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How does a church committed to justice still carry the weight of structural racism?
In 1784, the Methodist Episcopal Church condemned slavery, declaring that slaveholders could not be Methodists. But political pressure eroded that stance. By 1939, segregation was codified into church structure itself through the Central Jurisdiction-a separate, unequal space for Black Methodists that would last nearly three decades.
When the Evangelical United Brethren Church insisted on integration before agreeing to merge in the 1960s, The United Methodist Church faced a reckoning. How would they dismantle the very structures they had built? Who would bear the cost of that change?
Through a pilgrimage lens, Rev. Dr. Bonnie J. McCubbin traces this painful journey using historical archives and oral histories from those who lived through the denomination's transformation. Beginning each chapter with the haunting question,"When did you first realize you were Black?" she reveals how structural racism shaped Methodist identity and what it truly cost to pursue integration.
As The United Methodist Church pledges today to "dismantle racism," this book asks: What can we learn from how the dissolution of the Central Jurisdiction unfolded? What was lost? What was gained? And what comes next?
I Love to Tell the Story is essential reading for church leaders, seminarians, historians, and anyone seeking to understand how institutions-even those founded on justice-must continually reckon with their complicity in oppression.
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Published by Tehom Center Publishing
Tehom Center Publishing elevates marginalized voices, amplifying stories that challenge systems of oppression and imagine more just futures. Learn more at www.tehomcenter.org
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