This Week in Texas Methodist History  February 25

Texans Look Forward to Uniting Conference in Kansas City, 1939

In April 1939 the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and the Methodist Protestant Church united to form the Methodist Church.  By doing so Methodists undid breaches that had occurred in the 19th century.  

Naturally this was a grand affair of reconciliation of the three denominations and Kansas City was determined to put its best foot forward as the host city.  As was customary invitations were sent to dignitaries including President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  In keeping with the theme of reconciliation, if the president attended, he would be welcomed by Governor Alfred Landon of Kanas, FDR's Republican opponent in the election of 1936.  Landon was a lay delegate to the conference.  A nationwide radio broadcast was planned for the event in which Landon presented Roosevelt to the conference and the president responded.

Roosevelt declined the invitation, and it is easy to see why he had other priorities.  He had returned from the baths at Warm Springs, Georgia to a world on the brink of global war. 

As the delegates made their way to Kansas City, FDR was exchanging letters with Adolph Hitler, asking in the strongest terms for peace.  Hitler rejected his plea.  FDR met with Charles Lindbergh a well known fan of Germany.  The same week FDR signed an appropriation bill to provide funds to build 571 bombers.  He then asked for another appropriation to build naval air bases.  

On April 30, while the Conference was in session, Roosevelt went to New York City to speak at the opening of the World's Fair.   For you trivia buffs, that was the first time a president appeared on television.  That same day Germany and Italy formalized their alliance.  

Eleanor Roosevelt often represented her husband in ceremonial matters, but she was also in the news in April 1939.   Marian Anderson had been denied use of Constitution Hall, owned by the DAR, for a concert.  Mrs. Roosevelt resigned her membership in the DAR.  Ms. Anderson gave her concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, April 9.  The concert attracted 75,000 attendees and millions more via radio, but Mrs. Roosevelt was condemned in newspaper editorials not just from Southern newspapers, but all over the nation.  

Both FDR and Mrs. Roosevelt had good reasons for not attending the United Conference in Kansas City, but there was another complicating factor.  On April 8, Tom Pendergast was arraigned for failure to pay taxes.  It gets worse.  He income he did not report was a bribe he needed to pay off gambling debts.  Pendergast was the political boss of Kansas City.  He had delivered Missouri votes to help get FDR elected and many CWA and PWA projects in Missouri were funneled through him.   He was responsible for elevating Harry Truman to the Senate.   FDR probably wanted nothing to do with Kansas City in April 1939.  

 This Week in Texas Methodist History  February 18

J. B. Ahrens Laments Problems Facing German Mission Efforts in Texas  1882

The Board of Missions of the MECS met during the General Conference of 1882, and J. B. Ahrens of New Orleans addressed the group on the difficulties facing the German mission work in Texas and Louisiana.  Those two states constituted the only German speaking conference in the MECS.  The MEC, on the other hand, had 8 German speaking conferences in the US and even sent missionaries back to Germany.

Arhrens was born in Germany in 1836.  H immigrated to Texas and attended Soule University in Chappell Hill.  He then went back to Germany and studied at the University of Gottingen.    In 1863 he was admitted on trial in the Texas Conference when it met in Columbus.  His first appointment was Missionary to the Army, but at the next conference he was appointed to Spring Hill and chaplain to the military post in Hempstead.  Hempstead was the site of one of the most famous prisoner of war camps in Texas, Camp Groce.   It is unknown whether Ahrens served as chaplain to the prisoners or to the guards--or both.  

After the war he was appointed professor at Soule, but very quickly was transferred to New Orleans by Bishop Keener.  He basically spent the rest of this ministry in New Orleans as pastor, presiding elder, and editor of two newspapers Familienfreund and later also the Kinderfreund.  

During his pastorate German immigration to Louisiana diminished and Germans became more integrated into US society, so Ahrens oversaw the transition of the largest German Church in New Orleans, Dryades Street from German to English services.  

He attributed the struggles of the MECS in his German work in Texas and Louisiana to the following:

1.  "Educated Germans for some reason or the other, associate our denomination with slavery."  It seems obvious to us today that the MECS was associated with slavery.

2.  German rationalism promoted secularism.  It is true that the critical study of the Bible had been a product of German universities.  German "rationalism" was a favorite bete noire for American Protestants which they conflated with atheism.  I have seen denunciations of this philosophical tradition in Methodist literature used as a reason to enter World War I. 

3.  Lutherans are becoming more organized and attacking us as fanatics.  They have the advantage of a steady stream of well-educated pastors coming from Europe.  It is true that Lutherans were becoming more organized.  The first Lutherans were small immigrant communities, but now they were well established.  

4.  The MEC is building churches right next to our churches!   The presence of two Methodist churches in small towns is confusing to the Germans.  Of course, with 8 annual conferences the MEC could support a much larger publishing effort than could the MECS.  The publishing efforts were located in Cincinnati and headed by William Nast who became quite a celebrity in Methodist circles.  

Ahrens died in New Orleans in 1906.

 This Week in Texas Methodist History February 4

Snapshot:  Texas MECS Bishops on Eve of Unification   1939

As the Methodist world concentrated on the May 1939 Unification Conference in Kansas City, final statistics were being gathered from the last sessions of the annual conferences of the MECS, MEC, and MP denominations that would soon be a part of history as they united to become the Methodist Church.

I thought readers might be interested in the bishops who had some connection with Texas as unification approached.

One should remember that bishops served more than one conference.   There were 12 MECS Episcopal Districts in 1939.  Two of them were centered in Texas and included churches in other states.  Bishop A. Frank Smith served the 5th District which consisted of five annual conferences:  Texas, West Texas, Louisiana, Indian Mission, and Texas Mexican.  The total membership in those conferences was 257,985.

Bishop Ivan Holt served the 6th District which consisted of North Texas, Central Texas Northwest Texas, and New Mexico.  There were 280,751 members.

  C. C. Selecman who had been at First Methodist Dallas and then President of SMU presided over Oklahoma, North Arkansas, and Little Rock Conferences.  Paul Kern who had served prominent Texas churches presided over Tennessee, Holston, Florida, Cuba, and the Latin Mission (only 585 members in that mission.)

Two bishops who had served Texas churches had far fewer members than all the other bishops but travelled much more than their colleagues.  Arthur Moore who had served Travis Park San Antonio (1920-1926) was assigned to the Belgium, Poland, Czechoslovak, Congo, and China Conferences.   There were a total of 18,410 in all those conferences.   Will Martin served the Pacific, Arizona, Western Mexican, Northwest, and California Oriental Mission.  There were 32,000 Methodists in those conferences.  He had been pastor of Houston Grace and Port Arthur Temple. 

The Uniting Conference shook up these assignments.  Bishops were assigned to newly created jurisdictions.  This meant that usually they would stay relatively close to home. 

The practice of serving several conferences such as Bishop Smith's five and Bishop Holt's four was sharply curtailed in 1960.  It became much more common for bishops to be assigned to a single conference.