Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
THE HISTORY OF THE NEGRO CHURCH
BY
CARTER G. WOODSON, Ph.D.
_Editor of the Journal of Negro History, author of A Century of Negro
Migration, and of the Education of the Negro Prior to 1861_
THE ASSOCIATED PUBLISHERS
WASHINGTON, D. C.
[Publisher's logo]
Copyright, 1921
By THE ASSOCIATED PUBLISHERS
[Illustration: A CHRISTIANIZED AFRICAN. _Frontispiece_]
To
THE CHERISHED MEMORY OF
MY MOTHER
ANNE ELIZA WOODSON
PREFACE
The importance of the church in the life of the Negro justifies the
publication of this brief account of the development of the institution.
For many years the various denominations have been writing treatises
bearing on their own particular work, but hitherto there has been no
effort to study the achievements of all of these groups as parts of the
same institution and to show the evolution of it from the earliest
period to the present time. This is the objective of this volume.
Whether or not the author has done this task well is a question which
the public must decide. This work does not represent what he desired to
make it. Many facts of the past could not be obtained for the reason
that several denominations have failed to keep records and facts known
to persons now active in the church could not be collected because of
indifference or the failure to understand the motives of the author. Not
a few church officers and ministers, however, gladly cooperated with the
author in giving and seeking information concerning their denominations.
Among these were Mr. Charles H. Wesley, Prof. J. A. Booker, and Dr.
Walter H. Brooks. For their valuable assistance the author feels deeply
grateful.
CARTER G. WOODSON.
Washington, D. C., September, 1921.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--Early Missionaries and the Negro 1
II.--The Dawn of the New Day 23
III.--Pioneer Negro Preachers 40
IV.--The Independent Church Movement 71
V.--Early Development 100
VI.--The Schism and the Subsequent Situation 123
VII.--Religious Instruction Revived 148
VIII.--Preachers of Versatile Genius 167
IX.--The Civil War and the Church 185
X.--Religious Education as a Preparation 202
XI.--The Call of Politics 220
XII.--The Conservative and Progressive 247
XIII.--The Negro Church Socialized 266
XIV.--The Recent Growth of the Negro Church 286
XV.--The Negro Church of To-day 300
FOOTNOTES
INDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS
A Christianized African _Frontispiece_
Directing the Wanderer in the right Way
The Oldest Negro Baptist Church in the United States
Lemuel Haynes
Andrew Bryan
Richard Allen
James Varick
Peter Williams
Christopher Rush
Lott Cary
M. C. Clayton
Sampson White
Josiah Henson
Noah Davis
Samuel R. Ward
Alexander Crummell
J. W. C. Pennington
Henry Highland Garnett
Daniel A. Payne
Richard DeBaptiste
W. H. Miles
Wilberforce During the Civil War
William J. Simmons
James Poindexter
J. C. Price
H. M. Turner
B. W. Arnett
W. B. Derrick
J. W. Hood
L. H. Holsey
Rufus L. Perry
Charles T. Walker
John Jasper
E. K. Love
W. R. Pettiford
M. C. B. Mason
George W. Lee
Alexander Walters
CHAPTER I
THE EARLY MISSIONARIES AND THE NEGRO
One of the causes of the discovery of America was the translation into
action of the desire of European zealots to extend the Catholic religion
into other parts. Columbus, we are told, was decidedly missionary in his
efforts and felt that he could not make a more significant contribution
to the church than to open new fields for Christian endeavor. His final
success in securing the equipment adequate to the adventure upon the
high seas was to some extent determined by the Christian motives
impelling the sovereigns of Spain to finance the expedition for the
reason that it might afford an opportunity for promoting the cause of
Christ. Some of the French who came to the new world to establish their
claims by further discovery and exploration, moreover, were either
actuated by similar motives or welcomed the cooperation of earnest
workers thus interested.
The first persons proselyted by the Spanish and French missionaries were
Indians. There was not any particular thought of the Negro. It may seem
a little strange just now to think of persons having to be converted to
faith in the possibility of the salvation of the Negro, but there were
among the colonists thousands who had never considered the Negro as
belonging to the pale of Christianity. Negroes had been generally
designated as infidels; but, in the estimation of their self-styled
superiors, they were not considered the most desirable of this class
supposedly arrayed against Christianity. There were few Christians who
did not look forward to the ultimate conversion of those infidels
approaching the Caucasian type, but hardly any desired to make an effort
in the direction of proselyting Negroes.
When, however, that portion of this Latin element primarily interested
in the exploitation of the Western Hemisphere failed to find in the
Indians the substantial labor supply necessary to their enterprises and
at the suggestion of men like las Casas imported Negroes for this
purpose, the missionaries came face to face with the question as to
whether this new sort of heathen should receive the same consideration
as that given the Indians. Because of the unwritten law that a Christian
could not be held a slave, the exploiting class opposed any such
proselyting; for, should the slaves be liberated upon being converted,
their plans for development would fail for lack of a labor supply
subject to their orders as bondmen. The sovereigns of Europe, once
inclined to adopt a sort of humanitarian policy toward the Negroes, at
first objected to their importation into the new world; and when under
the pressure of the interests of the various countries they yielded on
this point, it was stipulated that such slaves should have first
embraced Christianity. Later, when further concessions to the
capitalists were necessary, it was provided in the royal decrees of
Spain and of France that Africans enslaved in America should merely be
early indoctrinated in the principles of the Christian religion.
These decrees, although having the force of law, soon fell into
desuetude. There was not among these planters any sentiment in favor of
such humanitarian treatment of the slaves. Unlike the missionaries, the
planters were not interested in religion and they felt that too much
enlightenment of the slaves might inspire them with the hope of
attaining the status of freemen. The laws, therefore, were nominally
accepted as just and the functionaries in the colonies in reporting to
their home countries on the state of the plantations made it appear that
they were generally complied with. As there was no such thing as an
inspection of these commercial outposts, moreover, no one in Europe
could easily determine exactly what attitude these men had toward
carrying out the will of the home countries with respect to the
Christianization of the bondmen. From time to time, therefore, the
humanitarian world heard few protests like that of Alfonso Sandoval in
Cuba and the two Capucin monks who were imprisoned in Havana because of
their inveighing against the failure on the part of the planters to
provide for the religious instruction of the slaves. Being in the
minority, these upright pioneers too often had their voices hushed in
persecution, as it happened in the case of the two monks.
It appears, however, that efforts in behalf of Negroes elsewhere were
not in vain; for the Negroes in Latin America were not only proselyted
thereafter but were given recognition among the clergy. Such was the
experience of Francisco Xavier de Luna Victoria, son of a freedman, a
Panama charcoal burner, whose chief ambition was to educate this young
man for the priesthood. He easily became a priest and after having
served acceptably in this capacity a number of years was chosen Bishop
of Panama in 1751 and administered this office eight years. He was later
called to take charge of the See of Trujillo, Peru.
In what is now the United States the Spanish and French missionaries had
very little contact with the Negroes during the early period, as they
were found in large numbers along the Atlantic coast only. In the West
Indies, however, the Latin policy decidedly dominated during the early
colonial period, and when the unwritten law that a Christian could not
be held a slave was by special statutes and royal decrees annulled, the
planters eventually yielded in their objection to the religious
instruction of the slaves and generally complied with the orders of the
home country to this effect.
Maryland was the only Atlantic colony in which the Catholics had the
opportunity to make an appeal to a large group of Negroes. After some
opposition the people of that colony early met the test of preaching the
gospel to all regardless of color. The first priests and missionaries
operating in Maryland regarded it their duty to enlighten the slaves;
and, as the instruction of the communicants of the church became more
systematic to make their preparation adequate to the proper
understanding of the church doctrine, some sort of instruction of the
Negroes attached to these establishments was provided in keeping with
the sentiment expressed in the first ordinances of the Spanish and
French sovereigns and later in the Black Code governing the bondmen in
the colonies controlled by the Latins.
Although the attitude of the Catholic pioneers was not altogether
encouraging to the movement for the evangelization of the Negroes, still
less assistance came from the Protestants settling the English colonies.
Few, if any, of the pioneers from Great Britain had the missionary
spirit of some of the Latins. As the English were primarily interested
in founding new homes in America, they thought of the Negroes not as
objects of Christian philanthropy but rather as tools with which they
might reach that end. It is not surprising then that with the
introduction of slavery as an economic factor in the development of the
English colonies little care was taken of their spiritual needs, and
especially so when they were confronted with the unwritten law that a
Christian could not be held a slave.
Owing to the more noble example set by the Latins, however, and the
desirable results early obtained by their missionaries, the English
planters permitted some sort of religious instruction of the bondmen,
after providing by royal decrees and special statutes in the colonies
that conversion to Christianity would not work manumission. Feeling,
however, that the nearer the blacks were kept to the state of brutes
that the more useful they would be as laborers, the masters generally
neglected them.
The exceptions to this rule were the efforts of various clergymen in
cooperation with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts. This organization was established in London in 1701 to do
missionary work among the heathen, especially the Indians and the
Negroes. Its function was to prepare the objects of its philanthropy for
a proper understanding of the church doctrine and the relation of man to
God. This body operated through the branches of the established church,
the ministrations of which were first limited to a few places in
Virginia, New York, Maryland, and the cities of Boston and Philadelphia.
From the very beginning this society felt that the conversion of the
Negroes was as important as that of bringing the whites or the Indians
into the church and such distinguished churchmen as Bishops Lowth,
Fleetwood, Williams, Sanderson, Butler, and Wilson, persistently urged
this duty upon their subordinates. In 1727 Bishop Gibson sent out two
forceful pastoral letters outlining this duty of the missionaries,
Bishop Secker preached a soul-stirring sermon thereupon in 1741, and in
1784 Bishop Porteus published an extensive plan for the more effectual
conversion of the slaves, contending that "despicable as they are in the
eyes of man they are, nevertheless, the creatures of God."
The first successful worker in this field was the Rev. Samuel Thomas of
Goose Creek Parish in the colony of South Carolina. The records show
that he was thus engaged as early as 1695 and that ten years later he
reported 20 black communicants who, with several others, well understood
the English language. By 1705 he had brought under his instruction as
many as 1,000 slaves, "many of whom," said he, "could read the Bible
distinctly and great numbers of them were engaged in learning the
scriptures." When these blacks approached the communion table, however,
some white persons seriously objected, inquiring whether it was possible
that slaves should go to heaven anyway. But having the cooperation of a
number of liberal slaveholders in that section and working in
collaboration with Mrs. Haig, Mrs. Edwards, and the Rev. E. Taylor, who
baptized a number of them, the missionaries in that colony prepared the
way for the Christianization of the Negro slaves.
Becoming interested in the thorough indoctrination of these slaves, Mr.
Taylor planned for their instruction, encouraging the slaveholders to
teach the blacks at least to the extent of learning the Lord's Prayer.
Manifesting such interest in these unfortunate blacks, their friends
easily induced them to attend church in such large numbers that they
could not be accommodated. "So far as the missionaries were permitted,"
says one, "they did all that was possible for their evangelization, and
while so many professed Christians among the whites were lukewarm, it
pleased God to raise to himself devout servants among the heathen, whose
faithfulness was commended by the Masters themselves." In some of the
congregations the Negroes constituted one-half of the communicants.
This interest in proselyting the Negroes was extended into other parts.
In 1723, Rev. Mr. Guy of St. Andrew's Parish reported that he had
baptized a Negro man and woman. About the same time Rev. Mr. Hunt, in
charge of St. John's Parish, had among his communicants a slave, "a
sensible Negro who can read and write and come to church, a catechumen
under probation for baptism, which he desires."
A new stage in the progress of this movement was reached in 1743 when
there was established at Charleston, South Carolina, a special school to
train Negroes for participation in this missionary work. This school was
opened by Commissary Garden and placed in charge of Harry and Andrew,
two young men of color, who had been thoroughly instructed in the
rudiments of education and in the doctrines of the church. It not only
served as the training school for missionary workers, but directed its
attention also to the special needs of adults who studied therein during
the evenings. From this school there were sent out from year to year
numbers of youths to undertake this work in various parts of the colony
of South Carolina. After having accomplished so much good for about a
generation, however, the school was, in 1763, closed for various
reasons, one of them being that one of the instructors died and the
other proved inefficient.
Farther upward in the colony of North Carolina, the same difficulties
were encountered. There the motive was the fear that, should the slaves
be converted, they would, according to the unwritten law of Christendom,
become free. Some planters, however, were very soon thereafter persuaded
to let these missionaries continue their work. "By much importunity,"
says an annalist, Mr. Ranford of Chowan, "in 1712 we prevailed upon Mr.
Martin to let him baptize three of his Negroes, two women and a boy. All
the arguments I could make use of," said he, "would scarce effect it
till Bishop Fleetwood's sermon in 1711 turned ye scale." These workers
then soon found it possible to instruct and baptize more than forty
Negroes in one year, and not long thereafter some workers reported as
many as 15 to 24 in one month, 40 to 50 in six months and 60 to 70 in a
year. Rev. Mr. Newman, proclaiming the new day of the Gospel in that
colony, reported in 1723 that he had baptized two Negroes who could say
the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments and gave good
sureties for their fuller information. According to the report of Rev.
C. Hall, the number of conversions there among the Negroes for eight
years was 355, including 112 adults; and "at Edenton the blacks
generally were induced to attend service at all these stations where
they behaved with great decorum."
In the middle colonies the work was given additional impetus by the
mission of Dr. Thomas Bray. The Bishop of London sent this gentleman to
the colony of Maryland for the purpose of devising plans to convert
adult Negroes and educate their children. Having also the influential
support of M. D'Alone, the private secretary of King William, who gave
for its maintenance a fund, the proceeds of which were to be used to
employ catechists, the Thomas Bray Mission decidedly encouraged these
missionaries. The catechists appointed, however, failed; but the work
was well extended throughout Maryland, into neighboring colonies, and
even into the settlements of Georgia, through certain persons assuming
the title of Dr. Bray's Associates. Traveling in North Carolina, Rev.
Mr. Stewart, a missionary, found there a school maintained by Dr. Bray's
Associates for the education of Indians and Negroes. They were
supporting such a school in Georgia in 1751; but in 1766 the Rev. S.
Frink, a missionary trying to secure a hearing in Augusta, found that he
could neither convert the Indians nor the whites, who seemed to be as
destitute of religion as the former; but he succeeded in converting some
Negroes.
[Illustration: DIRECTING THE WANDERER IN THE RIGHT WAY.]
In Pennsylvania the missionary movement among the Negroes found
apparently less obstacles. There are records showing the baptism of
Negroes as early as 1712. One Mr. Yates, a worker at Chester, was
commended by the Rev. G. Ross "for his endeavors to train up the Negroes
in the knowledge of religion." Mr. Ross himself had on one occasion at
Philadelphia baptized as many as twelve adult Negroes, who were examined
before the congregation and answered to the admiration of all who heard
them. "The like sight had never been seen before in that church." Giving
account of his efforts in Sussex County in 1723, Rev. Mr. Beckett said
that many Negroes constantly attended his services, while Rev. Mr.
Bartow about the same time baptized a Negro at West Chester. Rev.
Richard Locke christened eight Negroes in one family at Lancaster in
1747 and another Negro there the following year. In 1774 the Rev. Mr.
Jenney observed a great and daily increase of Negroes in this city, "who
with joy attend upon the catechist for instruction." He had baptized
several but was unable to add to his other duties.
The Society, ever ready to lend a helping hand to such an enterprise,
appointed the Rev. W. Sturgeon as catechist for the Negroes in
Philadelphia. At the same time the Rev. Mr. Neal of Dover was meeting
with equally good results, having baptized as many as 162 Negroes within
eight months. Now and then, however, as in the case of Rev. Mr. Pugh, a
missionary at Appoquinimmick, Pennsylvania, the missionaries received
very few Negroes, because their masters here, as elsewhere, were
prejudiced against their being Christians.
The Society did not operate extensively in the State of New Jersey. The
Rev. Mr. Lindsay mentions his baptizing a Negro at Allerton in 1736. The
missions of New Brunswick reported a large number of Negroes as having
become attached to their churches, but this favorable situation was not
the rule throughout the State. The missionary spirit was not wanting,
however, and the accession of Negroes to the churches followed later in
spite of local opposition and the general apathy as to the
indoctrination of the blacks.
In those colonies further north where the Negroes were not found in
large numbers, little opposition to their indoctrination was
experienced; and their evangelization proceeded without interruption,
whereas in most southern colonies the proselyting of the Negroes was
largely restricted to what the ministers and missionaries could do
during their spare time. There was in New York a special provision for
the employment of 16 clergymen and 13 lay teachers for the conversion of
free Indians and Negro slaves. Elias Neau, a worker in these ranks,
established in New York City in 1704 a catechizing school for Negro
slaves. After several years of imprisonment in France because of his
Protestant faith he had come to New York as a trader. Upon witnessing,
however, the neglected condition of the blacks, who, according to his
words, "were without God in the world and of whose souls there was no
manner of care taken," he proposed the appointment of a catechist to
undertake their instruction. Finally being prevailed upon to accept the
position himself, he obtained a license from the Governor, resigned his
position as elder in the French church, and conformed to the established
church of England. At first he served from house to house but very soon
secured a regular place of instruction, after being commended by the
Society to Mr. Vesey, as a constant communicant of the church and a most
zealous and prudent servant of Christ in proselyting the Negroes and
Indians to the Christian religion whereby he did great service to God
and his church. There was a further expression of confidence in him in a
bill to be offered to Parliament "for the more effectual conversion of
the Negroes and other servants in the plantations, to compel owners of
slaves to cause their children to be baptized within three months after
their birth and to permit them, when come to years of discretion, to be
instructed in the Christian religion on our Lord's Day by the
missionaries under whose ministry they live."
Neau's school suffered considerably in the Negro riot in that city in
1712, when it was closed by local authority and an investigation of his
operations ordered. Upon learning, however, that the slaves primarily
concerned in this rising were not connected with his school but had
probably engaged in this enterprise because of their neglected
condition, the city permitted him to continue his operations as a
teacher, feeling that Christian knowledge would not necessarily be a
means of more cunning and aptitude to wickedness. The Governor and the
Council, the Mayor, the Recorder, and Chief Justice informed the Society
that Neau had "performed his work to the great advancement of religion
and particular benefit of the free Indians, Negro slaves and other
heathen in these parts, with indefatigable zeal and application."
Neau died in 1722; but his work was continued by Huddlestone, Whitmore,
Colgan, Auchmutty, and Charlton. The last mentioned had undertaken the
instruction of the blacks while at New Windsor and found it practical
and convenient to throw into one class his white and black catechumens.
Mr. Auchmutty served from 1747 to 1764 and finally reported that there
was among the Negroes an ever-increasing desire for instruction and not
one single black "that had been admitted by him to the holy communion
had turned out bad or been in any way a disgrace to our holy
profession."
This good work done in the city of New York extended into other parts
of the colony. We hear of Rev. Mr. Stoupe in 1737 baptizing four black
children at New Rochelle. At New Windsor, Rev. Charles Taylor, a
school-master, kept a night school for the instruction of the Negroes.
Rev. J. Sayre, of Newburgh, promoted the education of the two races in
four of the churches under his charge. In 1714 Rev. T. Barclay, an
earnest worker among the slaves in Albany, reported a great forwardness
among them to embrace Christianity and a readiness to receive
instruction, although there was much opposition among some of the
masters. Sixty years later Schenectady reported among its members eleven
Negroes who were sober and serious communicants.
These missionaries met with some opposition in New England among the
Puritans, who had no serious objection to seeing the Negroes saved but
did not care to see them incorporated into the church, which then being
connected with the state, would grant them political as well as
religious equality. There had been an academic interest in the
conversion of the Negroes. John Eliot had no particular objection to
slavery but regretted that it precluded the possibility of their
instruction in the Christian doctrine and worked a loss of their souls.
Cotton Mather, taking the task of evangelization seriously, drew up a
set of rules by which masters should be governed in the instruction of
their slaves. He had much fear of the prodigious wickedness of deriding,
neglecting and opposing all due means of bringing the poor Negroes unto
God. He did not believe that Almighty God made so many thousand
reasonable creatures for nothing but "only to serve the lusts of
epicures or the gains of mammonists." In the protest of Jonathan Sewell
set forth in his _Selling of Joseph_, there was an attack on slavery
because the servants differed from those of Abraham, who commanded his
children and his household that they should keep the way of the Lord. In
this they were standing upon the high ground taken by Richard Baxter, an
authority among the Puritans, who, denouncing the use of the slaves as
beasts for their mere commodity, said, that their masters who "betray or
destroy or neglect their souls are fitter to be called incarnate devils
than Christians though they be no Christian whom they so abuse."
The opposition there, however, was not apparent everywhere among the
ministers of other sects. From Bristol, Rev. J. Usher of the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, wrote in 1730 that
several Negroes desired baptism and were able to "render a very good
account of the hope that was in them," but he was forbidden by their
masters to comply with the request. Yet he reported the same year that
among others he had in his congregation "about 30 Negroes and Indians,"
most of whom joined "in the public service very decently." At Newton,
where greater opposition was encountered, J. Beach seemed to have
baptized by 1733 many Indians and a few Negroes. Dr. Cutler, a
missionary at Boston, wrote to the Society in 1737 that among those he
had admitted to his church were four Negro slaves. Endeavoring to do
more than to effect nominal conversions, Dr. Johnson, while at
Stratford, gave catechetical lectures during the summer months of 1751,
attended by "many Negroes and some Indians, as well as whites, about 70
or 80 in all." And said he: "As far as I can find, where the Dissenters
have baptized two, if not three or four, Negroes or Indians, I have four
or five communicants." Dr. Macsparran conducted at Narragansett a class
of 70 Indians and Negroes whom he frequently catechized and instructed
before the regular service. J. Honyman, of Newport, had in his
congregation more than 100 Negroes who "constantly attended the Publick
Worship."
The real interest in the evangelization of the Negroes in the English
colonies, however, was manifested not by those in authority but by the
Quakers, who, being friends of all humanity, would not neglect the
Negroes. In accepting these persons of color on a basis of equality,
however, the Quakers, in denouncing the nakedness of the religion of the
other colonists at the same time, alienated their affections and easily
brought down upon them the wrath of the public functionaries in these
plantations. Believing that such influence would not be salutary in
slaveholding communities, many of them, as they did in Virginia,
prohibited the Quakers from taking the Negroes to their meetings. Such
opposition was but natural when we find that their leader, George Fox,
was advocating the instruction of Negroes in 1672 and boldly entreating
his coworkers to instruct and teach the Indians and Negroes in 1679 how
that "Christ by the grace of God tasted death for every man." When
George Keith in 1693 began to promote the religious training of the
slaves as preparation for emancipation and William Penn actually
advocated the abolition of the system to commit the whole sect to a
definite scheme to return the Negroes to Africa to Christianize that
continent, such opposition easily developed wherever the Friends
operated.
These people, however, would not be deterred from carrying out their
purpose. The results which followed show that they were not frustrated
in the execution of their plans. John Woolman, one of the fathers of the
Quakers in America, always bore testimony against slavery and repeatedly
urged that the blacks be given religious instruction. We hear later of
their efforts in towns and in the colonies of Virginia and North
Carolina to teach Negroes to read and write. Such Negroes as were
accessible in the settlements of the North came under the influence of
Quakers of the type of John Hepburn, William Burling, Elihu Coleman,
Ralph Sandiford, and Anthony Benezet, who established a number of
successful missions operating among the Negroes. As the Quakers were,
because of their anti-slavery tendencies, the owners of few slaves and
were denied access to those of others, what they did for the
evangelization of the whole group was little when one considers the
benighted darkness in which most Negro slaves in America lived. The
faith of the Quakers, their religious procedure, and peculiar customs,
moreover, could not be easily understood and appreciated by the Negroes
in their undeveloped state.
Generally speaking, then, one should say that the Negroes were
neglected. The few missionaries among them stood like shining lights
after a great darkness. They, moreover, faced numerous handicaps, among
which might be mentioned the conflicts of views, and especially that of
the established church with the Catholics and later with the evangelical
sects. There were also the difficulties resulting from dealing with a
backward pioneering people, the scarcity of workers, and the lack of
funds to sustain those who volunteered for this service.
Some difficulty resulted too from the differences of opinion as to what
tenets of religion should be taught the Negro and how they should be
presented. Should the Negroes be first instructed in the rudiments of
education and then taught the doctrines of the church or should the
missionaries start with the Negro intellect as he found it on his
arrival from Africa and undertake to inculcate doctrines which only the
European mind could comprehend? There was, of course, in the interest of
those devoted to exploitation, a tendency to make the religious
instruction of the Negroes as nearly nominal as possible only to remove
the stigma attached to those who neglected the religious life of their
servants. Such limited instruction, however, as the slaves received when
given only a few moments on Sunday proved to be tantamount to no
instruction at all; for missionaries easily observed in the end that
Christianity was a rather difficult religion for an undeveloped mind to
grasp.
As long as these efforts were restricted to the Anglican clergy,
moreover, there could be little question among the British as to the
advisability of the procedure. When, however, upon the expansion of the
territory of the Catholics and other sects the Negroes came under the
influence of different sorts of religion promoted by men of a new
thought and new method, some conflict necessarily arose. There was
another handicap in that the Anglican clergymen in America during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were not of the highest order.
Their establishments were maintained by a tax on the colonists in
keeping with the customs and laws of England, so that their income was
assured, whether or not they wielded an influence for good among the
people. The colonial clergy, therefore, too often became corrupt in this
independent economic position. They spent much of their time at games
and various sports, tarried at the cup and looked upon the wine when it
was red, in fact, became so interested in the enjoyment of the things
inviting in this world that they had in some cases little time to
devote to the elevation of the whites, to say nothing about the
elevation of the Negroes. They did not feel disposed to undertake this
work themselves and in adhering to their rights as representatives of
the established church precluded the possibility of a more general
evangelization of the Negroes by the other sects. One might expect from
a country, the religious affairs of which were thus administered, a
number of protests from those thus served. There was such a general lack
of culture among these backward colonists, however, that no such
complaint followed. Interest in religion must come from the promoters of
religion. If the clergymen themselves did not manifest interest in this
work, it was out of the question to expect others to do so.
Another difficulty was the lack of workers. The colonies were not
rapidly becoming densely populated and it was not then an easy matter to
induce young clergymen to try their fortunes in the wilderness of the
western world for such remuneration as the colonists in their scattered
and undeveloped economic state were able to give. As many of the white
settlements, therefore, were neglected, it would naturally follow that
the Negroes suffered likewise. Some of these workers volunteering to
toil in this field as missionaries were, of course, supported by funds
raised for that purpose; but the difficulty in raising money for
missions is still a problem of the church. At that time the people were
generally more disinclined to contribute to such causes than they are
to-day. That was the age of commercial expansion and available funds
were drawn into that field, much at the expense of the higher things of
life. The intelligent Christians, therefore, with a clear understanding
of the Bible and the doctrines derived therefrom were not legion even
among the whites prior to the American Revolution. The slaves with the
handicap of bondage, of course, could not constitute exceptions to this
rule.