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History of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, Virginia Conference

by A. P. Funkhouser

CHAPTER XV

CONCERNING SLAVERY AND INTOXICANTS

Slavery existed in all the colonies when the United Brethren Church was in course of formation. In Pennsylvania the institution never had more than a slight hold, and after American independence came was soon abolished. The Western States, into which the church spread, were free territory by virtue of the famous Ordinance of 1787. Maryland, Virginia, and Tennessee were slave states until after the war of 1861 had begun. Therefore, the ground covered by our church was, until the last-named event, partly free and partly slave.

Yet from the first the sentiment of the church was distinctly against the institution of slavery. This was partly because the Germans of America were very generally averse to holding slaves. It was partly because some of their sects had religious scruples that stood in the way. But fundamentally the objection of these people to slavery had an economic source. The United Brethren were not generally large land owners but small farmers. Such men had no place for slavery. Without exception, all the counties in which our church arose were overwhelmingly white in population, and consequently the actual number of slaveholders in them was very small.

The General Conference of 1817 was held in Pennsylvania and adopted a rule on slavery which is stated in very explicit and energetic language. It resolved that "all slavery, in every sense of the word, be totally prohibited and in no way tolerated in our community." Members of the church who were holding slaves at the time were required to set them free, or to ask the quarterly conference to determine how long a slave might be held in order that the owner might thus be compensated by labor for his purchase-money, or the cost of raising the negro. And

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in no case should a member sell a slave. A reprimand was to follow any violation of this rule, and if the reprimand were not observed, expulsion was to follow. It is to be noted that this rule was adopted just after the enactment of the Missouri Compromise, and therefore at a time when the line between free and slave territory was sharply drawn.

The rule of 1817 remained in force and was closely observed. It was enforced by Bishop Glossbrenner against his own father-in-law. Some persons thought the rule should not have been so drastic, and in certain circumstances, as when slave property was inherited, it worked some hardship. There was, indeed, in the Virginia Conference an element that disapproved of the rule on slavery as well as on secret societies. Nevertheless, the position taken by the leaders of the church was so well sustained that there was no schism, such as occurred in the Methodist Episcopal Church.

When the United Brethren Church was taken root in the Valley of Virginia, slavery had relatively a much weaker hold in that district than in 1860. And as white labor was there still general at the latter date, the church was able to hold its ground. But the slave power was politically dominant throughout the South, and any sect holding a pronounced anti-slavery attitude was certain to be under suspicion as an ally of the abolition sentiment in the North. Thus, until 1860, the United Brethren were never able to spread much beyond that area in Virginia which was covered by them in 1800. Nowhere else in the South did they gain a foothold, save in the valley of East Tennessee. Now that slavery is gone, there is outwardly no reason why the United Brethren should not win new territory in the South. Yet their lack of harmony with the prevailing sentiment of the South continues to render that section a closed field. The church has been shut out of the South by its stand on slavery, and out of the cities by its stand on secret fraternities.

"Forty years before the civil war the General Conference made slavery a test of membership. No man who

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owned slaves and would not arrange to free them, could remain a member of the church. This rule was never modified, but its enforcement was the more demanded as the abolition sentiment in the country grew in force and intensity. This, of course, kept the church out of the South, except in the north of Virginia, where the church had been carried by the German settlers before the question of slavery attracted public attention. The Germans worked with their hands, and did not own or employ slaves, except in rare cases where a house woman or a farm hand was owned as the most available way of securing needed help in a community where slave labor was the rule. This was winked at only during the civil war, when other labor could not be had. Otherwise, it was not tolerated. Christian Shuey, who gave the land and assisted largely in building Bethlehem church near Swoope Depot, was a small slave owner. Although he was reared in a home where the fathers preached, and although he was the class leader and mainstay of his congregation, his son and his son-in-law enforced the church law against him, and expelled him from membership in his own church. However, the question of character was not involved in this violation of church law, for Christian Shuey remained loyal to his church and was its standby until his death. He continued to be the leader of the class from which he was technically expelled."

In the matter of intoxicants the position taken by the United Brethren from the first is highly creditable. The German settlers of the eighteenth century were a temperate people. They did not have the beer-loving propensity of the modern German, a habit which has made that element in America a laggard in the march of prohibition. Again, the United Brethren put themselves on record at a time when the drinking habit lacked little of being universal in this country.

It is often asserted that in the "good old days" liquor was purer than it is now, and that although drinking was prevalent, intoxication was rare. The statement is echoed

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time after time, as though its truth were unquestionable. And yet its only foundation is a mirage; an illusion of human nature that is very aptly expressed in the following couplet:

Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountains in their azure hue.

The only solid fact in the statement mentioned is that in those "good old days,"—about which, by the way, there is so much of humbug—the intoxicating element in liquor was generally alcohol, and not so much as now, a compound of corrosive chemicals. Alcohol is alcohol, the world over, and its effects on the human system are but slightly influenced by climate or race. Instead of actual drunkenness being less frequent than now, it was more frequent. The authority for this assertion is abundant and unimpeachable. Washington said in 1789 that drink was the ruin of half the workmen in America. An eminent French visitor of the same period said that the most common vice of the inferior class of the American people was drunkenness. The Continental Congress of 1777 passed a resolution that the state legislatures should at once pass laws "the most effectual for putting a stop to the pernicious practice of distilling grain." But this resolution was too far in advance of the public sentiment of the day and was laid on the table.

In our time it requires no high degree of courage to denounce the rum trade, for the simple reason that the business is now under the ban of the best public opinion. But a century ago the traffic was so strongly entrenched in the social customs of even the best classes of society that the person presuming to antagonize it was called a visionary or a fanatic.

The decanter was then in almost every home. Temperance sermons were not preached, neither were there any temperance societies. High church officials drank to intoxication. Drinking was carried on at marriages, births, and burials. When a doctor visited a patient he was offered a dram. Speaking in 1820, a pastor in the city of New

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York said it was difficult to make pastoral visits for a day without becoming intoxicated. Dr. Daniel Dorchester quotes a minister of that period as saying he could count up among his acquaintances forty ministers who were drunkards, or who were so far addicted to the use of drink that their usefulness was impaired. Coming nearer home, all but one of the eight deacons of a certain church were in 1839 actively engaged in distilling whiskey. And this was within the present bounds of the Virginia Conference.

And yet we find the United Brethren Conference ruling,—as early as 1814,—that "every member shall abstain from strong drink, and use it only on necessity as medicine." Seven years later, the General Conference ruled that "neither preacher nor lay member shall be allowed to carry on a distillery." Outside of our church there is in American history no ecclesiastical action on record of earlier date than 1811. The one of 1811 took place in New England, and exerted very little influence outside. It was not until 1826, when the American Temperance Society was organized, that the evangelical churches of the United States put themselves on record as opponents of the liquor trade. In 1841 came the adoption by the United Brethren of the rule which declares that "the distilling, vending, and use of ardent spirits as a beverage shall be and is hereby forbidden throughout our society." The Church thus became a total abstinence society, and such it has ever since remained.

Nevertheless, the early restrictive legislation was not always heeded. The conference of 1831 took this action concerning one of its members: "Resolved, if Conrad Weast don't quit making liquor and preach more, he shall have his license demanded." Evidently this remedy was not effective, for six years later it is ordered that "it be published in the Telescope that Conrad Weast is no longer a preacher among us."

As in the case of alcohol, the use of tobacco is no more nor less than a phase of the drug habit. In this matter

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the United Brethren early took advanced ground, notwithstanding the fact that this denomination arose in a tobacco-growing region, and likewise where the tobacco habit has always been very prevalent. The objection raised within the Church is that the habit is unhealthful, unsanitary, unnecessary, an offense to neatness, and particularly unbecoming in a minister.

In 1867 this resolution was adopted: "That the ministers of the Virginia Conference be advised to discontinue the habit of using tobacco in all its forms." Since then tobacco has repeatedly been denounced on the floor of conference. At the present time it is tacitly understood that applicants for admission to that body are expected to be abstainers from the weed, and that persistence in the habit by the older members operates as a bar to their advancement to high position.



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