Was the UPCI Founded on Racism?
by David K. Bernard
Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript)
Kind: teaching

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--was-the-upci-founded-on-racism
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
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it's a complicated history I would say uh what you've described is is is in part correct but there needs to be more context more Nuance which I'll try to give in a brief briefly uh but to say that the upci was founded on racism that that's simply false now uh for more study I would give you two resources uh one is my book a history of Christian doctrine volume three so volume three talks about the origin of the modern Pentecostal movement and how the various organizations were formed and it has a discussion of this very issue of race and the splits and the attempted mergers and so on that took place so that will give you the story the history then my recent book anchor points has a chapter called slavery racism and the gospel and it responds more generally does the Bible support slavery uh does the church support racism how should we deal with racism in society today and it gives a historical background particularly for World slavery and US slavery and how that's affected us and you know as a society so I think you would find that very helpful but to address U the question more specifically I would also say uh I think uh Dr Martin Luther King Jr the birthday is excellent time for the church to focus on some important things and take a stand um for inclusion and U for affirmation of all Races and ethnicities and Against Racism segregation Etc and and for justice so it's good for us to preach teach or talk on these thingses around this particular time not just at this time but it's a good opportunity good reason for the church to be more specific and by by the way the upci has some resources we have a racial and ethnic affirmation and we have a timeline for what we've tried to do over the last 50 years to address these issues you can find this on our website upci.org and I think you'll find that very enlightening and some of the things I'm giving you now um you know you can find in more detail there including recent statistics which is very interesting because our latest survey of um churches and constituents here in the US and Canada shows that the racial composition of our churches is almost exactly the same as the population of the US and Canada overall uh in fact it's slightly even more representation of Hispanic and African-American I think the latest shows about 20% of our cons constituents Hispanic about 14% are African-American or black and then we have by the time you add Native Americans and um asian-americans and Pacific isers and so on I think uh what it comes up to be is um well over 23s I mean well over onethird probably 38 or 39% of our constituents would fall under some of those categories so in recent years then we've been able to make enormous strides uh in this area of inclusion and affirmation and diversity but to go back to the history so the Pentecostal movement was interated racial uh from the beginnings especially the great isua Street Revival in Los Angeles California that spread the Pentecostal movement throughout the world 1906 to 1909 the leader was an African-American William Seymour who was the son of former slaves the leadership was interracial from the beginning black and white male and female um the Hispanic population was not as great in the US as it is today but there were Hispanics who attended and people of other nationalities who attended the isusa Street Revival now that was before the Oneness move when the Oneness move began basically we're talking about 19113 1914 it also was interracial including its leadership so when the Assemblies of God took a stand against Oneness in 1916 all the Oneness ministers left well many of the Oneness ministers were black African-American and that made the Assemblies of God almost totally white organization so in trinit Arian Pentecostal ranks what you had is the assemblance of God as a white organization as well as some previous Holiness Pentecostal groups such as the Church of God Cleveland Tennessee but then you had the Church of God in Christ which was a black group so from that early time the trinitarian Pentecostals were pretty much divided on racial lines but not so with the Oneness movement in 1918 they formed their first organization the general assembly of apostolic assemblies it was interracial but it was a new organization and there was a pre-existing organization called the Pentecostal assmes of the world that embraced the Oneness message and since it already been in existence that other organization just merged into it and so as of 1919 the main Oneness organization was called the Pentecostal assmes of the world about 80% white about 20% black and blacks and whites were represented leadership so it's an amazing beginning now think about this this is 1918 when the US is basically a racist Society you had official segregation in the South through Jim Crow laws in the north you didn't have those kind of laws but there was still a lot of prejudice and a lot of segregation in Practical terms so if you if you look at the labor unions they were segregated US military segregated Democratic party was segregated basically the Democratic party stood for segregation um you had um you know racism or segregation or those kind of feelings really permeated influenced all of society so it's really quite amazing the Pentecostal movement in general and then the Oneness movement was so countercultural and I wish I could just end the story there but here's what happened the early Pentecostals could not have any meetings in the South because of Jim jimro law so even though a lot of the constituents a lot of the preachers were in the South you couldn't you couldn't have a conference together you couldn't go to hotels together you couldn't go to restaurants together even to have uh integrated Church you would often be attacked by the community Through tearing down tents burning buildings throwing rocks and rotten eggs and so it was difficult now again think of the the U early Pentecostals are mostly there was some middle Class A lot of working class A lot of people wouldn't even have cars at that time there were no interstate highways people traveled by train there were there was no commercial jet service and so just to go to a conference across the country would take days lots of money and be very difficult so automatically half the people could never go to a general conference could never vote on their leaders and so that created a lot of tension uh now uh and then also the pressures of a racist Society now I'll have to be honest obviously there there had to be some racism or some kind of feelings even within the church but I do think it's accurate to say most of the pressure came from outside the secular society the persecution the pressure and just the logistics of I mentioned of not being able to hold conferences in half the country and half the constituents not being able to participate in their own their own governance their own conferences but the reason why I say it was not primarily internal one reason the chronicle of the isua Street Revival Frank Bartman who who later accepted one Scott he said at isua Street the color line was washed away in the blood and then SC mlan who was a early Oneness Minister early upci Minister he was from the south so he remarked that when he got into the Pentecostal church he thought it was amazing for the first time in his life blacks and whites were sitting together in service blacks and whites were sitting together having Fellowship eating dinner together after church to him that was incredible and amazing and wonderful so here is a minister raised in segregation who now is exposed to the integration of the True Body of Christ through the Pentecostal movement I think that was the predominant sentiment however these pressures of society did occur so in 1923 there was a a big Fellowship Conference in the South no business was conducted but a lot of the Southern ministers said this is this is amazing we need this we we need to have conferences here so in 1924 they split primarily along racial lines now as I said it was obviously pressure from the segregated society and we have to be honest to say there had to be at least some internal feelings of segregation or separation which are not Christian which are wrong U but the church is not perfect and it was an imperfect situation but I don't think it was primarily internal the reason why the most of the white ministers left but when they did they did not form one white organization they formed three regional organizations because the idea was not just segregational race the idea was being able to have conferences in your area where everybody could participate so you had four organizations the Pentecostal of the world predominate black although some white state in there and then you had three regional organizations mostly white although there were a few African-Americans in them as well so it wasn't strictly race but primarily that was 1924 and 2 nevertheless the desire for Unity was so strong those two predominantly white organizations two of them join to form the Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ and then in 1931 that organization and the PFW merged again so both whites and blacks wanted Unity so much that they joined again in 1931 and they actually merged their names Pentecostal Assemblies of the world Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ they merg at Pentecostal Assemblies of Jesus Christ to me that shows the majority of the members really wanted it wasn't internal Prejudice that had caused the division it was external pressures and so they decided let's try this again and so most of the whites and blacks came back together they actually said 50% of the board the governing board will be white 50% black even though the total constituency would would have been more like 70% white 30% black but they were trying to be fair they also said no conferences in the South because if you did that blacks couldn't come and so that lasted until 1938 sad to say the same pressures happen again and the precipitating factor was they had a conference in Tulsa Oklahoma which wasn't the South so technically that met the conditions but it was a very Prejudice racist segregated City and so most of the black ministers said you know what this is not working they're not really accommodating us the way we thought and so they left and went back the somebody had kept the uh PFW alive as a very small group although it's supposed to all be merged and so most of the black ministers left went to the PFW so as of 1938 again you had one organization mostly black you had two organizations mostly white I so it's a complicated history of course there were some ministers that were independent or with small groups who never were part of that so it's hard to generalize but as of uh 1938 you did have these three organizations predominantly black and two predominately right the two predominantly white in 1945 merged to form the United Pentecostal church so it was formed as mostly white however there were a few black ministers and a few members of other races including Hispanic ethnicity at in the merger so they they became part of the UPC from the beginning so to say the upci was for because of racism is is not true to say it had no black members is not true however it was a very small um percentage and then we started seeing in the late 50s and early 60s more African Americans being converted or getting credentials and then starting in the mid 70s we find a very intentional effort by the upci leadership and Ministry to reach out to African-Americans Hispanics other ethnicities and so since that time we've seen dramatic progress till today as I've said our constituency reflects the racial comp composition of the general population uh our ministry and our leadership is lagging behind a little bit but more and more people rise as they rise through the ranks and uh be called to preach and get qualified uh then there's increasingly an ongoing diversity which we now see and our ministers our headquarters uh staff our headquarters Executives our uren college and and uren graduate school um students staff um Administration you know so in every our our district leadership our general board uh we're seeing uh increased and and notable diversity and of course worldwide we're predominantly uh non-white so the vast majority of our constituents would be uh black brown you know Asian or African or Caribbean or um Hispanic and so our Global Council which is our International leaders which you can go on our website and see would be overwhelmingly now there's still a lot of missionary presence from North America as as um churches grow to maturity uh they elect their own National leadership but until they get to that point they're still under missionary leadership which is led by North America but so now you're seeing uh you know half or more of our national leaders would be representing um you know uh other ethnicities than uh White European so uh and that will only increase as more and more churches come to maturity and elect their own National leadership so overall I'm very thankful I would say yes there were some racial divisions in in the past back in the 20s before there was a United Pentecostal Church so is the background but it's the same kind of problems every denomination actually if you look at other denominations you had the southern Baptists the southern methodists the southern Presbyterian they were explicitly formed on the basis of racism uh so every other institution of society had to work through this um I think the Oneness history while obviously not perfect is probably better than most because there was an attempt from 1918 to 192 4 and again from 1931 to 1938 to be truly interracial I only wish they could have held that counter culturally no matter how difficult it was if they could have held that for 20 more years then we'd be in the civil rights movement and we could have been more at the Forefront and we could have implemented the vision of the church and not succumb to the pressures of the culture however obviously uh that was before there was United p Pentecostal church and once the United Pentecostal Church was formed um it wasn't formed on the basis of race but it took probably uh a good 20 years for the leadership to start realizing we've got to be intentional we've got to do something about this uh or actually maybe even closer to 30 years where you saw real significant intentional progress um and of course I would have to say the white majority would bear the Great respons possibility for the failures but really uh I would say the church is formed in a culture in a society you have to start dealing with where you are and I'm thankful that we're growing to maturity in Christ and I'm thankful uh to report we have a great inclusion and diversity in the body of Christ not as a matter of political correctness but to be biblically and spiritually correct