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AME's Ransom on the Christian State
Reverdy C. Ransom, speaking in 1906, was a pastor, editor and bishop in the AME church.
"When Christianity
received its Pentecostal baptism and seal from heaven it is recorded
that, 'there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of
every nation under heave. ... St. Paul, standing in the Areopagus,
declared to the Athenians that, 'God hath made of one blood all
nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.'
"Jesus Christ founded Christianity in
the midst of the most bitter and intense antagonism of race and
class. Yet he ignored them all, dealing alike with Jew, Samaritan,
Syro-Phoenician, Greek and Roman. ... The crowning object at which
Jesus Christ aimed was, to 'break down the middle wall of
partition,' between man and man ... And this He did, 'that He might
reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the
enmity thereby, do making peace.' ... (p. 337-8 in African
American Religious History: A Documentary Witness, ed. Milton C.
Sernett, Duke U Pr., 1999)
"The
Negro in America cherished no ideals, holds to no other principles
save those that are soundly American. Why then this fear of being
Africanized? We hear no fear expressed of our country being
Germanized or Jewized; we hear no cy going up from North or South
against Irish political ascendancy. Is there any evidence anywhere
in a single page of American history where the Negro has been less
patriotic and true to our institutions than any of these elements
which we have named? ... (p. 343)
"The
attitude of the Christian State toward this question should be to
seek to lift up all men who are sinking down, and to clear the way
and throw wide the gates to all peoples who are seeking to climb
upward in education, in wealth, in character and in all that better
growth of the human spirit which makes for manhood." (p. 345)
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