Another defect of the Negro church is her neglect of rural communities.
From eighty to eighty-five per cent of the race is to be found in our
small towns where ignorance and superstition prevail to an alarming
extent. Among the causes of this neglect are:
(1) The need of adequate funds for the support of churches.
(2) The need of suitable men for these churches.
(3) Discrimination made by church authorities in the sending of their
best men to fill city churches on account of inadequate funds in the
country churches.
(4) The poverty of country churches and their inability to provide for
the support of their pastors, especially those who are needed most in
cities.
(5) The repulsiveness of rural districts on account of inadequate
protection and little justice given to the Negro.
Where there are supplementary grants or a reserve fund as aids to
struggling churches, better work is done and suitable men are seen in
the country churches. Suitable men are so rare that the city churches
easily keep them by the offer of larger salaries. Even the city's need
is not yet fully met. The demand is greater than the supply in both
places but still greater in the country. For this neglect of country
churches, a neglect by no means wilful, what are the results? We may
mention a few.
(1) Country pastors are often compelled to take to other callings, their
church work being supplementary and subsidiary. Hence energy needed for
pastoral and pulpit work is dissipated in the effort to make a living.
(2) The paganization of Christianity. One of the saddest things that has
happened to Negroes in our rural districts is the presentation to them
of Christianity in a crude, uncouth, and distorted form. It is a form of
Christianity with the Christ left out. The songs of the church, its
prayers and experiences are there but in a mutilated form, divested of
their spiritual significance. The "Big Meeting," or revival meeting
often gives an opportunity for a revival of the latent paganism in the
Negro. The weird songs, the wild excitement of the people followed by
the unchaste exposures and hysteria of women, the physical agony and
wallowing on the floor, and the violent physical gymnastics among both
sexes is a species of voodooism imported from the religion of heathen
Africa. It is deplorable because its after effects are demoralizing. The
situation is grave and calls for rebuke, because it is deeply entrenched
in our country churches and is encouraged by pastors who ought to point
out a better way. In Africa Christianity is displacing paganism, in
rural America paganism is displacing Christianity. Our rural population
is confronted with a form of Christianity which does not civilize. Since
the corruption of the best thing is the worst thing, it may be fairly
stated that Christianity is receiving an unfair treatment in a
professedly Christian country from a professedly Christian people.
(3) Funds being inadequate to support country churches, and men
qualified to fill them being few even if funds were at hand, there
follows as a necessity the _employment of unqualified men_ to fill
vacancies. So pressing is the need for preachers that in many cases any
kind of men rather than no men at all seems to be the best that can be
done. Hence some men accept appointments for what they can get out of
them. Fitness in any form is out of the question in many of these
appointments. The country churches have therefore become the dumping
ground where pastors sink or swim. There too may be found a host of
immoral preachers. This fact in itself creates a prejudice in the minds
of a class of preachers against accepting country appointments. It is
only the few who are strongly imbued with a missionary spirit that are
willing to labor and lift up the standard in the interest of God and
fallen humanity. One of the surest ways of breaking down this prejudice
is for the churches to send some of their best men to country churches
and provide for their support. Missionary societies aiming at best
results send some of their best men as pioneers and bishops to the
heathen. It is only by a selective method of appointing men to our
country churches that these places can be reclaimed from heathenism and
immorality. It is only then that the "wilderness and the solitary place
shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose."