Discrimination In Churches

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30886, 20 October 1965, Page 2

Discrimination In Churches

While the Dean of the Charleston Cathedral had refused to give Holy Communion to members of his congregation who would not accept two Negroes into membership, other Episcopal priests in the same diocese were flagrantly breaking the Canon Law by discrimination, says Miss Florence Jones, a summer vacation Civil Rights worker in South Carolina.

These priests were saying to disaffected members of the Cathedral congregation: “Come to my church. We won’t have any of this integration business in our church.” The Charleston Cathedral was the only Episcopal parish in the city in any way integrated and it had only two coloured members, she says. "But it is assumed, specially since the new Canon Law was passed, that no Episcopal (Anglican) congregation would dream of discriminating and turning people away from services because of the colour of their skin,” she says in a letter to her parish church in Berkeley, California. Bishop’s Reminder “The Bishop of this Diocese has spent some years uncomfortably reminding his congregations of this, whether or not they make the opportunity for him to do so. “The Dean of the Cathedral in Charleston is also an integrationist. He put in months of work last year organising integrated meetings and integrated luncheons, preparing his congregation for the time when a coloured family would apply for membership at the Cathedral. “When the Canon Law was passed he proclaimed it loud from the pulpit and published the full text in the parish bulletin. Then a Negro sergeant and his wife applied for membership and were accepted. “A dozen white families stopped coming to that church. Two leading members of the congregation got up in

public and said they would fight against it all the way. The Dean, gently reminding them of his obligation under the Canon Law, refused to give them communion until they had come back into love and charity with their neighbours. So they left also. “The rest of the congregation has given the new members a genuine welcome. But the shameful thing is that other priests, who are bound to administer the same law, have called up the disaffected members of the Cathedral congregation and said: ‘Come to my church instead. We won’t have any of this integraion business in our church.’ “So the Cathedral remains the only Episcopal parish in Charleston which is in any way integrated, and there are only two coloured members there,” Miss Jones said.