This Week in Texas Methodist History November 25

Southern Conference of the MEC Meets in Dallas, November 1937

The members of the Southern Conference of the MEC knew their days as a conference were coming to an end soon.  Plans were already underway for the merger of the MEC, MECS, and MP denominations that would occur in 1939 and create a new denomination, the Methodist Church.  The Southern Conference was no stranger to mergers.  It was created in 1926 from the merger of three linguistic conferences==from English, German, and Swedish speaking conferences.  The English and German speaking segments had also been formed from a merger--that of Louisiana and Texas churches.  

The total membership of the conference was 13,800 spread through three districts, the Brenham, Lake Charles, and San Antonio.  

As I was reading through the 1937 Journal, I was struck by two items.  

A.  Bishop Charles Mead had to admonish the various racial groups in the conference to remember that they were all Christians and needed to cooperate with each other.  He closed his remarks with the singing of Blest Be the Tie That Binds.  Obviously, we would like to know more about events that led to the Bishop's need to make such remark.  His use of the term "racial" does not mean what it does today---he was talking about Germans, English, and Swedes and also possibly Italians since the denomination had an Italian Mission in New Orleans.  After the 1926 merger Swedes continued to be appointed to former Swedish churches, Germans to the former German churches.  Perhaps anti-German sentiment accompanying World War I still existed.  

B.  The other item that caught my eye was the resolution honoring the work of pastors visiting the Carville Leprosy Hospital just of the south of Baton Rouge.  That reference sent into a research direction that revealed a most interesting story of a disease I had known mainly from the Bible.  I invite readers to look up the story via internet resources.