The Office of Archives and Statistics at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists makes available a phenomenal wealth of full-text historical sources online. Long-time director Bert Haloviak initiated the service several years ago and oversaw steady expansion its offerings, and his successor, Dr. David Trim, is carrying it forward.
A relatively recent addition, the General Conference Recording Secretary Minutes for 1901-1905, helps us get a little closer to what actually happened while
At the 1901 session in Battle Creek, a proposal was made that the union conferences establish a department of sorts to promote the church's work among recent immigrants from Germany and Scandinavia. Sheafe, by then generally recognized as the unofficial leader and spokesperson for the Adventist work among African Americans, quickly proposed that a similar plan be initiated for the "colored people."
The excerpts below indicate substantial omissions in the General Conference Bulletin when compared with the recording secretary's minutes. For one thing, the comments of one Watson Ziegler, a name unfamiliar to me, are excluded entirely. More importantly, for my interests, the recording secretary's inclusion of Sheafe's figures of speech -- "under a ring" and "gagbit" gives much greater force to the preacher's remarks about working "with freedom."
Though presumably the more original, less redacted source, the recording secretary's minutes also present its own problems. Substition of the word "not" for the first "but" in the phrase "work with freedom, but under a ring or under a gagbit, but with freedom" makes sense of an otherwise contradictory statement, and thus can be done with confidence. But that does involve "tampering" with the text as it reads.
With the "not" in place, though, we can see much more clearly than I was able to bring out in the biography, how the concerns about fairness along racial lines that prompted Sheafe to break away from conference organization in 1907 were already troubling him in 1901. The "gag-bit" is "a powerful type of bit used in breaking horses" according to the Collins English Dictionary. "Under a ring" probably refers to the insertion of a ring through the nose of animal to keep in under control.
It is doubtful that Sheafe would have used these figures of speech if he, in his five years of Adventist ministry to that point, had not at times felt like he was under a gag-bit or ring, or at least in danger of it. The point of a "department" (that exact word was not used) for the black work thus was to enable black Adventists to work with a freedom that would otherwise be severely constricted.
Sheafe's motion was referred to an ad hoc sub-committee, but neither he nor any other black worker was included on that sub-committee, which recommended against enacting it for the present. One wonders how differently Sheafe's stormy relationship with the denomination might have turned out if he had simply been included on that ad hoc committee and given a genuine voice. And whether the conflicts alienating powerful black leaders such as John W. Manns and James K. Humphrey from the denomination in 1914 and 1929, respectively, might have been avoided.
At any rate, due in large measure to the pressure created by the protests of Sheafe, Manns, and Humphrey, the denominational leadership gradually released black Adventists from the hold of the "gag-bit" over the next forty years, with the establishment of the North American Negro Department (1909), placing a black minister, W.H. Green, in charge of that department (1918), and formation of black-led conferences (1944).
General Conference Bulletin, 22 April 1901, 388-90:
General Conference Recording Secretary's Minutes, 21 April 1901, 62-63 (17-18, DJVU file):
Doug: This is very useful. I'll need to revisit the recording secretary's minutes regarding my project on Daniells.
Posted by: Ben McArthur | 09/12/2011 at 01:07 PM