This Week in Texas Methodist History March 28

 

 

Advocate Reports on Missionaries in War Zones, April 1942

 

 

Texas Methodist congregations have treasured personal relationships with foreign missionaries.  Although the bulk of missionary support came from a general fund administered by the Board of Missions, it was common for congregations to adopt a particular missionary and provide special support for a particular mission.  Sometimes the missionary had grown up in the church or had some special relationship with the community.   When the missionary returned to the United States on furlough, he or she would be certain to spend time in the sponsoring church.  I remember furloughed missionaries speaking in the attire of their assigned countries and displaying cultural and artistic objects of the mission to which they were assigned.

 

Because so many congregations had a direct relationship with foreign missionaries, they were naturally concerned about missionaries in war zones.

 

In early April, 1942, the Advocate tried to inform its readers about what was going on with missionaries in the war zones.  One should remember that the United States had entered the war only months earlier, but in both Asia and Europe the war had been raging for years. 

 

Life had not been easy for American missionaries in war zones even before Pearl Harbor.  Although as American citizens, their rights as neutrals should have been protected, the viciousness of the Nazi and Japanese occupying forces often prevailed over neutral rights. 

 

The Twentieth Century, and especially World War II,  had brought a new word to the lexicon---totalitarianism.   Previous dictatorships had merely demanded obedience, but the Nazis demanded total control over every aspect of life, including religion.    

 

Previous posts on this blog have considered restriction of Methodist mission activities in both China and Czechoslovakia.  Some missionaries were interned, church schools and hospitals were seized, and evangelism was banned. 

 

Here is the status report as of April 1942

 

Japan and Korea (remember that Korea had been seized by Japan earlier and renamed Chosen)

All of the missionaries had been withdrawn before Pearl Harbor and reassigned.  1 to the Philippines,  7 to Latin America, 5 to India, 2 to Malaysia, 1 to Africa, and 22 to Korean and Japanese congregations in Hawaii and the mainland U.S.

 

Occupied China   There were 29 missionaries and 2 dependent children in the missions.  Communication with them was not possible. 

 

Free China   There were 48 missionaries and 12 dependent children working without restriction on their activities.

 

 

Philippines—there were still 12 missionaries and 9 dependent children still working on Luzon.

 

Malaysia (including Sumatra)  Bishop Lee and 35 missionaries were still in country.  Five dependent children had been evacuated to India.

 

 There were still 10 missionaries in Europe.  One was in a German prisoner of war camp.  2 were in Poland, 1 in Bulgaria,  2 in Vichy France, 2 in Belgium, 2 in England, and 3 in Czechoslovakia. 

 

One should note that these are the missionaries sent by the Board of Missions.  The Woman’s Division of Christian Service also sent missionaries.  Reports from them will follow. 

 

This Week in Texas Methodist History March 21

 

Atlanta Lay Couple Donates 14,000 Empty Fruit Jars to Methodist Home, March 1936

 

The Methodist Home in Waco is one of the most popular and widely-known Methodist institutions in Texas.  It began as an orphanage but has since evolved into a full service provider for many types of child services.

 

One of the main continuities in the history of the Methodist Home has been its grassroots support.  As one reads back issues of its Sunshine magazine, one is always impressed with the number of donors from small towns, large cities, and all in between.  Its radio program featuring Let the Sun Shine In sung by residents of the Home was a popular feature in radio-era Texas. 

 

In March 1936 Mrs. and Mrs. R,. P. Willis of Atlanta, Texas, challenged Texas Methodists to support the Home with a matching gift---well, sort of a matching gift---that would multiply the donation. 

 

The lay couple who served as financial agents in the Texarkana District for the Home bought a box car load of fruit jars ---14,000 jars costing $1500 that had the name of the Methodist Home molded into the glass.  The jars were ½ gallon, and when filled with canned meat, vegetables, and fruit would be worth about $4200.   

 

In 1936 rural electrification was just beginning.  Instead of electrical freezers, families often put preserved their produce and meat by canning it.   The corn, green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, peaches, pears, figs, and other canned goods preserved during harvest season fed the family through the winter.  In the fall, at butchering time, the canning equipment was used to preserve beef and pork. 

 

Most farm families knew how to can, but during the New Deal, Home Demonstration agents spent a great deal of their time teaching the skill---after all, improperly canned foods could harbor the toxin botulism.  Some communities established communal canneries where families who could not afford canning equipment could come and can.  The cannery in Brenham still exists and has been repurposed into a restaurant in which vocational food service skills are taught. 

 

Individuals who sent filled jars to Waco would receive a certificate of participation in the project.   Mr. Willis proudly reported that one Cass County family had already earned 7 certificates, both parents and five children had supplied cans.  It was a way that cash-strapped families in the Depression could continue to support a worthy cause.

 

 

In-kind donations to the Home were nothing new.  Reports from even earlier in the 20^th century show donations of dish towels, preserves, and a box car load of good coastal prairie hay from Wharton County for the Home’s dairy herd. 

 

 

Personal Note:   My father was later appointed to Atlanta so I knew members of the Willis family.  The parsonage, directly across from the church, in town, had a large garden.  Its yard was full of pecan trees.  I had some of my very early vegetable and nut production experience there.

 

Note 2:   The Willis family also donated the Infirmary at Lakeview.  It is named in their honor.  

Note 3:   I inherited my grandmother's canning equipment--still use it, but to prepare fruit for the freezer, not for canning.  

 

 

 

 

This Week in Texas Methodist History, March 14, 2021

 

San Augustine Church Escapes Tornado, Church Dedicated March 14, 1937

 

The Methodist Church in San Augustine is one of the oldest congregations in Texas.  Both the city and the church played important roles in the Republic of Texas era.  Littleton Fowler, Daniel and Jane  Poe, Francis Wilson, and S. A. Williams all had important connections to the church. 

 

A church dedication service was planned for March 7, 1937 by the pastor, the Rev. Emmett Dubberly.   The congregation decided to spruce up the building before the service.  They wanted to paint the interior, repair the gutters and some of the exterior woodwork, not a major renovation, costing just $750 which had been raised for the repairs.

 

The work was supposed to begin on Tuesday, March 9, but the weather intervened.  At 4:40 p.m. a tornado struck and devastated the business district.  The Methodist church and parsonage were spared, but the destruction barely missed those structures.  Hail stones 3 and one half inches in diameter pelted the city.  The entire African American residential area known as Sunset was devastated.  About 30 houses closer to the business district were also destroyed.  The San Augustine Wholesale Grocery business, a brick structure housing about a half million dollars of merchandise was also destroyed.  Even worse, the city power plant was knocked out of commission depriving the city of lighting to assess the damage.  One person was killed, but there were relatively few other injuries.

 

Should the church go ahead with the repairs and dedication service?  Many of the Methodist families were now homeless.  Many more had sustained damage to their residences.   The congregation decided to go ahead and held the dedication service on March 14.  They even took the scheduled dedication week offering.  

 

Rev. Dubberly commented to the press that the experience of destruction.  “I believe we will be better able to rededicate our hearts now.”

 

 

In February 2009 the church suffered a fire.  You may visit the repaired building at 205 S. Liberty St. in historic San Augustine. 

 

This Week in Texas Methodist History March 7, 2021

 

Texas Methodist Women Reorganize after Creation of Methodist Church, March 6-11, 1940

 

The Methodist Church was created in 1939 by the merger of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and the Methodist Protestant Church.  The merger of the three denominations had very little theological importance since all three predecessor denominations had retained the basics of their Wesleyan heritage. Organizational matters were another matter.  The most contentious issue facing the new denomination was the status of African Americans.  Eventually that issue was resolved in favor of the Southern Church  by placing African American congregations in a segregated Central Jurisdiction.  That racist decision was not to be erased until 1968 and the creation of the United Methodist Church from the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church.

 

One of the organizational issues to be resolved concerned the status of the women’s organizations of the three predecessor denominations.  All three of those denominations had created Woman’s Foreign and Woman’s Home Missionary Societies.  They also lobbied the denominations to create the position of deaconess.  The Methodist Protestant Church even allowed the ordination of women as pastors.  

 

The distinction between the home and foreign missions was eventually ended, and by 1939 the denominations had institutions all around the world and in the United States as well.  The ministries included schools, hospitals, settlement houses, immigrant reception centers, etc.  In the Texas Conference, for example there were settlement houses in Houston and Beaumont for Mexican immigrants, (Eugenia Smith, Am Shipley, and Elma Morgan) a woman’s residential co-op in Houston  Carmen Blessing), and a deaconess (Willie Mae Porter) assigned to the East Texas Oil fields in the Longview District.  (The Japanese Mission in Orange County had just been terminated.)  There was also a deaconess working at Houston Methodist Hospital (Sarah Kee).  

 

The various missionary societies were fund raising powerhouses.  They raised funds to support these missions and to supply scholarships for both undergraduate women and graduate students at Scarritt who planned to enter the mission field. 

 

The northern and southern denominations both had offices to run the missions.  The MEC officed on Fifth Ave.  in New York City and the MECS in Nashville.  Merging those two offices would be complicated by the different cultures that had developed in the two denominations.  

 

From March 6-11, 1940 the Woman’s Missionary Council of the former MECS  met in New Orleans, and Texans were well represented. This was the last time the Southern women would meet without their Northern counterparts.   Mrs. J. W. Mills, was vice president of the organization.  She had been president of the Texas Conference Society for 21 years and had long experience serving at the denominational level, even being one of the first women elected a delegate to the General Conference of 1922.  The Council meeting in New Orleans consisted of the Mission Board officers, almost all of whom were men, the sixteen women serving on the Mission Board and the president and secretary of the 41 annual conference Societies—a gathering of about 110 voting members.    They counted about 200 foreign missionaries and about 165 deaconesses working in home missions.  By contrast the Northern Church had 525 foreign missionaries and 950 home missionaries. They reported raising about one million dollars for missions and noted that the sum exceeded the amount raised by the Board of Missions by about $100,000.

 

The keynote speakers show just how far the Council had to go in eliminating sexism from a woman’s organization.  They included Dean Lynn Harold Hough of Drew University,  Umphrey Lee of SMU,  Paul Quillian, John Mott, and A. Frank Smith---couldn’t the program organizers find women to provide the keynote speeches? 

 

Much of the work of the New Orleans meeting was explaining the new organization.  The new organization would be named Woman’s Society of Christian Service.  In an accommodation to the growing number of women in the workforce, a new organization, the Wesleyan Service Guild would be created, and its meetings would be held at night so women in the workforce could attend. 

 

 

Members of the Council were instructed to go back to their conferences and re-organize, write a new charter, elect new officers, etc.  They would also elect delegates to the first Jurisdictional Meetings of the Woman’s Society of Christian Service. 

 

The Texas Conference accomplished those goals at Cameron the following Sept. 30-Oct. 1.  They had previously met in College Station one last time earlier that year to dissolve the old MECS Woman’s Missionary Society.   New bylaws were adopted.  New officers and committee chairs were elected and five delegates to the Jurisdictional WSCS meeting to be held at Boston Ave. Methodist Church in Tulsa the following December were elected.

 

The WSCS and WSG continued until the 1968 merger which created the United Methodist Women.