St. Mark's and the Social Gospel: Methodist Women and Civil Rights in New Orleans, 1895–1965

Chapter 4: “A Restlessness of Women”

4 “A Restlessness of Women” In the 1920s and 1930s, the deaconesses in New Orleans laid the groundwork that allowed a major incident in the city’s civil rights struggle to play out later at St. Mark’s. The training that MECS deaconesses underwent, including its theological, spiritual, practical, and economic aspects, prepared them for a profound embodiment of their Christianity. As the MECS women of New Orleans made major advancements in their Social Gospel practice in the decade that followed the First World War, so did their organization at the denominational level, especially with regard to that training. In 1924, Scarritt Bible and Training School moved from Kansas City, Missouri, into spacious new quarters in Nashville , Tennessee, and took the name Scarritt College for Christian Workers. The majority of the deaconesses who served in New Orleans studied at Scarritt College . This chapter examines their training program and demonstrates that the women at St. Mark’s were far more radical than female Social Gospel reformers have been thought. This finding offers a much-needed corrective to assertions that all female reformers of the era were intrinsically conservative. A number of white MECS deaconesses joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) during their Scarritt training and were, considering their time, place, and cultural backgrounds, truly radical in the area of race relations. Mary Lou Barnwell as Chief “Loving Trouble-Maker” A Scarritt College faculty member once referred to Methodist deaconesses as “Loving Trouble-Makers.”1 An important moment in the history of St. Mark’s “A Restlessness of Women” 108 occurred when one of the most outstanding of the “loving trouble-makers,” Mary Lou Barnwell, came to the community center in 1927. Barnwell shaped the facility not only during her years as its local director in the 1930s, but also as a national leader of the deaconess movement for three decades thereafter. As head of the deaconess program overall, she set policy and influenced the work of every Methodist deaconess, including those who followed her at St. Mark’s. Born in Georgia in 1903, Barnwell dreamed of going as a missionary to Asia and did her graduate work at Scarritt toward that end. However, to pass the physical exam for overseas service, a woman had to weigh at least one hundred pounds, and she was not able to gain that much weight. So when she graduated , the MECS sent her to New Orleans to work with the St. Mark’s program for boys and to work as receptionist for the health clinic. In 1933, she was reloFig . 11a. Mary Lou Barnwell in the summer of 1927. “A Restlessness of Women” 109 cated to the Rosa Valdez Center in Tampa, Florida, but in 1937, she returned to New Orleans, this time to serve as head resident at St. Mark’s for two years. In 1939, Barnwell was elected to oversee urban work for the women’s mission structure in the newly created Methodist church, and she continued to fill important administrative posts for the rest of her career, including service as executive secretary of the Commission on Deaconess Work from 1948 to 1964.2 Her work in these offices took her all over the world and gave her unparalleled opportunity to shape the work of deaconesses. Barnwell “chose to live out her commitment to God through the agencies of churchwomen’s organizations” and “sought racial understanding, crossed economic barriers, helped women interpret mores of different peoples and, in [the] face of opposition, exercised strong leadership.”3 Fig. 11b. Mary Lou Barnwell in Audubon Park on Easter day, 1929. “A Restlessness of Women” 110 At the time of my interview with her, she was a resident of the BrooksHowell Home for retired deaconesses in Asheville, North Carolina, and she responded to a question about her understanding of the Social Gospel by saying , “It’s just something you live.”4 This deceptively simple-sounding response mirrors exactly the theological underpinnings of the Social Gospel and points to the liberation theology of the mid-twentieth century, with its recognition of theology as a “second order” activity involving reflection on already occurring practice (praxis). It also resounds with the particular Wesleyan emphasis on “social holiness.” Training in Radical Christianity During the formative period when she studied at Scarritt College, Mary Lou Barnwell did her fieldwork at a Bethlehem House in Nashville. Bethlehem Houses were Methodist settlements that served African American...