Carver's Young Men's Bible Class at Tuskegee (1907 on)..

Chapter 10 - Bigger Than the Pulpit

Carver’s relaxation in the Spirit put him at odds with a few over-serious clergymen. His disgust with human egotism would reach its peak when he found it in a man of the cloth. Once a visiting bishop, entering his office with a self-important air, stormed out after only a moment, red-faced with coat-tails flying. What Carver said that whipped him out the door was not recorded; but a story he told of a highly educated and prominent young Southern minister offers clues. After the young man had spent an afternoon at the Museum, Carver recalled, “my assistant brought him to my office. [Looking ] quite solemn, he said, ‘Dr. Carver, I have been all through your Museum.
 
It is very different from anything I have ever seen before; but I cannot say that I see anything so very spiritual about the exhibits. For the life of me, I cannot see how a normal person can connect peas and corn, paints and paving blocks with religion.’ I looked [him] right in the eye,” Carver said, “and replied, ‘Young man, your religion is just a foot too high;… in your head instead of your heart. In addition, you have a bad case of the “I” disease, and that’s mighty bad for any man, let alone a preacher.’” A Presbyterian minister in the town of Tuskegee accomplished the near-impossible task of provoking Carver to sarcasm. He had an invitation to the Institute chapel, where the President of the University of Rochester was to confer an honorary doctorate on an elderly Carver, whose health prevented him from going to receive it. The Reverend wrote that he planned to attend, adding, “I also have ALL of my degrees;… an A. B., and a Seminary Theological degree, B. D.,… my doctor’s degree, D. D. from Erskine College, South Carolina.” “I am not at all surprised,” Carver wrote back, “at the number of degrees that you have—what you do speaks so much louder than what you say, that I cannot hear what you say—and I so thoroughly agree with so many others with whom I have conversed with reference to the good you are doing by living among us all..”