_The History of the Negro Church._ By CARTER G. WOODSON, Ph.D.
The Associated Publishers, Inc., Washington, D. C. 1921. Pp. 330.
With due regard for the modern scientific methods of historiography,
the author of this book has traced the rise and spread of
institutionalized Christianity among American Negroes. He discusses
such salient points as the early efforts of white missionaries to
evangelize the heathen bondmen, the difficulties which beset their
labors, the respective contributions of the white denominations,
showing the Baptists in the lead, followed closely by the Methodists,
with the Presbyterians, Catholics and Congregationalists in the rear.
There are set forth the psychological, geographical and other reasons
why the Negro was attracted more readily to the Baptist and Methodist
denominations, the causes for the reactions of slave holders for and
against the evangelization of the slaves, the rise of Negro preachers
of merit in the Baptist and Methodist denominations during the
eighteenth century, and the founding of the first churches by Negroes
of these sects. Among these he mentions the first African Baptist
Church by Andrew Bryan in 1788, the first African Methodist Episcopal
Church by Richard Allen in 1794, and the first African Presbyterian
Church by John Gloucester in 1807.
The factors which caused the cleavage of the white denominations into
North and South, the causes of the separation of the Negro
communicants from the whites and the threefold cleavage of the Negro
Methodists are adequately discussed. Attention is given also to the
increase in the number of churches and the State and national
centralization of the churches within the respective denominations.
The ante-bellum beginnings of the only Negro education which aimed to
develop Negro preachers through instructors of both races, the
importance of Negro churches in developing race leaders, educators,
and statesmen who figured in the economic, social and political life
of the Negro after the war, are ably treated. The book gives an
account of the rise of the conservative and progressive elements
within the church and closes with a chapter on the present-day Negro
church statistics which indicate the enormous spread of Christianity
through the ascendancy of the Methodists and Baptists.
One can hardly appreciate the sympathetic and scholarly character of
this work from the bald outline given above. Just therein may it be
characterized as a pioneer work, a genuine contribution. In a larger
sense it is more than the history of the Negro church; it is the very
life history of the Negro race in America, so intimately have the
spiritual strivings of the Negro been bound up with his sentiments and
interests, his habits and endeavors, his situation and circumstances,
his monuments and edifices, his poetry and song.