No Nonsense

When Southern churchmen get together with Northerners, they usually keep their eyes peeled for a tar baby. Last week at Atlanta's big, good-willing congress of the Baptist World Alliance, even the highest-minded Southerners felt sticky when, congregating in social groups, they were approached by a Negro who repeatedly exclaimed: "I am a Negro. I don't guess you want me around." The Negro, Dr. H. M. Smith of Chicago, thereupon telegraphed newspapers, declaring that "numerous racial signs" were displayed at the congress meeting place.

The signs designated the groups represented in the Alliance, including the two U. S. Negro bodies, National Baptist Convention and National Baptist Convention of America.* They were meant simply to make it easy for the Baptists to find their friends. But down came the signs, at the order of Dr. James Henry Rushbrooke, goat-bearded British secretary of the Alliance, who said crisply, "Don't let's have any more nonsense about color." Not quite satisfied, a Negro editor from Nashville sounded the brass for the election of a "consecrated, learned, experienced black minister" as president of the Alliance, to "answer the challenge from barbaric paganism." He nominated Dr. Lacey Kirk Williams, learned black pastor of one of the world's largest churches, Chicago's Olivet Baptist (membership: some 10,000). The Alliance then elected Dr. Rushbrooke its president. There was no more nonsense about color, most delegates feeling that Atlanta, which quietly shelved some of its racial laws during the congress, had kept tar-baby trouble at a minimum.

If racialism bothered the congress little, nationalism caused it some trouble. Most of the "messengers" were for telling off Hitler and Mussolini. Thereupon a German Baptist bitterly accused the congress of not understanding Germany, while an Italian defended Il Duce as Baptism's protector against the Roman Catholic Church. Dr. Rushbrooke, with no particular national ax to grind, made a speech which further suggested that, in Europe, religious minorities like the Baptists try to play off governments against established churches. He blamed "the sinister figure of the priest," rather than King Carol, for Baptist troubles in Rumania. He paid his respects to "the intolerant temper of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Spain," but cited Generalissimo Franco's pledges for freedom of worship, which he said he believed.

*Baptist groups which do not believe in foreign missions and "human institutions" such as Sunday school do not belong to the Alliance. Stay-at-homes--unless they wished to pay 25-c- to sit in the audience at night meetings of the congress--were Foot-Washing, Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit, Hard Shell Primitive, Six-Principle, Seventh Day, Free Will, Streaked Head Baptists. All these sects are small, quirky.

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