and could not be retrofitted with the sound systems and air conditioning now considered necessities. 

There had been a change in church architectural styles.  The Akron Plan was dead.  The post World War II generation of preachers was the first generation of Methodist preachers for whom a seminary education was an expectation.  In the years following 1945 the crop of young preachers who were going to lead the church-building effort had been educated in the historic traditions of our faith.  Many of them wished to re-emphasize the historic emphasis on the sacraments at the expense of preaching.  A more educated, sophisticated clergy was now preaching to a more educated, sophisticated laity and both were somewhat ashamed of their legacy as “Shouting Methodists.” 

In architectural terms, that meant the pulpit was pushed to the side, and the communion table that held the sacraments was made the focal point of the worship space.  Church auditoriums were stretched to create long central aisles appropriate for ritual processions. 

The pastor at Brenham, James Allen Chapman, already had a reputation as the “most high church preacher in the Texas Conference” when he came here.  It would be an understatement to say that he embraced the changes going on in church architecture.  Church architecture was his passion, and he even went to Columbia University for graduate school to study the subject. 

His predecessor, Emmett Dubberly, had tried to move the church, but failed because there was huge division in the church.  Some of the former MECS members wanted to renege on the merger agreement and place the new church back on the lot that had once been their home.  Dubberly could not break the log jam.

Chapman was less diplomatic.  In the “you can’t cook an omelet without breaking some eggs” style, he pushed through the new building plans by driving out some members of one of the factions. 

The church in which we worship shows the mark of the “high church” architectural movement.  You have noted the kneelers in the pews as possibly the only ones you’ve ever seen in a Texas Methodist church, but the kneelers were not the talk of the Conference in 1950.  The most radical “high church” feature was the eternal flame in the chancel (since removed). 

In the late 20^th century the pendulum swung back again.  The blossoming of “contemporary worship” services and the rise of mega-churches pushed architectural styles toward more flexible spaces.  The communion table was de-emphasized and the pulpit and stage for a band returned to prominence.  Rotating seasonal banners rather than timeless stained glass windows became the dominant visual ornamentation. 

This Week in Texas Methodist History  August 18

Continuing with our series celebrating the 175th year of Methodism in Brenham. . .

When the Civil War finally ended, everyone knew that the old social order based slavery was forever destroyed.  Few could anticipate how tumultuous the religious scene would become during the era immediately after the war. 

The first and most obvious change was that African Americans were now free to organize their own religious lives without having to conform to the wishes of the people who formerly held them in bondage. 

Before the war at least a quarter of Texas Methodists were African American.  Washington County holds the distinction of having the only Methodist African American licensed to preach before the Civil War whose name we know.  A man named John Mark was licensed by the Washington Circuit Quarterly Conferences beginning in 1852.  Joseph P. Sneed recorded in his diary hearing him preach and commented favorably on his sermon.  Sneed also reports that when the man who held John Mark announced his intention to move further west, Methodists in Washington County bought John Mark so that he could remain and preach here.  Alas, I have not been able to corroborate this statement with any other document.

After emancipation African Americans had choices that did not exist before the war.  They could join the MEC which was known for its anti-slavery stand in 1844.  They could join the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) or African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) churches, both of which were totally controlled by African Americans.  They could also remain in the MECS, but since that denomination had been founded on a defense of slavery, that option wasn’t particularly appealing.  In Brenham’s case, it really wasn’t appealing since the Brenham pastor was Franklin C. Wilkes who had been a colonel in the Confederate army. 

Robert Alexander, though, had another idea.  He attended the 1866 General Conference of the MECS which met in New Orleans, and while there visited with representatives of the AME denomination.   Shortly after returning home, he visited with Richard Haywood who had been licensed as exhorter by Orceneth Fisher way back in 1840.  Alexander suggested that Haywood affiliate with the AME and start a church in Washington County.   He did so and when the Texas Conference of the AME was founded, 3 of its fifteen churches were in Washington County.  John Mark, who had been licensed by the MECS, switched to the AME and served Independence. 

African Americans continued to leave the MECS and join the MEC, AME, and AMEZ churches, and eventually the MECS organized its remaining African American members into a new denomination, the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, later renamed the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church or CME.  In the case of Brenham and Washington County, it was too late.  The AME and MEC were far ahead of the CME in organizing churches there. 

This Week in Texas Methodist History  August 11

Last month’s historical sketch related how African Americans in Washington County left the Southern branch of Methodism.  This month we will see that German speaking Methodists also found a new home in another denomination after the Civil War. 

The first and most important German settlement in pre-Civil War Texas was Industry, just to the southwest of Brenham.   Industry's founder, Friedrich Ernst, wrote letters home extolling the beauty and fertility of the land.  After the formation of the Adelsverein to promote German immigration, Industry became a crucial stop on the way to the land grants in the Hill County.  

The stereotypical view of German religion—Catholic in the South, Lutheran in the North—obscures a more complex reality.  German immigrants to Texas also included a large number with a pietistic inclination, and they were ripe for the message Methodist circuit riders were bringing.  On the eve of the Civil War both the Texas Conference and the Rio Grande Mission Conference (today’s Rio Texas) of the MECS had German districts.

The end of the Civil War presented Germans with same problem it presented African Americans—to stay in the MECS or join another denomination.  The Presiding Elder of the Austin District of the MECS, which included the Hill Country German churches, convened a meeting and told them basically that the denomination was flat broke and could not continue mission payments to the churches.  The MEC, on the other hand was relatively well off and had a vigorous publishing concern in Cincinnati that produced German language Disciplines, Bible commentaries, tracts, Sunday School literature,  and newspapers for the German speaking conferences that stretched from New York to Iowa.  Even before the war, MECS Germans were using publications from the MEC. 

The MECS pastor at Industry, Carl Biel, took the lead and changed his church’s affiliation from MECS to MEC.  When the Texas Conference of the MEC was formed in January 1867, it consisted of about 70 African American preachers and 3 Germans—all of whom were from Industry.  More Germans were to follow.

As the German Methodists prospered, they had a problem.  The closest German Methodist school where aspiring preachers could go for ministerial training was in Iowa.  In 1883 that problem was solved with the creation of Blinn Memorial College at the 4^th Street Church.   The college began with the pastor, Carl Urbantke, and three students, but from those modest origins came a mighty force for education and evangelism.

The founding of Blinn shifted the center of Texas German Methodist from Industry to Brenham.   Young men studying for the ministry could attend classes all week and then go serve a church thanks to Brenham’s rail connections.  The efforts of the student pastors and transfers from the northern conferences led to the establishment of German MEC churches in all directions from Brenham.   The 4^th Street Church became a favored site for holding Annual Conference.   Thanks to Blinn Memorial College, Brenham became the only town in Texas in which the MEC and MECS churches were roughly equal in size an influence. 

Assimilation of German speakers into the English speaking world and the anti-German sentiment associated with World War I diminished the need for Blinn’s historic role.  When the Depression hit, the church lost control of the school, but Washington County voters created a special district to turn it into a public institution. 

This Week in Texas Methodist History August 4

Continuing with our series on the history of Methodism in my home church. . .

1844—the year our church was founded, Methodists faced their greatest crisis.   The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, meeting in New York City, was roiled with the refusal of some northern conferences to accept the episcopal supervision of a slave-owning bishop, James O. Andrew of Georgia.   The parties were not able to compromise so Methodism was split into northern and southern branches that would not reunite until 1939.

John Wesley hated slavery and passed that hatred on to the denomination which he inspired, but as time passed, General Conferences made small accommodations to human slavery which eventually amounted to embracing the institution by most southern Methodists. 

Anti-slavery Methodists finally had enough!  They announced that they would not accept Bishop Andrew as the presiding officer at their annual conferences.  Methodist bishops have “general authority.”  That means that any bishop is authorized to conduct the annual conference of any annual conference. The split at the 1844 General Conference reverberated all the way down to Washington County and the newly formed town of Brenham.

Bishop Andrew presided over the Texas Annual Conference of December 1843, held at a campground in southwestern Walker County.   His time spent there earned him the friendship of many Texas Methodists.  Only six months later he was in New York City at the center of the dispute.  When the General Conference finally voted on the issue, only one delegate from the South voted with the North.  That one delegate was John Clark of the Texas Conference. 

At the next meeting of the Quarterly Conference of the Washington Circuit in August 1844 a resolution was introduced to condemn Clark’s vote.  The committee to write the resolution consisted of John W. Kenney, Enoch King, and Jabez Giddings.  They composed the resolution and submitted it for publication in the New York Christian Advocate. 

Clark had remained in New York upon the adjournment of the General Conference and took an appointment to a local church.  He sent for his wife and children who had stayed in Texas and never again set foot in Texas.  He decided to defend his vote and did so by replying to the letter in the New York Christian Advocate.

That reply touched off a barrage of letters back and forth between Clark and Robert B. Wells, the Brenham preacher.  Wells continued to condemn Clark for voting with the anti-slavery forces and Clark continued to defend that vote.

The exchange of letters might have been just one more insignificant tiff in the bigger picture were it not for Robert B. Wells.   Out of this exchange of letters Wells decided to start his on edition of the Advocate as a vehicle for the exchange of news items.  It took a while but in 1847 Wells brought out the Texas Christian Advocate and Brenham Advertiser as a weekly publication.  It lasted in Brenham only one year when Wells turned the operation over to his father-in-law Orceneth Fisher who moved it to Houston and dropped the “Brenham Advertiser” from the name. 

The newspaper had its ups and downs but by the 1880’s the Texas Christian Advocate had a circulation of over 10,000, putting it in the ranks of the most widely distributed publications in Texas—religious or secular.  The paper moved to Dallas in 1887 and went through several name changes until it published its last edition as the Texas Methodist Reporter in 2013. 

Brenham FUMC can thus claim to be the source of Methodist publishing in Texas and home to the first religious newspaper of any denomination in Texas.