Religion: Abyssinian Allegations

"Reverent" Powell was hopping mad. . . .

He's going to get a writ. . . .

Brother Skerritt just defied them. . . .

Not a cent of money left. . . .

Been playing the numbers. . . .

They're going to impound the Friendly Society books. . . .

The street corners of Manhattan's lusty black Harlem last week buzzed with rumors, reports, allegations, accusations— all concerning the Abyssinian Baptist Church which, with 12,094 members, is the largest Protestant church in the world.

Banding together 126 years ago after a schism in the Baptist Church, the Abyssinian Baptists so named their sect because they liked the sound. They worshipped first in downtown Worth Street, moved northward with the city's color line. When the church was in midtown 26 years ago there arrived in its pulpit a tall, rawboned, Yale-trained Negro named A. (for Adam) Clayton Powell. After years of planning for a model church in Harlem, Pastor Powell began raising money in 1920, got 2,000 people to promise to give their church a tenth of their weekly earnings. Two years later ground was broken for a great Gothic-spired church. In triple-quick time the congregation paid off a $60,000 mortgage.

To accommodate 12,000 worshippers the Abyssinian Baptist Church holds three or four services every Sunday, runs two Sunday schools with 1,000 members each. Also it maintains a Community House with gymnasium and roof garden, Home Economics and Health Education departments, a weekday Church School for children, the nation's largest Daily Vacation Bible School, an employment agency, a Music School, a Dramatic School and 53 clubs and auxiliaries. Furthermore the Church supports a missionary in Africa, a summer camp, a chair at Virginia Union University and an Old Folks Home. And lastly there is the Friendly Society which holds fried chicken socials, pays for sick benefits and funerals of its 1,000 members, and which last week had the Abyssinian Baptist Church in a high dither.

Now white-maned at 69, "Reverent" Powell (as many a parishioner calls him) is accustomed to rule his flock like a benign autocrat. Indeed he and his officers are empowered to declare vacant any of the numerous posts in the church. But last week Pastor Powell was meeting open defiance—from the Friendly Society's president, a tall, blue-black West Indian named Samuel Skerritt. Six months ago, recalling that the Friendly Society books had not been audited for four years, Pastor Powell asked for a look at them. Samuel Skerritt seemed evasive. And when Pastor Powell kept on asking for those books, Brother Skerritt continued to seem evasive.

Last week Pastor Powell called a church meeting, ordered Brother Skerritt to attend. Declaring that the pastor was trying to usurp the prerogatives of the Friendly Society, Brother Skerritt boldly stayed away. The meeting took place, the church officers declared Brother Skerritt deposed, but still no one could lay hands on those books. Harlem street corners continued buzzing about what each side planned to do next, but all "Reverent"' Powell would say was: "We are only having a family fight, which happens in all families, and we are trying to settle the fight without telling the world about the cause."