This Week in Church History – July 28
Understanding history teaches important lessons; unfortunately, many of the lessons fall by the wayside. The old adage, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” has several versions and has been attributed to British statesman Winston Churchill, among others.
The thought most likely originated with George Santayana in a 1905 book titled, “The Life of Reason, or The Phases of Human Progress.” The sentiment pushes us to look at a couple of events from the past week in the church’s history.
July 29, 1794
In a small blacksmith’s shop in Philadelphia, the space had been cleared for what was to become one of the city’s most important assemblies. Richard Allen, a minister, educator, and author, had invited members from five congregations spread across the mid-Atlantic seaboard who found themselves in similar situations.
Allen’s circumstances were more than unique. Slightly over thirty years earlier, Allen had been born into slavery on a plantation in Delaware. The owners of the plantation experienced financial difficulties and ended up selling some of the slaves and freeing the others. Just shy of eighteen, Richard and an older brother and sister began attending the meetings of a local Methodist Society which were very welcoming to all people.
Before early afternoon on that summer day in 1794, Allen and his friends, all black Christians who had faced discrimination by their local Methodist Episcopal churches, formed the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The blacksmith’s shop in Philadelphia became the founding church for a movement that would become known throughout the world.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church carved a special place in the history books. It is the first major religious denomination in the Western world to develop because of race rather than theological differences. It became the first African-American denomination organized and incorporated in the United States. The group remained Methodists, clinging to the words of John Wesley who had once called the slave-trade “that execrable sum of all villanies.” Francis Asbury performed the ordination ceremony for Allen.
Allen became an active spokesperson for social themes and abolitionist ideals. He died on March 26, 1831, at his home in Philadelphia. He is buried in the lower level of the blacksmith’s shop which had been renovated and converted into one of the nation’s strongest churches.
July 31, 1966
This next event teeters between church history and entertainment history. The event and implications certainly played havoc upon both.
The story actually began almost four months earlier in a London tabloid newspaper called The Evening Standard. In March 1966, the paper ran a weekly series called “How Does a Beatle Live?” The articles were written by Maureen Cleave who knew the group well and had interviewed them regularly since the start of Beatlemania.
The Interviews
The interviews, which contained the now infamous comments by John Lennon where he argued that the public was more infatuated with the Beatles than with Jesus. Originally published in London, the interviews found distribution three times in the United States with very little fanfare.
An American teen magazine, Datebook, purchased the interviews and published them on July 29th. Two disc jockeys at a station in Birmingham said, “That does it for me. We are not going to play the Beatles anymore.” More than 30 stations joined forces. The pair set about destroying vinyl LPs and other Beatles items on the air. The station hired a tree-grinding machine and invited listeners to bring in their Beatles’ merchandise for destruction.
Datebook, which had never been a leading teen title, suddenly sold over a million copies.
Beatles manager Brian Epstein seemed unconcerned at first as he responded, “If they burn Beatles records, they have to buy them first.” Within days, though, he became so concerned with the uproar that he considered canceling the group’s US tour. Instead, Epstein organized a press conference in Chicago when the Beatles arrived. While preparing to meet the reporters, Lennon broke down in tears.
At the press conference, a distraught Lennon remarked, “I am sorry that I opened my mouth. I am not anti-God, anti-Christ, or anti-religion.” He continued to explain that he was simply remarking on how popular the Beatles had become and contrasting it with the decline of Christianity in the United Kingdom. “If you want me to apologize,” he summed, “if that will make you happy, then OK, I am sorry.”
Expected Today
In 1993, Michael Medved wrote in The New York Times that “today comments like Lennon’s could never cause controversy because a contemptuous attitude to religion is all but expected from all mainstream pop performers.” The entire drama was parodied in a 1978 movie called “All You Need Is Cash,” in which the Lennon character claims what he really said was the group was bigger than Rod Stewart.
Re-reading the events of this entertainment controversy seemed to echo the “Last Supper” fiasco in the news recently from the Paris Olympics. The lesson that Christians – and almost everyone – have not learned is how to communicate with someone with whom you disagree. No one responds well to yelling. It is difficult to convert someone with whom you do not talk.
It’s even more difficult to observe and learn from history. Let’s try to do both.
