James B. Bennett has written a well-researched, clear, and well-organized account of the relationship between religion and the rise of racial segregation in New Orleans, covering the period from the end of the Civil War to the 1920s. By focusing on two Christian denominations operative in the city, the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Church, Bennett argues that black and white leaders in both groups strove heartily to create racially inclusive churches based on the principle that Christianity demanded that its followers rise above particularities of race or caste. Unfortunately, as the twentieth century neared, both New Orleans Methodists and Catholics ultimately failed to stand firmly against advancing segregation and discrimination either in the wider society or within these denominations.
After a very helpful introduction, the author outlines his argument in seven chapters and an epilogue. The first four chapters are dedicated to the establishment of “interracial Methodism,” the Methodist Episcopal Church (headquartered in the North versus the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, based on the southern states), the decline of the quest for a raceless Methodism, and the move to renegotiate black Methodist identity, which entailed compromise of the older principle of a casteless, nonracial Christianity. Achieving such a non-racial Christianity was hampered by the relatively small presence of white southerners in the Methodist Episcopal Church and the approval at the national level to separate blacks and whites into different annual conferences or regional organizations. Chapters 5–7 examine the same historical evolution of race relations in New Orleans Catholicism. Catholicism, argues Bennett, started from an even more pronounced interracial religious background. Just as with Methodism, however, the interracial character of Catholicism declined so that by 1890s there were clear lines of racial demarcations found among New Orleans Catholics, as evidenced in greater segregation of blacks in white-controlled congregations and the establishment of separate churches for black worshippers. This segregation trajectory continued and even increased up to the 1920s and beyond. In his epilogue, “Religion and Baseball in New Orleans,” Bennett brings his study to a fitting conclusion by utilizing the Catholic Xavier University's baseball victory over the Methodist Episcopal Church's New Orleans University in 1917 as indication of both the rivalry among blacks between Catholics and Protestants (Methodists in particular) and the fact that blacks in both camps had been effectively segregated by their white counterparts by this date.
This work is a very important contribution to the study of American and African American religion. First, the work draws attention to two predominantly white denominations in which there was a significant presence of blacks. Much current scholarly attention regarding African Americans is devoted to non-Christian and historically black denominations. Conducting such studies is good, overdue, and begs for even more attention. Yet examinations of blacks in groups such as Methodist Episcopal and Catholic Churches, constituents of the predominant Christian tradition among African Americans, also have their place and deserve more scholarly attention. Second, Bennett's study indicates the very strong argument of those blacks who elected to join or remain with predominantly white groups. While independent black Christians emphasized the opportunities to claim racial agency, pride, and the building of institutions, African Americans in mainly white groups stressed the core Christian conviction that faith in Christ should triumph over all distinctions of race, color, and class. Third, this study sadly demonstrates that even in groups with black and white leaders vigorously arguing in the early post-war period for racial inclusion, the ugliness or racial prejudice and segregation in a matter of decades had effectively blunted the sharpness of the message of racial equality. Fourth, this book renders a great contribution by its focus on New Orleans, a city with large numbers of Catholics and Methodists, blacks and whites. In addition, Bennett's work reveals how the original racial tripartite system of blacks, whites, and Creoles in the city gradually succumbs in many ways to the racial binary system of blacks and whites, characteristic of most of the rest of the United States.
This reviewer's major criticism of the work is its confusion or not drawing sufficiently keen distinction between racial separatism and racial segregation. Segregation is that set of circumstances that a more powerful group to secure its own supremacy imposes on an economically and politically weaker or more vulnerable group. Separation as pursued by independent black African Methodists and black associations and conventions was a voluntary action by blacks seeking to gain power, direction, freedom, and set goals through the instrumentalities of racially separate institutions. During the era covered by Bennett's book, these independent black Christians forcefully denied that they practiced racial exclusion, insisting that they never barred white membership. They understood the establishment of separate institutions as the only logical (and a moral) avenue to accomplish what white-controlled organizations, such as the Methodist Episcopal and Catholic Churches, consistently blocked them from attaining. Furthermore, one could contend that the inevitability of segregation in the larger society along with the growing instances of indignities and restrictions encountered in white-controlled groups, as Bennett so artfully illustrates in this work, vindicated the separatist paths which the independents had taken.
Many readers and students of American history might also take exception to the manner in which Bennett treats the importance of Creoles and the tripartite racial division characteristic of much of New Orleans history. The author appears to have a rather sanguine vision of a pre–Civil War relationship among blacks, whites, and Creoles of color. While acknowledging the presence of slavery and discrimination, Bennett appears in a number of places to argue that a tripartite system in which Creoles of color were treated as a separate class from blacks was somehow a more moral system than the evolving post-war binary system in which there was a sharper division drawn between whites on one hand and all persons of color, blacks or mixed race. One could argue, however, that while mixed race blacks were treated with a softer form of racial discrimination than their blacker siblings, the “softness” was not because they were spared discrimination but that it seemed less intense because of the greater suffering of “non mixed race” blacks. Indeed, a binary system is more honest in that it reveals with greater clarity and candor the arrogance and destructiveness of white supremacy and, hence, reduces the “divide and conquer” strategy that would have militated against an alliance of African Americans across the black–Creole of color line.
In sum, the reader employing a critical eye regarding the two immediately mentioned points will find this work a very significant, valuable contribution to American and African American religious and general history and to Southern Studies.
