# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1926_S5
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of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1926. 5

Business Proceedings.

Negro Mission.

The following was submitted for consideration:

Twenty-third Report of the Board for Negro Mission.

From July 1924 to July 1926.

"*Mohrenland* [Luther's German for Ethiopia; literally "Moorland"] will stretch out its hands to God." So the Holy Spirit prophesies
through the mouth of the royal singer David,
Ps. 68:32. Mohrenland is the land in which the Mohren [Moors, i.e. black Africans] live.
The Mohren are the people with dark, black skin colour. Their
home is the dark continent, Africa. When it is said that Mohrenland
will stretch out its hands to God, what is meant is that the
people in Mohrenland, the blacks, will do this. By
stretching out hands to God is meant that they will call upon God, the true God.
So this psalm verse contains a promise for missions; for it is precisely through the work of missions, through the sending out
of messengers of the Gospel, that the blacks come to know the true
God and call upon him.

A large part of the Mohren lives in our United States
of North America. The number of our black population may
now amount to a good twelve million. Countless numbers of them do not know
the true God. Sadly, this is also true of many members of the
coloured sectarian churches. The Negro leader Booker T. Washington, who died about ten years ago,
speaks the bitter truth when he
writes: "Many church members know as little about true Christianity
as any people in Africa or Japan and are just as much in need
as heathens in distant lands of having missionary work done among them."

Our Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America (*Synodalkonferenz*) has been doing mission work
among these Mohren for nearly forty-nine years. The work of our
Negro Mission was begun in October 1877. The labour
has not been in vain. God has crowned it with his blessing.
Our dear missionaries have experienced the truth of the divine promise:
"Mohrenland will stretch out its hands to God." Through
their service in church and school it has come about in these forty-nine
years that thousands upon thousands of Negroes
have come to know the true God.

The two past years, too, on which report is to be made here,
were years of divine blessing in our work of rescue among
the black people of this country. This divine blessing must fill us with
inspiring zeal.

New Mission Stations.

In these two years under report, mission work was begun or taken over at the following
twelve places: Atmore, Camden,
Flatwood, Hamburg, Rockwest, State Normal at Montgomery, Lamison
and Tuskegee, Ala.; Pensacola, Fla.; Los Angeles, Cal.; Pomona
near Greensboro, N. C.; Jacksonville, Ill. Work was temporarily suspended
in Brooklyn, N. Y., Pailets Land in New Orleans, La.,
Greer, S. C. Thus this biennium shows an increase of nine
mission stations. Not included is the Negro Mission
at Jack Pines, Mich. (24 souls; Rev. H. J. Storm), Buffalo,