# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1928_S37
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1928. 37

worthy courage and great patience and faithfulness in the service of this
mission for many years. Of the twenty white pastors and professors who are at
present active in our mission, three have already been active in our service
more than ten years: Pastor G. M. Kramer twenty-one, Prof. Fr. Berg twenty and
Superintendent Georg A. Schmidt fourteen years. When one considers that it
takes a white man at least two years before he has gotten to know the Negro, one
can easily see that the frequent change of mission workers is harmful.

3. With regard to the white workers, a further obstacle is the race
consciousness, which has been growing rapidly especially since the World War.
Our Lutheran members, to be sure, hold their white pastors dear and worthy. The
non-Lutherans, on the other hand, ask reproachfully: "Is there not preacher
enough in our own race? Why must you have a white man and hold to him?!" Last
winter our colored vicar at X. had persuaded two mothers to have their children
baptized. On Sunday, however, only one mother brought her children to Baptism.
Why had the other woman stayed away? Because she had meanwhile learned that it
would not be the colored student but the white pastor who would perform the
Baptism. That is one reason why we must train colored mission workers. But as
long as we still have white workers among the colored (and that will still last
quite a while), race consciousness presents us with a real obstacle in our
mission work.

4. A further obstacle in our Negro Mission is the lodge system. This evil is
rampant in these last, troubled times almost everywhere, but nowhere so bad as
among our colored fellow citizens. One of our older Negro pastors, John McDavid,
says:

"Today it is not the sectarian preachers and their sectarian churches that are
our chief opponents, but the secret societies or lodges. Probably no other
people on earth is so bewitched and bound hand and foot by the lodge as the
Negro people. The lodges are supported, encouraged and promoted by the colored
pastors of all denominations. Almost all prominent black men and women belong
to a lodge or even to several. The Negro pastors not only belong to lodges
themselves but often show greater zeal to promote the interests of the lodge
than those of the church. They deliver the annual sermon to the lodges and
praise them to the skies for their so-called charity and good works. In short,
the lodges exert so powerful an influence on the colored that no black man
counts for anything at all unless he belongs to one or several lodges. And most
of our people think it is impossible to exist if they did not belong to them.

"Among the Negro churches, to our knowledge, our Lutheran Church is the only
one that raises its voice against the lodges. In the light of Scripture we must
rebuke them as Christless societies, expose their supposed charitable activity
as self-love and selfishness, and their lodge worship as idolatry. We do not
permit them to enter our churches as a lodge, and we oppose them publicly and
privately. So we become an object of their hatred and opposition, and they leave
nothing untried to hinder our work and put an end to it. They constantly try to
entice our members into their societies and do their utmost to keep people from
joining our congregations or from attending our services. They cause us more
vexation and annoyance