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AN ADDRESS
TO THE
COLORED BAPTIST CHURCHES
OF THE
UNITED STATES,
FROM
The Consolidated American Baptist Missionary Convention.

To the Churches, Ministers, Deacons, and Brethren throughout the United States.}

DEAR BRETHREN:

We address you thus, because we are brethren, both according to the flesh and according to the Spirit. We are Baptists, and, from our Church organizations, we are known as Colored Baptists.

The circumstances which brought our churches into being, as colored churches, still exist; and such are the force and attitude of those circumstances towards us, even now, that we are convinced that the time has not yet arrived when we should either disband them or abandon them.

Some progress has been made by the great Baptist denomination in the advance movement now going on in the Christian sentiment of this nation towards us as a people; but this sentiment has not become so developed in our denomination as to conquer the anti-Christian sentiment of race -- caste, that precludes the possibility of the body of colored Baptists obtaining a cordial welcome and finding a hearty Christian fellowship, should they, en masse, seek a visible unity, in the same churches with the other part of the Baptist family.

The assent is readily enough given to the teachings of Christ and the Apostles, as divine truths to be believed and obeyed, that God "hath made of one blood all nations of men," and that, as believers created anew in Christ Jesus, "all ye are brethren,' and, therefore, we "are one (body, or family) in Christ Jesus." But these truths, and the many others like them, have not so influenced our practice as to cause it to entirely conform to our faith.

It is fair to state here, as we believe, that this condition of things is not continued from a feeling of conscious unfriendliness, but seems rather to be the result of a serious conviction of necessary exclusiveness.

These are plain statements of what must be apparent to all as obvious facts. From these facts there are certain things that follow as logical sequences, which have left their impressions upon us, and we wish to present them to you for your careful and candid consideration.

In the first place, it is quite clear that we are, in fact, separated from the great mass of our white brethren; and whether willing or not, on our part, for the continuance of this separation, it is not in our power to bring all together in one homogeneous Baptist family. There is no difference between us in theological or scriptural tenets: we hold to the same confession of faith, and believe