Description
This sixteen-page pamphlet, titled Ecclesiastical Relation of Negroes,is the printed version of a speech given by Reverend Robert Lewis Dabney to the Presbyterian Synod of Virginia on November 9, 1867. As the subtitle indicates, Dabney spoke Against The Ecclesiastical Equality of Negro Preachers … And Their Right to Rule Over White Christians. Dabney advocated a black Presbyterian ministry with its own churches and congregations, ecclesiastically independent of, and separate from ours, but in relations of friendship and charity … But I would make no black man a member of a white Session, or Presbytery, or Synod, or Assembly; nor would I give them any share in the governement of our own church, nor any representation in it. It is confusion.
