USA > Alabama > History of the Protestant Episcopal church in Alabama, 1763-1891 > Part 15
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In 1869 the Convention resolved to give the offering on the second Sunday in every month to diocesan missions; and then the clergy went home and, to a man, forgot all about the resolution. The next year at Convention much compunction was manifested and it was determined to do better; but at the end of the next six months one solitary parish had given as much as one cent-and this despite the fact that the burden of supporting the eight missionaries was borne by the Bishop alone. Small wonder is it, then, that in 1872 the Bishop very nearly rose in insurrection, and told the Convention plainly that he would no longer bear the Convention's own responsibility for support of the missionaries unless the brethren gave him, not words of approbation, but tangible evidence of determination to help. He demanded some system; he left the Con- vention free to choose its own plan.
Sufficient pressure to cause movement having been applied, the Convention of 1872 gave Alabama its first attempt at systematizing the missionary work. The plan adopted was that presented by the Rev. Dr. Horace Stringfellow, Jr., a recent accession to the ranks of the diocesan clergy. It was extremely simple: To leave standing the old order for monthly offerings and to supplement these offerings by the pledge of a minimum sum from each congregation. The clergy and their lay delegates made pledges, and went home and kept them. The amount raised in the ensuing year was more than three thousand dollars.
But it was in 1873 that the present system, which was allowed to sleep fourteen years before it was
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aroused and put to work, saw the light. The Bishop had just made a strong plea for system to replace spasms. He had received enough money, in conse- quence of his appeal of the previous year, to keep open the churches at Jacksonville, Talladega, Monte- vallo, Union Springs, Seale, Carlowville, Tilden, Opelika, Marion, Greenville, Evergreen, and Whist- ler; but he was unable to assist the congregations at Livingston, Pushmataha, Autaugaville, Gadsden and the smaller places in the Tennessee Valley. The Bishop's appeal was grounded on the thought that if the diocese was truly one body, each part must minis- ter to the others. "In theory," he said, "we realize our mutual membership, one in the other, and our common membership in Christ. When we realize this in heart and deed, then the abundance of one will ever flow to the relief of another; the strong will reach its hand to help the weak; and, when charity becomes more perfect, will extend itself as unconsciously as one hand helps another in doing a work which one cannot do alone. In a word, we shall reproduce the Pentecostal spirit, and no man shall think that to be his own which a brother needs more than himself."
There sat in this Convention a layman who, because of his reputation as a remarkably painstaking, method- ical, successful, trustworthy banker, was at this, the second, Convention he had attended in the novitiate of his Churchmanship, elected Treasurer of the dio- cese-Mr. James H. Fitts, of Tuskaloosa. Mr. Fitts was appointed a member of the special committee to which were referred the Bishop's observations on
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missionary work. The Rev. R. A. Cobbs was chair- man of this committee, and, as chairman, his duty was to write the committee's report. But in the pre- liminary consultation of the committee Mr. Fitts sug- gested a plan so simple, yet so thorough and worka- ble, that the chairman and the entire committee requested him not only to formulate it, but to present it to the Convention as the committee's report. Like Columbus' method of setting an egg on end, it was alphabetical in simplicity; only-no one had thought of it before.
First of all, the committee expressly condemned the existing plan of securing pledges from parishes as wrong in principle and unsatisfactory in results. In lieu thereof it recommended:
Ist, That it should be the duty of each clergyman to obtain from every communicant in his congregation a written pledge to pay a specific amount weekly for missions; this pledge to be given and redeemed through the Offertory, and thus formally consecrated to God;
2nd, That it should be the duty of each clergyman to appoint collectors of the pledges not redeemed by the end of each month;
3rd, That it should be the duty of each clergyman to transmit the receipts every month to the Treasurer of the Diocesan Missionary Fund;
4th, That it should be the duty of the Treasurer of the Diocesan Missionary Fund to send a quarterly re- port of his receipts and disbursements to every clergy- man in the diocese; and,
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5th, That it should be the duty of the clergy to read these reports to their congregations.
These recommendations aroused the liveliest inter- est and discussion. Some of the clergy were very jealous for the dignity of their order, and these un- limbered on the phraseology of the report. They decidedly objected to having laymen dictate to them their "duty;" especially when that duty was pro- claimed to be the collecting of money in small amounts. They contended that the clergy were insulted by the attempt to make them the financial agents of an organization. The Rev. Dr. John Fulton very em- phatically assured the Convention that, as for him- self, he " would not pick picayunes " in Christ Church, Mobile. Some one suggested, in the interest of peace and harmony, that for the antagonizing phrase "It shall be the duty," should be substituted the less forcible, but more euphemistic, words, " It is recom- mended." But the committee stood by their guns. They thought they had properly located the responsi- bility, and they purposed to fix it where it belonged. The opposition slept over the matter. After a good night's rest the committee's report did not seem so dreadful; besides, there was no penalty for disregard of the Convention's action. So in quieter mood they went up to the Church (Trinity Church, Mobile) that morning and made no opposition to the unani- mous adoption of the plan and its verbiage, exactly as proposed.
So the Convention declared what was the duty of the clergy in the matter. The clergy by their own vote
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confessed to a sense of their duty. The records show that they went back home and were as unanimously inactive as they had been enactive. Not a single cler- gyman in Alabama did his self-confessed duty. A few, indeed, did put the Fitts plan into operation; but these applied it strictly to parochial purposes !*
The Bishop was in despair. For years he had urged system and at last the clergy seemed to declare that they would not have system. "I will not press this matter further," was the Bishop's heart-sick con- clusion. "I have, perhaps, in the judgment of some, been already too importunate. If they think so, they must forgive me for my cause."
So, systemless as to missionary finance, spasmodic- ally enthusiastic, and with income diminishing year by year, surely and constantly, until in 1883 the amount contributed was less than one thousand dol- lars, the Church in Alabama allowed her missionary work to disintegrate and her missionary force to slip from her nerveless grasp. One by one the clergy of the dependent congregations were dismissed to other dioceses, and were scattered to the four winds. They went to Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Indiana, Kansas, Texas-where- ever, in fact, there lived those who deemed the laborer worthy of his hire. They were frozen out, these men. Like the mercury shrinking before a cold-wave the missionary receipts fell from two thousand dollars to seventeen hundred, and then dropped rapidly to fifteen, to fourteen, to eleven, and finally ( 1883) rested at nine
* See Journal of 1874, page 42.
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hundred; while the missionaries themselves decreased from twelve to ten, to seven, and finally to six.
Through these ten years the Bishop remembered his words of former days, and resolutely refrained from importuning the diocese for "system." Once only did he refer, and then only incidentally, to this work. In 1878 he complained of the "utter want of all system " in every branch of ecclesiastical endeavor, and suggested that the clergy and laity should be as- sociated with himself in the missionary work. There- upon the Convention, following its old custom, referred the suggestion to a special committee; the committee reported back a slight variation of the Fitts plan, the distinctive feature being the provision for an advisory committee of clergymen and laymen whom the Bishop could at his pleasure call into consultation. The Con- vention received the special committee's report, and referred it to the Committee on Canons to be shaped into a canon. This committee dawdled, and the plan was soon with the silent majority.
So far the decade had been marked by disintegra- tion, decay, and discouragement. The first positive step towards the rehabilitation of the missionary work was taken in 1884. The old Convocational system had not, as we have seen, amounted to much, but now it was rubbed up a bit and found to have kept ready a number of "Deans. " As these deans were already nominally supervising missionary operations in their respective Convocations, what could be more natural, in integrating Church extension work, than to put them in the Bishop's missionary cabinet? -18
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What could be more natural than to add from each Convocation a layman, and thus bring representative clegymen and laymen from various parts of the dio- cese to feel a common interest in the entire work ? The men that formulated this idea were the Rev. Drs. Joseph L. Tucker and Horace Stringfellow, the Rev. Messrs. J. C. Taylor and H. K. Rees, and Messrs. N. H. R. Dawson, David Buell, and Charles E. Waller. The resolutions presented by these men as a com- mittee went through without a dissenting voice, and the Convention followed up its action by at once placing on the " Board of Missions " men whose chief recommendation was not that they were figure-heads. The Bishop, of course, was President of the Board. The deans-the Rev. Messrs. H. K. Rees, Horace Stringfellow, D. D., R. H. Cobbs, D. D., T. J. Beard, and J. M. Banister, D. D.,-were ex-officio the clerical members. The lay-members elected were : J. H. Fitts, of Tuskaloosa ; R. E. Coxe, of Huntsville ; James Bond, of Mobile; Charles L. Stickney, of Greensboro ; and David Buell, of Greenville.
The creation of this Board of Missions and the ad- mission of laymen to a share of official responsibility was attended with immediate and marked improve- ment in the treasury and in the field of missions. Not only was the long and steady decline in receipts checked, but a sharp upward turn was given them, and in the following year they amounted to more than in any of the ten preceding years. The Bishop was enabled to put four new missionaries in the field at once, and to re-occupy the long vacant fields of
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Whistler, Citronelle, Grand Bay, and Bon Secour ; Livingston ; Burton's Hill (Fork of Greene) and Gainesville ; and Eufaula and Clayton. The diocese in next year's Convention assembled felicitated itself upon this improvement. Having done so much better than had been expected it proceeded for the next two or three years to do much worse than was to be ex- pected. Enough was raised to support the four new missionaries, but a number of congregations in North and Middle Alabama were still shepherdless and the missionary board was forced to play the horse-leech.
It was not simply for salaries that money was needed; though in later days the overwhelming necessity to meet this demand has seemed to make the pay-roll the only legitimate channel of expenditure. Mis- sionaries, whose families were not infrequently of more than moderate size, needed assistance to pay their railroad fare into the diocese. One hundred dollars was appropriated towards the building of every new mission church or chapel. Sudden and excep- tional cases demanded immediate help. To meet all these extraordinary calls the Bishop appealed for one hundred communicants to give him ten dollars each per annum. Parishioners of Christ Church, Mobile, gave nearly one-fourth of what he desired. Every lay-member of the Board of Missions responded to the appeal. In all the remainder of the diocese only one person gave anything.
It is possible, now, in the light of subsequent events, to diagnose the missionary condition: The laity of Alabama had never been properly approached in
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behalf of diocesan missions. The thigh of fervent appeals, of exhortations to duty and denunciations of judgment for negligence, is not as large as the little finger of detailed and correlated statements of facts, and illustrations of present conditions and future pos- sibilities. It is a moderate estimate that two-thirds of the Churchmen of Alabama never heard of a single one of the Convention's many missionary resolutions, and that ninety-nine one-hundredths were totally igno- rant of the status of missionary work in the diocese. Furthermore, it is safe to say that, under the condi- tions, wider information was impossible. What knowl- edge the clergy themselves had was ill-digested, and the clerical mind is so constituted that it has a tend- ency, often irresistible, to exhort before it has laid a solid foundation for exhortation. What the Church needed was a layman accustomed to dealing with facts, able to grasp them in detail and to arrange them in symmetrical proportion, desirous to study the condi- tions, and prepared to make them known to the con- gregations of the diocese. An organizer was wanted, an organizer that could speak and work with the authority of the Council behind him. Could such a man be found ?
Charles E. Waller, a young lawyer of Greensboro, was the man to whom the Council turned as by divine guidance. For ten years Mr. Waller had been coming to Convention. For three years he had sat on the Board of Missions. In Convention and in Board he had often been heard in debate. From the first he was interested in the missionary problem. The earnest-
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ness with which he put forward his views on this sub- ject had marked him out as pre-eminently the man to push forward the organization of missionary finances. He was accordingly elected Treasurer. * His first duty as Treasurer was to relieve the Bishop of the responsibility of being the Board's financial agent. He threw himself into this new work with all his cus- tomary enthusiasm. He deemed the Fitts plan the best plan, and undertook to vitalize it. He spent much time in visiting all the larger parishes, and many of the smaller. Everywhere the clergy wel- comed him cordially. He addressed the congrega- tions from the chancel floor on Sunday, and followed up the good impression thus made by the immediate organization in most of the parishes of branches of the Missionary Society. St. John's, Montgomery, was the only parish whose rector refused point blank to allow the formation of the society within its borders, t but Dr. Stringfellow saw to it that no other parish exceeded his in the amount of its yearly contributions to missions. Everywhere the money began to flow in for the work. The boom, while depleting, had stirred, and the system moved off into new fields with the mighty momentum gained by the increase of re- ceipts in a single year from seventeen hundred to three thousand five hundred dollars.
* All previous Treasurers of the Missionary Fund had lived in Mobile. Only four men had served in the entire forty-two years -- Thomas W. McCoy, Joseph W. Field, Stephens Croom, and Robert Middleton.
t Dr. Stringfellow never allowed any societies to be organ- ized in St. John's parish.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE GOLDEN AGE.
T HE life of a community and that of a common- wealth are alike in this: that long continued quie- tude brings mental stagnation and that unexpected up- heavals, threatening destruction of past labors, arouse latent energy and lead to fuller life and development.
The life of a parish and that of a diocese are subject to similar conditions. The burning of a church is often the salvation of a parish. The economic per- turbation of a state is often the opportunity for dio- cesan progress.
So it was in Alabama in the 'Eighties, and so it came about that the years when the Boom shook the agricultural and well-established town and city con- gregations to the center, and shook the very life out of some of them, were the years when the general condition of the diocese was, and was becoming, the most satisfactory. The years 1884-1891 may properly be termed the "Golden Age " of the Church in Ala- bama. The labors of the diocese were more abun- dant in these years, and the harvest was greater, than in any other period of the same length in the history of the diocese.
1. The earliest noticeable improvement came in the easier flow of money into the diocesan, parochial, and missionary treasuries. The loosing of purse-strings had first been for speculation in the mineral regions.
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Bank deposits with cobwebs over them were brought out, and dusted, and pressed into active service. Men began to speak familiarly of amounts that previously had been mentioned with some reverence. For very shame at the contrast between their week-day expendi- tures and those of Sunday they pocketed the five-cent piece which habit had unconsciously separated from larger coin, and enriched the alms-basin with twen- ty-five cents. Twenty-five cents a month to diocesan missions began to seem parsimonious, and a fifty-cent pledge was given. A yearly subscription of twenty dollars to the rector's salary was raised to fifty dollars. The ministerial salaries were increased from ten to fifty per cent. Parochial debts were paid, improvements were made in church buildings and rectories, and goodly sums were gathered in trust for further develop- ment. The missionary income, under zealous admin- istration of the new system, remained more than three thousand dollars. Diocesan assessments were met promptly, and payment of the Bishop's salary was never carried into another fiscal year.
2. Resulting from this favorable financial condition, wherein a diocese of five thousand communicants raised $125,000 in the single year 1889-90, was the second improvement, viz., the increase in the number of clergy. The missionary force grew from seven to thirteen, and the active clergy from twenty-two to thirty-four. Not the least encouraging feature of this increase was that it was largely indigenous, giving promise (not always fulfilled) of a permanent minis- try of Alabamians wedded to their own people.
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3. The infusion of all this new blood, by grafting and by ordination, aroused a godly emulation in the body clerical. In a single year (1888) the rector of St. John's, Mobile, made eleven hundred visits, bap- tized more than one hundred persons, preached one hundred and thirty-six sermons, and presented for Confirmation in the parish one hundred and twenty- three persons. Others worked no less indefatigably as their fields permitted. The missionaries did not preach so frequently as the city clergy, or baptize and visit so many, or present as large numbers for Con- firmation, but their diligence was not one whit less. Sometimes, though, they were permitted to waste a large amount of energy. For example: One minister was stationed at Auburn. Seven miles from Auburn was Opelika. The two places, each with less than thirty communicants, were served by different clergy- men, neither of whom had any other charge. The Auburn minister resided in his mission. The minis- ter who served Opelika lived first in Montgomery and afterwards at Decatur, Georgia. From the former place he traveled one hundred and thirty-two miles on each visit to Opelika, and from the latter two hun- dred and forty. When he lived in Montgomery each visit carried him through Auburn, and when he lived in Decatur he passed through Atlanta and three or four Georgia mission stations served by a minister who lived within three miles of Opelika. *
* The explanation of this remarkable condition is that Emmanuel Church, Opelika, was a " parish," and called its own minister. This particular minister, having independent
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4. The unexampled energy of the laity in personal work was one of the most encouraging features of this period. This manifested itself in two distinct lines- the growth of parochial societies and guilds, and the increase of lay-readers. The parochial societies were for the greater part expression of women's energy; they were engrossed with the raising of funds for parish improvements and the preparation of boxes for missionaries. The societies and their membership quadrupled in number in five years. Lay-readers had first appeared in Alabama, so far as can be ascertained from memory and records, in 1861, St. Paul's Church, Greensboro, being kept open by lay-service during the interval of six months between the removal of the Rev. Mr. Banister and the arrival of the Rev. Mr. Cobbs. They had done service again, at Marion and Uniontown, in 1865; but for years their numbers had been small and their duties nominal, their chief sphere of action being to read the prayers and lessons for the minister. In rare instances they had been known to do missionary work, and not infrequently they had, as at Greensboro, kept the church doors open between rectorships; but their availability did not develop fully until about 1880, when the necessity lay upon the Bishop, and was recognized by the laity, of extem- porizing an unordained and unsalaried diaconate to
means, was satisfied to serve the parish for less than his traveling expenses. After his death Opelika's independence ceased, and that congregation and the congregation at Auburn were conjoined, and served by a minister receiving aid from the Board of Missions.
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meet the exigencies of diocesan development. From this time forward men of ability offered themselves or were sought out by their minister. The Bishop, re- posing in this new force a confidence that they never betrayed, added to their commission as lay-readers, in some instances "power to exhort"-a faculty differ- ing from that of preaching by less than any apprecia- ble distinction. The majority of the lay-readers did good service at the smaller places-Uniontown, Fauns- dale, Eutaw, Prattville, Troy, Geneva, Columbia, and the like. Of the larger parishes only Christ Church, Mobile, seemed to realize the vast reserve of lay- energy only waiting to be evoked to evangelize the whole surrounding country.
5. The number of confirmations steadily increased, until in 1889 more than five hundred persons received the Laying-on-of-Hands. Less than half as many were confirmed in the following year, the Bishop's illness allowing but few visitations.
6. The general spirit of hopefulness gave men the courage to try greater things and the ability to accom- plish them. At one time six churches were awaiting consecration, having been built and completed almost simultaneously without debt. "Divide and over- come " became the cry in three cities that had each been content with one congregation, and soon the Holy Comforter, Montgomery; St. Mary's, Birming- ham; and St. Michael and All Angels', Anniston, were living, growing parishes. The last-named parish was due to the gift by Mr. John W. Noble, of Annis- ton, of a magnificent pile of buildings consisting of
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church, chapel, parish house, and rectory, built of stone, after the Norman order of architecture, at a cost of more than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It was established for the benefit of the poorer classes, but the anticipated increase of population was checked, just as the church was completed, by the collapse of values throughout the mineral regions, and St. Michael's has apparently yet many years to wait before it enters upon its destiny. About the time of the completion of St. Michael and All Angels' Church, Mr. Josiah Morris gave a ten thousand dol- lar chapel to St. John's, Montgomery, while Christ Church, Mobile, was enabled by the hard work of the women, assisted by the munificence of Mr. H. A. Schroeder, to whom the parish already owed its rec- tory, to build a thoroughly modern parish-house cost- ing ten thousand dollars. A chapel costing the same amount was given to the Church of the Nativity, Huntsville, by Mrs. Wilson Bibb, as a memorial of her husband and little daughter.
Such were some of the more encouraging features of the diocesan life in the later 'Eighties.
On March 15, 1888, Bishop Wilmer issued a cir- cular letter announcing that on account of his failing health and increasing inability to give the necessary oversight to the missionary work he would ask the Council at its approaching session to elect an Assist- ant Bishop. The Bishop issued this letter without sounding public opinion, but public opinion was not slow in declaring itself. The proposition met with all but unanimous opposition, both by clergy and by laity.
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