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Go and Be Reconciled - Alabama Methodists Confront Racial Injustice, 1954-1974 (Paperback)
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Go and Be Reconciled - Alabama Methodists Confront Racial Injustice, 1954-1974 (Paperback)
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List price R527
Loot Price R393
Discovery Miles 3 930
You Save R134 (25%)
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During the climactic years of the civil rights movement in the Deep
South, a closely related struggle was going on within the United
Methodist Church. That denomination, second only in membership in
the region to the Southern Baptists, was slowly moving toward
integration under mandate from its national governing body, the
Methodist General conference. But in Alabama, external
institutional pressures and even internal constituencies were not
strong enough to break down the segregated church structure: doing
that would require a significant shift in the leadership of the
church. The story is one in which an institution based on the moral
teachings of Christianity confronted the immorality of racism and
legal segregation within its own ranks while it continued to
operate within a racially divided larger society. Against the
backdrop of the tumultuous events of the civil rights struggle (the
1954 Supreme Court school desegregation decision, the Freedom Rides
in 1961, the King demonstration in Birmingham in 1963, and the
Sixteenth Street Baptist church bombing), the North Alabama
Conference and its counterpart in South Alabama carried on a
spirited and often bitter debate over the existence of a completely
separate conference for their black membership. This book tells the
inside story of the struggle within the North Alabama Conference
for the first time by utilizing the publications and official
archives of the church. But its most important sources are
interviews with a wide spectrum of Methodists, including those who
served in roles of leadership and those who were simply faithful
members of their respective churches. Their accounts are compelling
and go far beyond the sometimes vague and uninformative official
conference documents. Many of the persons interviewed are no longer
living, but in transferring their spoken words onto the printed
page, there is a sense that their long-suppressed stories are being
told for the first time. They described in detail how a
hierarchical institution moved from a position of absolute
commitment to segregation to one in which the uniting of the races
under one organizational structure was achieved. In the end, the
integration of the church was finally realized as a result of the
daring leadership of a single bishop who challenged the prevailing
white segregationist laity, Kenneth Goodson. But along the way
there were many other persons who risked their careers and even
their personal safety on behalf of racial justice. This is their
story as well.
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