WASHINGTON, D. C.:
Published by the Academy,
1904
The Defects of the Negro Church.
The writer does not undertake to point out all the defects of the Negro
church. He does not lay any claim to omniscience.
The limits of time and the scope of the subject prevent him from
discussing even what he knows in part. It is only some of the leading
defects in the Negro Church which will be presented for discussion. It
may be necessary to state at the onset that the writer is an optimist in
his studies of questions relating to his race. If at any time he is
compelled to use the surgeon's knife he will do so with the utmost
sympathy and with a view to heal. It may also be necessary to state, in
order to allay the fears of our friends and prevent the reckless
criticism of our detractors, that the defects of the Negro church are
found more or less in churches of other races. They are the same in kind
but differ in degree, on account of difference in environment. They are
not inherent in the race, but are found wherever the environments call
for them. It may be laid down as an axiomatic truth that there has never
been and there is not a perfect church. Of the twelve men who formed the
nucleus of the Christian church and who had the advantage of the
personal teaching of the Christ, one was a doubter, another was
worldly-minded, a betrayer, and a son of perdition who sought relief
from the stings of conscience by self-destruction; a third was a
deserter and vacillator, who drew from the great apostle of the Gentiles
a stinging rebuke for stultifying his conscience during that exciting
controversy which was to settle once for all whether Christianity was to
be a racial or a universal religion. But because there never was a
perfect church is no reason why we should speak lightly or condone the
defects of the Negro Church. Our ideal of the Negro Church is one which
will have as few defects as possible. If we expose these defects it is
because our aim is to correct them so as to reach as near as possible
our ideal. We hope we shall not be misunderstood if we submit for
investigation the following defects in the Negro Church.