City Temple SDA Church (Detroit, MI)

HISTORICAL DOCUMENTARY OF CITY TEMPLE CHURCH 1907 ~ Present

Why remember our past, the history of our countries, and the history of our faith?
The Early Church perhaps provides an answer! Personal history to the Early Church was vital. Peter on the day of Pentecost, Paul in his defense before Festus, the letters to the Early Church—all provide personal histories, testimonies. They all say, “I am talking about the Christ I know. Here is how this encounter changed my life!” Isn’t that the way we frame our present— remembering what individuals, experiences, and journeys of faith that have impacted our past? That was certainly true for the leaders of the early church.
Their interaction with Jesus dramatically redirected the course of their lives! Yet, it was not just personal histories that gave the apostles a context for their preaching. They also called on the scriptures, the inheritance of those who came before them, to give meaning and direction to the present. Jesus had given that example (see particularly the gospel of Matthew) and that is what Peter does, what Paul does. They look to the Old Testament, and declare to the early church, “We do not live in a vacuum. This is where we fit in the bigger picture—God’s larger plan. That’s what makes the present so vital and so dynamic. History has brought us to where we are, and now it is up to us to take this history forward.” They worked to take history forward, to give it the stamp of authenticity in the present, and to see it is as the foundation for the future. Early church history made the Old Testament promises and the living testimony of Christ a current reality. It helped people grapple with questions: how then should we believe, act, grow? Where does that place the Gentiles? How should the past help mold the future?
So what does this all have to do with City Temple Church in its centenary year? Everything, we believe, especially as a Christian institution. Today we have a very special opportunity: those of us with personal history and testimony can remember. We can remember those people who changed our lives when we were students; we can remember the way the Lord led us, especially in those key years of our experience. It is a time for all of us to stop and reflect on God’s leading of this institution. It is an opportunity for those of us presently leading City Temple, and for those who will join us in the future, to ask, “So, Lord, what does this great history tell us about how we should lead into the future?” We know we have no need to fear that future, if we do not forget the history, God’s leading in the past!
“In times of necessity or crisis a resolve almost always forms among pioneer people facing rejection by a society to substitute for one another, to support, to save one another. The will to rise above environment, to live in harmony with one’s professed faith is a whole interconnection between families and their groups within the extended society. If anything happens to cut one off, the remainders survive and tell the marvelous story. They become, as the scriptures declare, “a spectacle....to angels, and to men.” {Louis B. Reynolds: “We Have Tomorrow}
There are at times striking parallels between the story of Adventism and the story of the USA - as in the struggle with the issue of discrimination as a result of race, and particularly in the effort to place nonwhite members in leadership functions. The fact that unseen hands are said to have prepared the way for a great church mission to black communities has strengthened confidence in the movement in spite of a corrosive effect of acts by members who came to the church from areas where segregation was a way of life.
The object of this documentary is not only to record the obvious – those things that have transpired – but to see them in the context of the entire movement, its aims and goals.
In 1799, a bill was passed beginning the gradual emancipation of slaves in New York State – more than a half-century before Lincoln’s proclamation. The first independent act of Negroes was to sever all connections with the white churches, which had assigned them to sections marked “B.M.”, meaning black members. The movement, extending to every denomination, began when Negroes broke away from the Methodist Episcopal Church and started the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. To the Negro, his church was more than sectarianism, more indeed than religion – although outwardly it tended to follow the austere pattern of white churches. It was in reality the center and stronghold of his independent existence; a refuge and a shelter for runaway slaves, a meeting place, and platform; it cared for the sick and gave food, and other assistance to the destitute. Above all, it developed strong and intelligent leaders through whom black people learned to stand with self-confidence, united in a common understanding of their destiny.
For Seventh-day Adventists the close of the Civil War provided a clear signal to begin evangelism among the black population of the US, for by far the greater number were ex-slaves, located almost exclusively in the South. Plantation owners had held unchallenged power over Negro field hands and could deny them conversations with anyone whose motives might be suspect. This rendered a gospel mission to the captive laborers almost impossible.
The entire South’s economy strongly depended on the barbaric system of bondage, delicately balanced as it was- always tenuous, ever subject to insurrection by its victims. Slaveholders seemed little disposed to risk indoctrination of their workforce by outsiders, especially by invaders from the north who might question the propriety of one man’s holding another in a lifetime of unrecompensed servitude. Hard work for slaves was looked upon as a prime necessity, and anyone who advocated a rest day for them, a Sabbath as set forth in the Ten Commandments, or any free time other than Sunday, would do so at the peril of his life.
Although Abraham Lincoln's original intent was not to free the slaves, on January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in the Confederate states. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified by the states in late 1865, finally brought legalized slavery to an end. On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Commander in Chief Ulysses S. Grant.
Eliminating slavery, however, was only the first step. Stunned by the assassination of their compassionate leader on April 14, 1865, the nation embarked on 12 rocky and controversial
years known as Reconstruction (1865-1877). During this time the government sought to protect the rights of freed slaves and help them settle and start new lives.
Unfortunately, Reconstruction provided "too little for not long enough." Northerners made only a limited commitment to the objectives of Reconstruction. Before long, about the time of the Compromise of 1877, Northerners had returned most of the political power to Southern Whites. And they abandoned most of their efforts to assist emancipated slaves in achieving equality and self-sufficiency.
While the Civil War and Reconstruction provided Blacks with at least some level of liberty, it had not made them fully free. The nation's racial problems continued with segregation, discrimination, lynching, sharecropping, and the draconian Black Codes, essentially a new form of slavery.
Unquestionably the Civil War, therefore, and its resulting emancipation of slaves marked a turning point in the development of Adventist work in America. Until the slaves were free, no effort to bring the Three Angel’s Messages to this vast population could have been successful. Without the Civil War there would not have been the glowing accounts of faith and accomplishments for God throughout America’s vast Southland.
On the other hand, this setting free of captives was not an unmixed blessing. A mass release of slaves in any society would require a cataclysmic disruption of the established order. Reconstruction, with all its abuses, followed, as did segregation laws, Ku Klux Klan raids, terrorism, lynching, and widespread civil disorders. These tragic developments would affect the progress and direction of Adventist work through every decade. Church leaders faced heartbreaking decisions as they proceeded with plans to work in the same region for descendants of former masters and descendants of former slaves.
Moses declared to Israel, not long after their freedom from bondage in Egypt: “Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these many years” (Deut. 8:2) It was, therefore, a positive duty, an obligation, for God’s people to remember God’s dealings in all the circumstances and events of their wandering.