THE NEGRO CHURCH SOCIALIZED
The Negro church as a social force in the life of the race is nothing
new. Prior to emancipation the church was the only institution which the
Negro, in a few places in the South and throughout the North, was
permitted to maintain for his own peculiar needs. Offering the only
avenue for the expressional activities of the race, the church answered
many a social purpose for which this institution among other groups
differently circumstanced had never before been required to serve. It
was, in the first place, a center at which friend looked forward to
meeting friend, contact with whom was denied by the rigorous demands of
slavery. It was then a place of enlightenment through the information
disseminating from the better informed or by actual teaching in the
Sunday school. It served often as an outlet for expression of the Negro
social mind, now for a renewed determination to break their chains
through prayer, then to resort to concerted action on the basis that he
who would be free must himself first strike the blow.
After the emancipation, moreover, the Negro church developed a social
atmosphere which somewhat strengthened its hold on the youth about to go
astray. Not only education found its basis in the church, but fraternal
associations developed therefrom. Business enterprises accepted the
church as an ally, and professional men to some extent often became
dependent thereupon. Most movements among the Negroes, moreover, have
owed their success to the leadership of Negroes prominent in the church.
No better examples can be mentioned than W. W. Browne, a minister who
organized the True Reformers fraternity; W. R. Pettiford, another
preacher, who became one of the pioneer Negro bankers; John R. Hawkins,
the Financial Secretary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who
in applying efficiency to the business of his office secured for his
denomination an unusually large income, and Dr. W. F. Graham, who in
addition to his significant achievements in the church, has well invaded
various businesses, in which he has exhibited evidence of unusual
ability.
[Illustration: DR. W. R. PETTIFORD
A business-like minister in Alabama.]
Since the Civil War, the Negro church as a factor in general uplift has
become what the oppressed Negro longed to make it prior to that
conflict. In the first place, Negroes regularly attend church whether
Christians or sinners. They have not yet accumulated wealth adequate to
the construction of clubhouses, amusement parks, and theaters, although
dance halls have attracted many. Whether they derive any particular joy
therefrom or not, the Negroes must go to church, to see their friends,
as they are barred from social centers open to whites. They must attend
church, moreover, to find out what is going on; for the race has not
sufficient interests to maintain in every locality a newspaper of its
own, and the white dailies generally mention Negroes only when they
happen to commit crimes against white persons. The young Negro must go
to church to meet his sweetheart, to impress her with his worth and woo
her in marriage, the Negro farmer to find out the developments in the
business world, the Negro mechanic to learn the needs of his community
and how he may supply them.
Attached to the church is the Sunday school. Many a Negro had in
attending it learned clandestinely to read and write before the war. Now
they without fear of punishment eagerly studied in the churches on
Sunday, learned the alphabet, the spelling of words with one, two and
three syllables, and finally to read the Bible, that they might know for
themselves the truths hitherto kept from their fathers but now revealed
to their children in freedom. Education here was decidedly easy, the
motive actuating the student being the immediate results in the form of
a better knowledge of one's Christian duty and the reward awaiting the
faithful. Many of these Negroes often learned more on a single Sunday
than the average student acquired in a day school during a week. In
these Sunday schools, not a few Negroes laid the foundation for the
more liberal education which they thereafter obtained in the schools
established by the religious and philanthropic friends of the Negroes
working in the South immediately after the Civil War.
The church not only promoted education through the pulpit and Sunday
school, but through its emphasis on the Bible unconsciously stimulated
the efforts toward self-education. Whether a Negro attended Sunday
school or not, he heard read to him from the Bible two or three times a
week dramatic history, philosophical essays, charming poetry, and
beautiful oratory. Hearing these repeated again and again and under
circumstances securing undivided attention, he had many of these
precious passages sink into his heart like seed planted in fertile
ground to bring forth fruit fourfold. Under the continuous instruction
of the Negro preacher, who in expounding the Bible drew such striking
figures and portrayed life, death, and the beyond in a dramatic fashion,
the youth not only experienced the emotion so characteristic of the
Negro communicant but had his intellectual appetite whetted with the
desire to seek after the mysteries.
The majority of Negroes, therefore, became Bible readers. Reading the
Bible, they not only found what a minister of limited education could
point out, but facts drawn from the best thought of the ancient world.
And it was not mere reading; for many of them committed to memory
choice passages of the Scriptures. Hundreds of them could recite
accurately chapter after chapter of the treasures of Holy Writ; almost
as many could give a crude but logical exposition of these literary
treasures. From the study of the Bible the Negro developed, moreover, a
desire for Biblical literature. He heard the moral appeal and gladly
accepted the message to those in quest of the higher life in Christ.
This influence of the Bible, moreover, did more than lead to the reading
of literature of a kindred nature. Some read books on ancient and
medieval history, and finally works on the history of modern Europe.
Others more seriously concerned were by this mere exposition of the
Scriptures led to study collaterally commentaries on the Bible and to
take up theology. In this they exhibited the power of self-education
which with a strong spirituality combined with unusual imagination made
so many Negroes preach with success. They had no more formal education
than to read, and that was often picked up in the Sunday school; but
they had the experience of a seeker, the light of the Bible, and the
guidance of men who eloquently expounded it to the waiting multitude.
These they freely drew on and from them they obtained help abundantly.
Crude sometimes as the language might be, the thought of this self-made
philosopher was original and few heard one preach without wondering how
men of limited opportunities could speak so fluently and wisely.
Equally helpful was the socialized church as a forum for the Negro. The
older members developed an unusually valuable and sometimes a
troublesome knowledge of parliamentary practice by participating in the
debates on the business centering around communications received,
resolutions voicing the sentiment of the body, and policies shaping the
destinies of the local church. Here, then, was a constructive field
which to the Negro seemed like an invitation to enter the creative
world. He entered it and freely participated. True enough the formal
procedure too often overshadowed the actual program to the extent that
no plan at all could sometimes be carried out, because of unnecessary
debate and contention; but the training thereafter served many a Negro
in good stead in preventing his race from being imposed upon or in doing
something constructive in politics, in the school, and in the church.
The church through the literary societies attached thereto supplied a
similar need of the younger Negro. Having more formal education than the
older Negroes, the youth were more easily interested in the live
questions of the day, the desire to discuss which usually resulted in
the organization of a literary society. The declamations and recitations
were not always highly literary and sometimes the questions discussed
could not be thus dignified when we observe such debates as whether the
dog is more useful than the gun, or whether water is more destructive
than fire; but the scale ascends a little in the discussion as to
whether the pen is mightier than the sword. It matters little, however,
whether or not the procedure was in keeping with that of the best
literary circles, these Negroes were thereby undergoing training which
resulted in valuable discipline. Not any of them knew very much, but one
learned from the other. They developed the power to think and to think
on their feet, to express that thought and to express it so eloquently
as to make a lasting impression. The church, then, has been a training
school for the Negro orators who have impressed the world as the
inspired spokesmen of a persecuted people.
The Negro church, in short, has served as a clearing house for the
community. It has not only afforded opportunities for the evangelical
minister coming with an inspiring message to revive the lukewarm, but
every public man has had to reach the Negro through his church. The
lecturer on "men, women, children and things in general" asks for a
hearing there; the phrenologist holds his seances in this sanctuary; the
spurious "foreigner" in quest of a collection seeks there the
opportunity to tell a credulous people about wonders of other lands; and
the race leader demands this rostrum from which he, like a watchman on
the wall, sounds the alarm for an advance against the bold enemy who, if
not checked, will fix upon the race disabilities and burdens until all
the hopes of liberty will be lost.
The latest development in the socialized church is its service as a
welfare agency. The Negro in his religious development has not yet gone
so far as the white man in divesting Christian duty of spiritual
ministration and reducing it to a mere service for social uplift; but he
has gradually realized the necessity for connecting the church more
closely with the things of this world to make it a decent place to live
in. In other words, if man is his brother's keeper, the church, the
important institution in the community, must be the keeper of other
institutions. If it would build in men Christian character, it must
influence the more or less direct control of the forces in the community
which prevent the attainment of such an end. If men are to be saved,
they must be saved for service, not merely for their refuge at the last
hour. The church, then, must not let a man destroy himself and accept
him when he is no longer useful because of the loss of physical and
mental power through depravity, but it must by preaching the gospel or
prevention save a man from himself.
The coming of the church to this position, however, has not been
effected without much difficulty. The conservative element for many
years looked upon the participation of churches in certain sorts of
social welfare work as compromising with the devil. The more
conservative idea was that man should be meditative and seclusive, that
he should withdraw himself altogether from the pleasures of this world
and work out his salvation with his eye "single to the honor and glory
of God." The Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's
Christian Association with a different point of view were, therefore,
for a number of years unwelcome among some Negro churches.
During the last generation, however, the Negro church has decidedly
changed in its attitude toward this work, as is evidenced by the fact
that wherever these social welfare agencies have succeeded in carrying
out their program they have done so largely with the aid of Negro
churchmen. In the midst of the health crusades and the community service
organizations favorably impressing the public, the Negro church in many
urban centers where it might have continued conservative, found itself
facing the alternative of either responding to these social needs of the
membership or seeing its constituency gradually drawn away by agencies
which would. In case some social uplift agency failed to attract the
youth, they too often drifted to the dance halls or places where their
needs were supplied in the midst of vices. Many churches have,
therefore, modified their program. Seeing that the young Negro is
decidedly social and hoping to save him, they have done what many
formerly questioned. The Negro church, moreover, has become in many
respects a social welfare agency itself, doing in several communities so
much of this work that it has been unnecessary for the national agencies
to invade some of their parishes with an intensive program.
[Illustration: DR. M. C. B. MASON
A pulpit orator in the Methodist Church.]
The form this social work of the church takes in our day varies from
that of a mere church club or so with a precarious existence to that of
an organization almost like that of the Young Men's Christian
Association. The beginnings of this work appear first in such as the
men's forum, the women's league, the girls' club, or the boys' athletic
association. When these clubs tend to endure they finally work toward
the natural end of constituting themselves branches of an organization
directed by one trusted worker assisted by those in charge of the
various activities.
A church on this order takes the name of the institutional church. At
the head of this body, of course, is the pastor of the church; but in
charge of this work sometimes is a director well trained in the social
sciences and with the modern method of attacking the problems of to-day.
The work scheduled is more than the mere supervision of clubs
voluntarily organized. The director has a program which that particular
community needs, and he is there to show the people how to work out
their social salvation. If he is wise in presenting the case, he usually
secures the cooperation necessary to organize the community for the
purpose of self-education. The community is given an introduction to
itself. Every talent lying dormant is here given an opportunity to be
helpful in some way. What the individual from afar may bring for the
good of a few through this well-organized community service becomes the
heritage of all. No club can be large enough to accommodate the large
membership in a city, but what the clubs of one church acquire is
communicated to similar groups in another through such friendly rivalry
as athletic contests, debates, periodical reports, and conferences. Many
of the persons participating in this work are not in the beginning
spiritually inclined, but the experience of the church in working with
such groups has shown that the church has a better chance for success in
making its evangelical appeal to persons under its control than in the
case of delivering its message to those who have not been to any great
extent influenced by Christian contact.
Churches which have undertaken this work have had varied experiences.
The Institutional Church in Chicago under Dr. R. C. Ransom helped to
blaze the way in this new field of endeavor. Under Dr. J. Milton Waldron
and later under Dr. J. E. Ford, the Baptist Church of Jacksonville,
Florida, made itself, through its clubs and Bible Institute, an
effective community center. Dr. H. H. Proctor, a Congregational minister
of Atlanta, practically converted his church into an organization of
such groups as the day nursery, kindergarten, gymnasium, school of
music, employment bureau, and Bible school.
Dr. W. N. DeBerry, the pastor of a Congregational church in Springfield,
Massachusetts, has probably solved the problem about as well as any of
these workers. In the first place, the church has a well-equipped modern
plant so beautifully located and managed as to attract large numbers. It
has, moreover, a parish home for working girls and a branch church at
Amherst, Massachusetts. In the main plant are maintained a free
employment bureau, a women's welfare league, a night school of domestic
training, a girls' and a boys' club emphasizing the handicrafts, music,
and athletics. This church has solved the problem of supplying the needs
of the people during the week as well as their spiritual needs on
Sunday, by emphasizing some life activity for every day in the week.
Other ministers of the gospel, who have not seen fit to carry out in
their parishes in such detail the establishment of social welfare work,
have nevertheless done much along special lines to socialize their
churches. One hears of that indefatigable worker, the Rev. Mr. Bradby,
of Detroit; R. W. Bagnall, the rector of the Episcopal Church of the
same city; the fearless George Frazier Miller, an Episcopal rector of
Brooklyn; the talented leader, Dr. W. H. Brooks of New York City; the
popular western worker, Dr. S. W. Bacote of Kansas City; Dr. J. M.
Riddle of Pasadena, California; and Dr. W. H. Jernagin, of Washington,
D. C. Others of this group are Dr. Richard Carroll of Greenville, South
Carolina; Bishop Sampson Brooks, as pastor of the Bethel Methodist
Episcopal Church in Baltimore; Dr. W. D. Johnson of Plains, Georgia, now
a bishop of his denomination; the picturesque pulpit orator and
beautiful word painter, Dr. Peter James Bryant, of Atlanta, Georgia; and
that popular preacher of the social gospel, Dr. W. W. Browne, of the
Metropolitan Baptist Church in New York City.
Dr. L. K. Williams, pastor of the Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago, has
doubtless surpassed all in this group. Under his direction the church
conducts forty-two departments and auxiliaries with 512 officers, among
whom are twenty-four paid workers. The membership of both church and
Sunday School enormously increased through these agencies, that of the
former being 8,743 and of the latter 3,100. This church has two edifices
and five assistant pastors. During 1919 it collected $56,209 and
disbursed $54,959. In an eighty-day rally it raised $29,235 in cash. In
fact, so effective has been the socializing influence of this church
that the community, in consideration of its inestimable value, gladly
responds to any call it makes.
The Negro ambitious to rule, moreover, finds in the church about the
only institution in which he may freely exercise authority. Fortunately
here the Church and State are no longer connected. In the extension of
the boon of toleration, the Negroes in countries in which they have been
found in large numbers, have been permitted to conduct their spiritual
affairs as they like. There are in the South to-day, however, white men
who regret that immediately after the Civil War they permitted the
Negroes to establish their separate churches. As these bodies are to-day
being used to promote truths and foster movements which are prejudicial
to the interest of the Southern restriction program for the Negro, the
heirs of the former master class now rue the day when their fathers
permitted these Negro churchmen to get from under their control. They
complain that, whereas formerly they could learn from their Negro
servants exactly what was going on in their group, the development the
Negro church has in our day produced a reticent Negro loathe to disclose
the forces operating in their churches.
No one understands this better than the Negro himself. The law of the
South otherwise interpreted to the detriment of the Negro vouchsafes to
him a little protection in the exercise of religion and in most parts
public opinion has not become so unhealthy as to warrant action to the
contrary. The Negro preacher, therefore, is granted more freedom of
speech and permitted to exercise more influence than any other Negro in
his community. Some fearless Negro ministers, like Bishop Lampton, have
been driven out of the South because of utterances which enraged the
whites, who have considered the exercise of free speech among Negroes an
attack on their social laws; but, as a rule, the Negro minister may in
criticism of the white race and in the defense of his people say things
which other Negroes of good standing in the South would not dare to
utter. Although the State may chide an outspoken minister here and
there, it will hardly be so unwise so to restrict the Negro church as to
interfere materially with its development as the South has done in the
case of the Negro school in making Negro education altogether
industrial. The church serves as a moral force, a power acting as a
restraint upon the bad and stimulating the good to further moral
achievement. Among the Negroes its valuable service is readily apparent
when one considers the fact that this race, oppressed as it has been by
the government of the State and nation, is at heart rebellious, while
the church, as outspoken as it may seem, is not radical. Coming under
the influence of the church, the safety valve in the South, the race has
been dissuaded from any rash action by the patient and long suffering
ministry reiterating the admonition that "vengeance is mine, I will
repay."
Yet some men, like the sanguine and prophetic Kelly Miller, see in the
Negro church of to-day the opportunity to become the unbridled servant
of the people. The support of the Negro preacher comes from the people
and he can fearlessly speak for them within the limits of public
opinion. The Negro teacher or politician must be careful as to what he
says; for, inasmuch as his support comes through the white race, he must
proceed cautiously lest he be deprived of his position. As a rule, their
lips are forever sealed on the rights of the Negro. As social
proscription has retarded the development of the Negro lawyer, the
impetus toward the uplift of the race must come from its ministry, and
with the entrance of a larger number of intelligent men upon this work
the masses of the Negro race will be willing to have them lead the way.
The ministry too is more attractive among Negroes than among whites. The
white minister has only one important function to perform in his group,
that of spiritual leadership. To the Negro community the preacher is
this and besides the walking encyclopedia, the counselor of the unwise,
the friend of the unfortunate, the social welfare organizer, and the
interpreter of the signs of the times. No man is properly introduced to
the Negro community unless he comes through the minister, and no
movement can expect success there unless it has his cooperation or
endorsement. The rise of the Negro physician has during recent years
comparatively diminished the influence of the Negro preacher, but the
latter is still the greater force in the community and will remain so
unless the Negro learns to imitate the white people in substituting in
their faith the doing of the will of their race for that of doing the
revealed will of God.
The importance of the position of the Negro minister is apparent when
one considers the large following which some of these churches have.
Here the minister controls not only hundreds but thousands, as in the
cases of Rev. J. E. Willis of the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church in
Washington, of the Rev. Mr. Adams of the Concord Baptist Church in
Brooklyn, Dr. M. W. Reddick in the leadership of thousands of Baptists
in Georgia, and the eloquent Dr. M. W. D. Norman, who after years of
service as a minister in North Carolina and Virginia and as Dean of the
Theological Department of Shaw University, succeeded the lamented Rev.
Robert Johnson at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington, where
thousands wait upon Dr. Norman's words. Some of these ministers are
drawing very large numbers, because, instead of merely building large
edifices and buying fine clothes and gifts for themselves, they are
putting efficiency in the management of the churches, as in the cases of
R. H. Bowling in Norfolk, Mordecai W. Johnson in Charleston, and Dr. A.
Clayton Powell in New York City. In the Negro churches, moreover, as
with Dr. J. C. Austin in Pittsburgh, there are being organized banks,
housing corporations, insurance companies, and even steamship projects
in keeping with the ideas of Dr. L. G. Jordan. Yet despite this change
in point of view, the Negro church has not become a corrupt machine.
Its affairs are still in the hands of men who, as a majority, are
interested in their race rather than in themselves. The opportunity here
sought is not that of leadership but that of service.
One service of which the race is in need, as the Negro minister is
beginning to understand it, is the prevention of poverty. The poor you
have with you always, and the poor will sometimes steal before they will
starve. The masses must be elevated above dependence on another race for
what they shall eat or drink or the wherewithal they shall be clothed.
The saving of young men and women of the race from those pursuits in
which they are unduly exposed to the temptations of the low and the
contemptible of both races, is becoming a most important concern of many
Negro churches. The Negro minister is now beginning to realize that
every time he saves a youth from such undesirable conditions he himself
becomes like unto Christ, a savior of man. If to do this it will be
necessary to establish a business enterprise or make the church a
fraternal insurance company, the new Negro minister will act
accordingly. This is the way the race should go. The minister is the
shepherd of the flock. The sheep know the voice of the shepherd and a
stranger they will not follow.
Out of the exercise of these many privileges in the Negro church,
moreover, has come unusually important results. Although the Negro
learned in this way much that he had to forget, received many
impressions which led to improper expression, the experiences in the end
redounded to the good of the race. Misinformation when detected served
but to emphasize the need of information; imposition accentuated the
necessity for honest leadership; and the results of too much credulity
led to conservatism in the masses. It was the school of experience for
the Negro community. The church furnished the opportunity for this
experience and the people learned their lesson well. They learned how to
discriminate, how to think for themselves, how to take care of
themselves in a critical situation, in short, how to be self-sufficient.
The most important of all lessons the Negro has learned through his
church has been that of perseverance in cooperative effort. This is the
most striking result of this social work. Negroes have not readily
responded to the call of men in other fields, but the fact that these
church groups, large and small, have held together for decades, and even
generations, in the sacrificing effort to purchase houses of worship for
which some of them have well paid two or three times because of thieves
within and thieves without--that fact alone is evidence of the
development of the power of consolidation among Negroes, an asset which
in our day is being drawn upon for organization in education and in
business and bids fair to have tremendous results when properly
exploited by honest leaders enjoying the confidence of the masses.