Читать книгу The Cyclopedia of the Colored Baptists of Alabama: Their Leaders and Their Work онлайн

11 страница из 47

A case of discipline which came up in this church many years ago, led to the formation of the St. Louis Street Church, and I am sorry to say gave birth to a very bitter sectional feeling between the two bodies, which feeling has long been a blight to the Baptist cause in South Alabama.

This church is stubbornly set against all secret societies, so that no secret society people are allowed in its membership. The pastor is elected for life. For the support of its poor it has a fund which is called the “Church Treasury.”

This church was for many years especially noted for its missionary enterprise. To this church Alabama owes many of her pioneer preachers. The late Rev. Charles Leavens, who was pastor just after the close of the war, sought to send a pioneer, an organizer, into every section of the State. Their present house of worship cost, I am told, about $24,000, and is a two-story brick structure. Since the war their pastors have been: Revs. Charles Leavens, I. Grant, A. Butler, C. C. Richardson, and the present occupant, Rev. Mr. Frazier. This church seems now in full sympathy with its past missionary record, over which no one rejoices more than the writer, since it is from this church that he, under God, received his commission to preach the gospel of the Son of Righteousness.