The Omaha Guide

"The Way Forward"
Delivered at St. John A. M. E. Church housewarming, Springfield, Illinois, August 6, 1933, by Miss Helen D. Wheeler of Omaha, Nebraska

I could think of no better way to reawaken or recreate interest of any organization, family or group properly than a newly painted, thoroughly cleaned building or home to live and worship in. And at this 2nd meeting in this--let us say new auditorium, because the very atmosphere smells of cleanliness, may we be ever conscious of the fact that this building is your home, your house of worship for the development of your spiritual life.

At all times, may we so conduct ourselves in a reverential manner, ever conscious of the God spirit within and about us--that visitors will be impressed to an extent that they too will want to join hands with you and say, "God is wonderful to grant us the privilege of sharing his great love!"

For it is that love friends, which binds us together as a race of people. It was that never failing love, of which patience is an attribute that maintained our mothers and fathers, and our grandparents, throughout the past years of hardship and struggles. And it was that same love which inspired Richard Allen to look ahead for his people and thus found the A. M. E. Church, many years ago.

And may we take this occasion to utter thanks unto Him, Our Father, who always finds a way out of all our difficulties, and through you and I and thousands of others makes the impossibilities--come true--realities.

I have never been in a church more wide awake than St. John. I feel so much at home here, because there have been smiles everywhere. I've turned, there have been greetings and acknowledgements: your pastor has been reverential. And your women have vitality and interest for their members. That is what keeps a church alive: that is what makes your church a beacon light for outsiders, and a haven for rest and inspiration.

Last Sunday night there was nothing more impressive on your program than to see those smiling, wide awake, young Trustee Helpers, move about this auditorium as they performed their various tasks. That, is what keeps people interested. Young people, full of life and pep, sincere and ambitious; young people willing to help in every way possible. Such an organization as the Junior Trustee Helpers, the Sunday School and Christian Endeavor, with wide-awake, dependable and unselfish leaders should prove a marvelous drawing card for other young people.

Because, friends, it must be such an example if the A. M. E. Church is to have a church of tomorrow, if this race of ours is to have a stalwart conscientious men and women. For the power of any race of people has its source in the Church through the realm of the spiritual.

These men and women and these young people who have undertaken various tasks in your church cannot succeed very well without your help. You, their parents, officers and members of this church, brothers and sisters, and their friends, love to see them active for your church and community. You love them, for they are your own people, but many times you are so indifferent. You don't care how they get along. And yet you complain about your young people not having any opportunities. Opportunities are knocking at theirs and your doors every day, but you are too indifferent to be conscious of them.

It isn't your money they want chiefly, that is just means to an end. Of course, they must have financial help for expenditures, but more than anything else, they need your presence at their meetings. Show some interest. No matter how little. I can't find words to tell you how encouraging your presence is to meetings of any nature; save to say it would be like it is this afternoon with everyone happy and interested.

And if you have any love for your people, show it now. Work together unselfishly and above all things, learn to love--look personal prejudices, personal grudges. You must realize that as a race of people, it is you, you yourself who must break down the barriers of discrimination.

The majority of us have yet to learn that in order to get ahead in any endeavor, whether it is within our race proper or to make an opening through our white brethren, we must forget selfish motives, and strive for the ultimate good--another step ahead for the Negro.

You, have a better chance for the development of your race than the white. Why do I say this? Because in the first place you do not have any great governmental responsibilities and can therefore concentrate all of your energies toward making your race economically safe, and toward the development of the spiritual, intellectual and cultural angles.

Most white people do not expect their Christianity to do them any great or immediate good. They have their noble buildings and their stately service, they have their altars and their sermons, their doctrines and their corroding skepticism, but their faith in God and in the things of the spirit that makes life a joy and a blessing, they have not. On some stretch of its long presence with them, Christianity lost many of the precious treasures committed to it by Christ chiefly the Gospel of a Savior's love, and the religion of spirit and power--with its great sense of Human brotherhood. Their Christianity has accumulated such things as Jesus warned his Disciples against when he first sent them out--worldly pride and a passion for riches, organization which becomes necessary when the living organism is dead, and many theologies, which look upon truth and freedom as its enemies. Such Christianity lacks that great magnetic power that draws, transforms, and energizes the sad souls of men and women. Money and number appear to constitute the highest ambition of many of our white churches.

And I'm sorry to say some of our Negro churches are trembling. I say trembling because they have been stressing the same things and have been neglecting the souls of men and women--of men and women who need to be guided because they are at sea struggling in a world of doubt and turmoil.

It is all right to follow our white brethren in their culture and community life, but we as a race cannot afford to substitute their religion for ours. We have too much at stake.

We as a race are just an embryo--we are still in the making.

Christianity began its mission on earth as a religion of health and joy. Neither doctrine nor superstition had any place in the mind of Jesus. Light, was the symbol which best expressed the quality of His spirit. In Him there is no darkness and no gloom. It is all faith and courage, inspiration and hope.

Our grandparents, in the homes of their overseers, and in the little Christian communities--sought and found that religion of health and happiness of spiritual freedom and friendship, and they gave it to you, to give to your children more clear and more practical that the race may grow stronger and stronger with each generation.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered:
We have come, treading our path thro' the blood of the slaughtered;
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray,
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee;
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land
—Poem by James Weldon Johnson