Walther on “Negroes in the South”: Missouri's missions to the Blacks (Part 3)

       This continues from Part 2 in a short series on the Negro missions of the Old Missouri Synod.  In the year following Prof. Franz Pieper's reports on the Negro Missions, we find Walther's blurb on Negroes in the South, from 1885 Der Lutheraner vol. 41 p. 21:

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The Negroes in the South. The English paper The Church Union of January 15 [1885] writes: ‘It is a strange fact how much religion some Southern Negroes have and how little morality. What a mixture of piety and crime the following report from Georgia contains!’ Hereupon the following is reported: The Negroes gave a hot supper, at which Joe Durret and John Nail, both preachers, were present. Late in the night some brought in whiskey, and the whole party became drunk. The result was a quarrel, in which Durrett struck Nail so violently on the skull with a piece of wood that the latter instantly fell to the ground, disembodied. After the murderer, without making any attempt to escape, had spent the night at the side of his victim, he arranged a prayer meeting, which he himself led, praying over the corpse of the man he had killed. Now he is in prison. — Do not think, dear reader, that this is a proof of how useless it is that we Lutherans do Negro Missions. Rather, the exact opposite follows from this. For as true as it is, what the Church Union writes, that some Negroes have much religion, but little morality, it is equally true that they lack the latter because they lack the right religion. Their religion is often nothing but a miserable rapture. Therefore, let us not tire of helping to bring them the true religion, the pure Word of God, so that we will also bring them, by God's grace, to true "morality", to a godly life according to the holy Ten Commandments. For the Black man as well as the White man is redeemed by Christ's blood, and God's Word never returns completely empty. W. [Walther]

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      Walther did not focus on the lack of morality, he focused on the "right religion", the Christian religion that Lutheranism teaches... then morality will follow.  Walther had a true heart for the Negro or Black people!