MCBA HISTORY

To the Glory of God and His Christ

A Short History of the Middlesex Central Baptist Association

  The history of the Middlesex Central Baptist Association is a chronicle of one hundred years of the independent development and growth of the black Baptist church and its people in north central New Jersey.  When the call was issued to form an association in 1906, those who gathered recognized that they were undertaking a monumental mission that involved the spiritual and social well being not only of those in attendance but of future generations of African Americans who called themselves Baptists.

            On Thursday, July 12, 1906 a group of ministers along with men and women of the laity gathered at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, New Brunswick, in response to a call to organize a Baptist association in central New Jersey.  The Reverend Edward W. Roberts, pastor of the host church, was selected to serve as temporary chairman of this historic meeting.  Then by voice vote, Rev. Roberts was elected the first president of the Middlesex Central Baptist Association, making it the second Baptist association in the state of New Jersey organized and managed independently by African Americans. The Afro-American Baptist State Convention had been organized in 1904 and the Seacoast Association was organized the following year.  Others elected to office that day were Vice-Moderator, Rev. Lloyd L. Croom, pastor Second Baptist Church (Rahway); Recording Secretary, Rev. D. Wardsworth Cannon of Cranford; Corresponding Secretary, Mr. C. F. Cannon; and Treasurer, Rev. M. W. Vaughn, pastor Second Baptist Church (Roselle).

            The officers and members of the Middlesex Central Baptist Association were keenly aware of the bold and monumental organizational task they were undertaking.  After nearly three decades of association in mixed, but usually unequal, affiliation with white Baptists in New Jersey, they were declaring their spiritual as well as their cultural and political equality.  Identifying themselves as both American citizens and citizens of the Kingdom of God, New Jersey's black Baptists believed the time had come for them to develop independently the principles of Christianity and American citizenship.  As early as 1893, African American Baptists in New Jersey had adopted as their watchword New Jersey for Christ, an affirmation of belief in their ability to foster their own spiritual and cultural identity as an independent group equal to any other.  The quest for an independent religious identity grounded in the African American experience would be tested many times over.

            At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, New Jersey's African American population was growing by leaps and bounds.  With its diverse geography and economy--, rural/urban/suburban, agricultural/industrial/services--New Jersey was an attractive destination for many African Americans, particularly those seeking to escape the political and economic hardships of the South.  In 1890 New Jersey's African American population was about forty-five thousand with nearly two thousand identified as Baptists.  Nonetheless, by 1903 nearly seventy percent (70%) of southern migrants to the northeast were without a church.  Recognizing its Christian mandate to care spiritually and physically for this growing population within its boundaries, the Afro-American Baptist Convention created a Home Mission Board and appointed Field Missionaries with responsibility for stimulating new and shoring up weak churches.  The organization of the Middlesex Central Baptist Association (MCBA) grew out of a sense of spiritual and political urgency.

            The brothers and sisters meeting in New Brunswick that Thursday were keenly aware of the gravity of the spiritual, social and political challenges facing them as Christians and as a people only four decades out of bondage.  In 1906, the Afro-American Baptist State Convention declared that the cause of the Master's Kingdom could only be attained with thorough organization and development of the Baptist ranks to the glory of God and His Christ.  As Rev. Roberts observed in his presidential address to the State Convention the following year, African Americans were witnessing the nationalism of Jim Crowism with segregated public facilities in the South and the retreat of the Republican Party and the federal government from fair treatment of African Americans throughout the country.  If African Americans would put their trust in God, be good Christians and the best citizens, he assured the convention attendees, they would vanquish by our Christian and patriotic spirit, those who malign and try to degrade us. The Lord of infinite power would go before, securing for us our inalienable rights and intended position.  The spiritual and political future of African Americans in New Jersey, and by implication, throughout the nation, depended upon the black Baptist church's becoming a site of spiritual and political training along all practical lines [:] how to be good citizens, how to vote intelligently so as to make our votes tell for good and be powerful and effective in the national life, for the good, and well-being of our race.

            To that end, the Middlesex Central Baptist Association was organized with the objectives of promoting the program of Christ, supporting Christian education, and assisting in Home and Foreign Mission work.   The black Baptists of New Jersey grounded their Christian faith and praxis in a practical theology of political and social justice, a theology that would secure for them the political rights in this world and prepare them for their eternal bliss in the next.  By the first annual session held in 1907 at Calvary Baptist Church, Plainfield, MCBA's membership had grown to twenty-one ordained ministers, three licentiates, and delegates representing twenty churches and three missions with a total of 2,500 parishioners.  The associational territory included Middlesex, Union, Somerset, Hunterdon, and Mercer Counties.

            Within five years of organization, MCBA was ready to incorporate.  On Monday, July 25, 1910, MCBA members convened at their meeting house, Shiloh Baptist Church at 517 West Fourth Street, Plainfield.  A plurality of the male and female members over twenty-one, approved the incorporation with a voice vote.  The act of incorporation entitled the association to hold and manage real estate, and, more importantly, signaled the maturation of the independent movement among African American Baptists in north central New Jersey.  MCBA had indeed become an efficient missionary organization within its bounds. The elected trustees, all men and all clergy, were Moderator Edward W. Roberts, Rev. Reuben Johnson, pastor First Baptist Church (Pennington), Rev. Jesse L. Burton, pastor Union Baptist Church (Trenton), Rev. J. Isaac Allen (Westfield), and Rev. Preston W. Ross, pastor Bethel Baptist Church (Westfield).