'Splendor' in the Past: Billy Winn pens 600-page history of St. Luke UMC
A history runs through it.
Women’s temperance, battles over the Civil War, women’s roles in the church, the Great Depression. These are just a few issues and events that faced the region and nation from 1828-2008. A new 600-page history of St. Luke United Methodist Church from that period offers a glimpse into the congregation’s involvement in the pressing issues of the day.
Local historian and Columbus native Billy Winn, 72, took three years to research and write “Line of Splendor.” It was presented the weekend after Easter, when he signed copies at the downtown church.
In preparing to write, Winn pored through piles of church records and conducted interviews with dozens of members and staff, former and current.
“A history committee had gotten together all the documents, which was very helpful. Then I started separating out what was going to be relevant for the history,” Winn said.
“We started thinking it was going to take a year, but I knew the church was bigger than that and it deserved more than that,” he said.
“It’s a remarkable book,” said the Rev. Hal Brady, in his 14th year as senior pastor. He’ll retire from St. Luke in June.
Both struggles and triumphs during those 180 years played out in St. Luke as they played out in the rest of the town and nation. The Church, Winn found, is never far away from either.
A particular incident took place on Oct. 14, 1896, when a Columbus shoemaker named James White and his son Henry shot and killed two police officers as they walked to a downtown bar. Another officer, William Jackson, was shot and killed on James White’s porch after officers went to his home. James White was later killed. Jackson was a member of St. Luke, and a funeral at the church offered a stately funeral to all the felled officers. As money was being raised for the officers’ families, a campaign to drive out the whiskey business from Columbus and Muscogee County began. The Columbus Woman’s Christian Temperance Union met at St. Luke to rally around this cause.
Warts and all
If you want a glimpse of Columbus’ history, including many of the city’s leaders who were members then, you’ll find it in this book.
“It doesn’t pull any punches,” said Brady, who instructed Winn to offer a true history -- warts and all.
“I think even if you’re not interested in St. Luke, you gain such an authentic record of Columbus and the surrounding areas,” Brady said.
Winn said the pastor granted great license.
“He said, ‘Do the book and fear no one. Do a serious history.’ That would appeal to anyone who’s an historian,” Winn said. “He stood by that.”
The conference year 1962-63 was tumultuous. (In Methodism, conference years run summer to summer.) In 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Engel v. Vitale that reading prayers in the New York Public Schools was unconstitutional. At its summer meeting, the church board passed a resolution protesting the decision. It sent the resolution to Georgia senators Richard B. Russell and Herman Talmadge.
The next year, in the spring of ’63, the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare sent a letter to Muscogee County instructing that “segregated schools are not deemed suitable for the education of on-base Federal children.” This was due to Columbus’ relationship with Fort Benning. The department also asked Muscogee County to come up with a plan of desegregation.
Then in the summer of 1963, group of black school children staged a “read in” at the then-segregated Bradley Memorial Library.
The superintendent at the time, William H. Shaw, taught Sunday school at St. Luke. All public libraries were desegregated in September 1963, and the district approved a “freedom of choice” plan to desegregate schools beginning in September 1964. The pressure around him intensified from blacks, and from whites.
A charter member of the Shaw class recalled that William Shaw “kept his mind on the Bible rather than his personal situation” when he taught, according to Winn’s book.
A low point in the church’s history, financially speaking, was the Great Depression that hit the late 1920s and early 30s, which affected most congregations nationally.
“Many people think of (St. Luke) as a big wealthy church, but at times it’s had to struggle. It’s always made it by the skin of its teeth, like many churches have,” Winn said.
Societal issues
In his research, done mostly locally as well as in Atlanta, Winn was most interested in how St. Luke dealt with the big issues facing the larger society. Race was one. At times, members of the church were hostile or indifferent to blacks and then at other times were bold, for the time, in their support of racial equality.
“Like most Southern churches they have not been good at race, but we all could do better with race,” said Winn, who retired as this newspaper’s editorial page editor in 2000 and was a civil rights reporter for the Atlanta Journal in the 1960s.
“On the other hand, it has responded to society’s needs in the best way it could.”
Among other achievements, St. Luke was instrumental in the early days of Open Door Community House, a Methodist-based social services ministry on Second Avenue, and other works of benevolence. “If you keep score, you’d be amazed at all the work the religious institutions in this city has done. It’s a shadow kind of economic support system, and a constant one. This society would not exist without them, as reality exists. If you think everybody has plenty to eat, I’ve got news for you.
“If not for the congregations, we’d all be eating in trees.”
The book outlines the many ways St. Luke has reached out to the disadvantaged.
“Many have the impression of the church that it’s just one-dimensional -- devoted to piety and godly acts. In fact, it’s much more than that. It was active in outreach from Day 1.” Inspired by the notion that the city’s congregations have long contributed to people outside their walls, Winn has started teaching a class at neighboring First Presbyterian Church called “Good Works.” He doesn’t leave non-Christian congregations out of the mix.
Brought up at Trinity Episcopal Church, Winn said he likes to visit many congregations around the city when he’s in the mood to worship or when a particular event draws him.
“I’m not a joiner,” said Winn, who finds inspiration in poetry and music and nature, as well as in sanctuaries.
‘Marvelous people’
“Line of Splendor” follows three other books bearing this name: “The Old Beloved Path,” about the Indians who once called the Chattachoochee Valley home; “The Magic and Mystery of Westville,” a pictorial history of Westville outside Lumpkin, Ga., co-produced with Ledger-Enquirer photo chief Mike Haskey; and “Building on a Legacy: The Columbus Museum.” He’s working on another book, about Indian burial removal.
One of the most colorful figures he encountered in his research for the St. Luke book was the Rev. Sam Jones, an evangelist from north Georgia who came to Columbus to lead revivals. This was in the early 1880s. Jones was invited to town by the St. Luke minister, the Rev. J.O.A. Cook, because of what Cook viewed as spiritual malaise by the men in the church.
In his plain-folk preaching style, Jones was able to communicate with them, in part because he was familiar with the language of the streets; he’d struggled with drinking and other “secular pursuits,” according to “Splendor.”
“Quit sinning. Quit lusting after your neighbor’s wife. Quit gambling. Quit your meanness,” Winn wrote in describing Jones’ blunt messages.
Jones became a familiar figure around town for about a decade.
“Sam reached out and grabbed the men by the shirt,” Winn said. “ ‘I know everything you’re thinking of.’ He was able to deal with people on a spiritual level and personal level.”
Jones was just one figure who make St. Luke what it is. Countless others have passed through as well as those currently putting their stamp on the next 180 years.
“This church, probably like all churches, has not had an easy trip but has marvelous people,” Brady said. “There are thousands of people not mentioned in the book who have been faithful and true.”
Note: Books cost $31. They can be purchased at St. Luke, 1104 Second Ave.
Allison Kennedy, 706-576-6237
This story was originally published May 14, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "'Splendor' in the Past: Billy Winn pens 600-page history of St. Luke UMC."