Newspapers / The Star of Zion … / May 21, 1925, edition 1 / Page 1
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THE STAR OF ZION THE OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL ZION CHURCH VOLUME FORTY-NINE. CHARLOTTE, NORTH <jAROLINA. THURSDAY, MAY 21, 1925. NUMBER TWENTY-ONE. Crusading For African Redemption As Ashanti Sees Us. Bishop C. C. Alleyne The disciples were called “Chris tians” first at Antioch. , The term no doubt, was coined in the mint oi derision and reproach. The Oxford band of pious young men was desig nated “Methodists” hy way of con temptuous tolerance. In both cases the appellations were ennobled and glorified by the subsequent history of those whose distinctive char acteristics were thus epitomized. All through the Gold Coast Colony our Church is referred to as Zion, But in the country of the Ashanti they call it ADZAYEW—The Un fortunate Church. When you know the African; when you have looked into his sensitive soul; when you have seen how he hates opprobrium, and shrinks from sarcasm, you will realize what an indignity was thus heaped upon him. If there is anything which causes the African to wince it is ridicule. Do anything to the proud black man but abuse him. Reproach and de rision his soul abhors. Therefore to call his Church ADZAYEW was to pillory him in infamy. And to add to the bitterness of it they had be gun to feel that they were unfortu nate. The reproaches of their tor mentors fell on self-tortured souls, thus adding to the hopelessness of their situation. in mis country me worm ox every thing—even a Mission—is estimated by comparison. If the other Mission has a clearer sounding bell, a bet ter-toned organ, a more elaborately equipped school, a more up-to-date church building, the less pretentious Mission at once becomes anathema. To the unthinking the Mission with an important Bishop, or an European Superintendent out-ranks the one riot so equipped. From nearly all of these angles Zion suf fered by comparison, and correspond ingly lost prestige. It somehow in hered in the subconsciousness of the members and preachers alike that the astute Ashanti had rightly ap praised the Church of Varick and Small when they designated it—the unfortunate Church. This factor entered into the sit uation which precipitated the threat ened withdrawal. Mansu is the po litical centre of a section in which we have a very large circuit. These churches Were organized by the Conference path-finder, Rev. Isaac Sackey. One of the churches of this group severed its connection with the West Goltl Coast Conference and secured admission into the Wesleyan Methodist Denomination. Those of of the Zion group saw the seceding organization flourish and grow strong under the paternal care orf the Wes leyan conference while they remain ed weak and struggling. At the Annual Conference of 1924 the Mansu organization threw down the gauntlet. They resolved that if nothing could be done to bring about the consummation of their long de ferred hopes they could do no other than seek help elsewhere. Not only was their decision irrevocable, but other delegates chorused, “we also go' with thee.” A panic then en sued. The leaders already feeding cast down and forsaken could not stem the tide. The matter was sub mitted to a vote and the conference unanimously declared in favor of Withdrawal. For a few months chaos previled and the scarcastic Ashanti triumphed. Zidn was truly ADZAYEW—the unfortunate Church. Our failure to take communica tions from the mission field serious ly came near costing us the labor of a quarter of a Century. Letters were ignored, cables went unanswer ed and this was like adding insult to injury. • | . I well know that exceptions will be taken to the tenor of this article. , Silence perhaps would be golden; but, too much has this policy been followed. And to'o dearly has our Zion paicT for this false economy and criminal negligence. It should be told in Gath and published in the streets of Askelon that Zion mis sionaries, when thousands of miles from home, in however desperate a situation, seldom ever get a reply to their most urgent communications. To get the point of view of those from the centre of home activities, when thus left severely alone, one must sit down among them. To un derstand how an African-born Afri can regards an unanswered letter One must live for a while in this land of exactions and exactness. In the matter of regard fo'r obligations and courteous treatment the African is without a peer. He needs no book of etiquette, no lectures on “good form. ’ His native customs supply himWith a code which will stand the acid test. If you do Mr. African a favor in his native heath, or send him a gift, he does not _say thank you in a per .functory way and -let the matter drop. Next day he presents himself, or failing to’ do so, sends a letter profusely thankjng you for your kindness. Prospective visitors take notice; the day after is the occasion for elaborate thanksgiving. A younger man never sits in the presence of his sepior unless he is ' told to do so. He cannot address him without changing the position of his native cloth. A man of im portance is never approached save through an intermediary. In a country of such exactions fail ure to answer a communication is an unpardonable slight. A promise here is an obligation. If you sign your name to a subscription list failure to pay is a misdemeanor and the holder of the promise can re cover in a law court. Thus promises are bona fide debts, and appropria tions are collectable. If judged by African standards there may be justification for the latitude taken by the Ashanti when he changed our denominational patronymic from Zion to ADZAYEW. Quittah, Gold Coast West Africa. April 17, 1925. Ashes From Ashanti. The Saturday before our arrival at Kumasi a young man died suddenly. There is always something uncanny about sudden ideath in Africa. Every body seems to fall under th« spoil of an undefined dread. The Euro pean doctor evidently at his wit’s end> pronounced this a case of alco holic poisoning. Albeit, no autopsy was performed, and the deceased had “ever been on friendly »terms with King Alcohol. The Funeral Custom. By sonie strange stroke of fate we were domiciled in the Big House of the Compound where the death oc curred, and the funeral custom was being observed. On the eighth night after the demise the wake reached its culminating p|oint. Two’ choirs from the Roman Catholic and Epis copal churches respectively, gather ed to participate in the musical' feat ures of the strange programme. The family of the decedent is seat ed in th* yard. They are surrounded by their pagan friends and acquain tances. The choirs flank these and simultaneously engage in singing hymns of different tunes. The, re sult is . confusion rather than con sonance. - - A« it nears midnight they, serve drinks; and from then until gray dawn the noise becomes nauseous. About five O'clock in the morning the non-Christian clans take their turn at noise-making. They beat native drums and dance wildly as if in ecstatic glee. An hour later the beating of the drums cease; the complicated, fantastic movements are discontinued. The members of the family who were appointed to keep watch around the bed on which the death occurred, now join those in the yard. They pour rum on the ground as a liba tion, and then bred? out in weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. There is prolonged moaning. Africa is weeping for a departed son; and will not be comforted,, because he is now numbered among the inhabitants of the silent city of the dead. Women beat their breasts in a paroxysm of grief. They wend their way through the streets under the influence of un controllable emotion. Pandemonium has a respite; the orgy is deferred to a more appropriate season. “It Was a Stranger.” At this stage I was compelled to leave for Bompata, and as a conse quence missed "the closing scene of the drama. It was at Bompata that the Omanhene in replying to my ad dress said: “Yout speech made us both happy and sad. To think that you are our kith and kin., and we had to wait until you are now an old man before being privileged to see j you.” He also exhorted me to bring all the American Negroes with me ! on my return, i Of Africa the Master will never | say, “I was a stranger and ye took i me np’t in; I was hungry and ye did | not give me to eat." 'According to the native cugtofli a stranger must always be received, gTveft something to eat and drink, and escorted to his next stop. There are certain things that arfex given you and they have each certain significance. So at Bompata, as everywhere I went, I was presented a sheep, one hundred and fo^ty eggs, bananas and some cocoanuts. The other sheep were willing sacrifices, hence they were led to the, slaughter. But the Bom pata sheep decided that a “scape goat” was needed. Accordingly he broke the rope, jumped out of the (Continued on Page 5) Church Congress in Egypt. A dispatch from Cairo says that the Catholic Cotigress which met at that city last Sunday and has con tinued during the past week was the first ever held in Egypt. There is a peculiar interest in this announce ment when it is remembered that Egypt was the scene Of the labors of St. Mark, that Christianity came to the country in the first century and the Church was well established there by the middle of the second century. Egypt" whs one of the earliest strongholds of Christianity, but at the same time it was the field of intense struggles on doc trinal points and the place of origin of many s^cts and schismatic churches i that have had an important part in the religious history of the world. The congress thus met in a land rfiph in the history and traditions of eajrly Christianity. The wise men of Alexandria one of . the intellectual centers of the known world at the beginning of the Christian era, eagerly seized upon the new faith which had come to take the place of Greek philosophy and the decadent religions of the , Jjjggptians. From, them Christianity received the im petus that sent it along the north coast of Africa to raise up later St. Augustine in Numidia the modern. Tunis; Catherine, who surrendered her life for her belief, and the great Modern Woman Galled a Menace. The woman who will not hear chil dren is a menace to the civilization of the English-speaking race, and un less marriage customs which virtual ly enforce maternity upon unwilling women are not revived the posterity of English-speaking peoples is doom ed to obscurity. The “modern ’ woman will undoubt edly question this statement and as sert wo'man’s right to social'as well ap political equality with the opposite sex, but the imodern woman is woe fully wrong, according * to R. H. Towner, who, in his latest book-p the ‘tPhilosophy of Civilization'!— comes forward to prove that she is wrong. \ Mr. Towner goes further. He de clares that the emancipation of wo men, heralded as an evidence of the progress of our own national civili zation, is just another indication of our national decline. The author’s evidence to’ok the greater part of a lifetime to compile and is presented in two volumes. The first thing that marked the decline of every great civilization in history, declares, was the emanci pation- of women. “Isaiah,” he says, “speaking with prophetic voice, told Israel that bfecause women ruled over them, and the daughters of Zion are haughty, “thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.’ ” ' How Israel Fell. The fall of Israel came about with i the prophecy. The same results followed' the rise to’ independence of the women of Athens and Rome, ac cording to' the' author. “Women of augmented nervous or ganizations became rebellious, inde pendent and proud, refused the rule of fathers and husbands, made. and unmade their own marriages, accept ed or rejected maternity according to their own desires, substracted at will their own virtues from pos terity.” It is the women of higher nervous organizations, Mr. Towner empha sizes ' throughout his work, upon whom the production of genius is de- , pendent, and it is this type of wo man who is- the first to seek a means of escape from the duties of wife- i hood. I In the thirteenth and fourteenth ] centuries, at the beginning of the ] Renaissance, Mr. Towner states, wo- i men of the Italian burgeois were < “humble and obedient, were given i in marriage by paternal^ command, i and made fruitful by their husbands t rule* In the sixteenth and sevehr { teenth centuries all this was chang- c ed, women of augmented nervous or ganizations formed clubs and acad- 1 emies, wifely obedience was vulgar < and unfashionable, women demand- f ed an equal education, and asserted t equal rights and privileges, and an t equal independence with men. t The decline of Italian genius and a the destruction of Italian liberty fol lowed, exactly as from a like cause t; G defender of Christianity, Alexander, who worked for its extension to every part of the Mediterranean lit toral. In Egypt, too, the war waged bit terly over Nestorianism and Mono physitism, now forgotten by the lay men and remembered by the clergy principally as disputations filed away in the archives of the Church. But these dc'ctrinal points, their fore runners and kindred dogmas, had muc^ to do with the schisms and se cessions from the Church which have been described as so numerous that the names of many of them are not even known to-day.' The most im portant of the secessionist bodies in Egypt was that forming the Coptic Church, which has still a strong ho|d on the native Egyptian population. Many of the early converts to Christianity, left Egypt and as mis v (Continued to page 8) C f t c V b ii a r e fa fa li s< fa ti b fa S4 » Athenian genius and liberty had de clined twenty centuries earlier*” The same causes dominated the downfall of France and Spain, Mr. Towner points out, although in France the change in women occurred only among the women of the nobility, and it was this class that was overthrown. “During the (same period/’ writes Mr. Towner, “the virtues of humility, obedience, self-sacrifice displayed by the women of England, in contrast to those of the Continent, astonished Stendhal and Taine, and genius rote* in England as it declined in the Con tinental groups.” Thus, Mr. Towner concludes, Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled, not only by Israel, but by each succeed ing group. The author declares that had an Isaiah, in the second century of the Christian era, observed the differences between p.agan and Chris tian Vomen, he .would have cor rectly prophesied that Christians would soon seize the empire from the pagans. Similarly, had he no ticed the contrast drawn by Tacitus between women of civiLzed Rome and barbarian Germany, he could have easily predicted the triumph of Ger-. many over Rome, ri l3 _t(J^ (Continued to page 8) Where Are^The General Conference Minnies? Geo. G. ScorM, Att’y* at Lav. Editor o*f the Star: It may not be generally known, but one of the prime objects of the Laymen’s Association of the A. M. E. Zion church in 'the Philadelphia and Baltimore Conference, is to support in every way possible, the Bishops and pastors in the advancement and spread of our Zion, material and spiritual. Further, that there be a better working understanding between the :lergy and the laity. With such a arge array of intelligent and capable aity, there is no reason why all 'the >urden of the business of the Gen ial Church should be bottle by the lergy. It does ndt speak well for is as a great Church, that the busi iess should lag so far behind. What he laity want td know is why we ;et no financial reports of the doings f the Connection. For the past eight (8) years we ave not had the minutes of the General Conference. This V0 in the ace of the fact that there are among he laity, compiler*, editors and: oth rs that are competent to get out he literature of the Church promptly nd avoid these lotag delays. If there was a clearer understand* ig among the people as to the Bud et System and fiscal policy of the Ihurch, there would be less com laint, criticism and fault-finding as i ■ assessments, etc. When the laity finds itself and be omes fully aroused as to its rights, re may look for a change for the etter. The fact of the matter is, the laity 1 Zion has^ yet to learn that ours s a religious organization, is a jpreseniative body in which all pow r is derived from the people and that ixation and representation must go >gether. Even in this great repub c of ours in which the people are ipposed to rule, we hear of such irms of autocracy and bossism. In le Church of God there should not i the slightest semblance of these srms. We fear, however,. there is uneground for the charged At a meeting of the Laymen’s As relation recently in this City, ths (Continued to Pfcge A *
The Star of Zion (Charlotte, N.C.)
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May 21, 1925, edition 1
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