OUR DISADVANTAGES AND ADVANTAGES.
FIELD SUP’T J. E. ROY, D.D.
Our church work at the South has its disadvantages, its advantages, its obligations, its encouragements.
I.—Its Disadvantages.
1. One is that our church system is entirely unknown among the Freedmen. It is a singular fact that they should know absolutely nothing of the churches which had led in the anti-slavery reform, and which, through this Association, are now, as is confessed on all hands, doing more for the lifting up of these lowly poor than any other. The occasion of this ignorance is at hand. The doctrine of equality in Christ’s house, as based on his own words—“All ye are brethren”—precluded the setting up of this order of church life among a people, where master and slave should vote, side by side, upon all church business. I know that it will be said at once that the Baptists, with their congregational polity, did prevail all over the South. But theirs was, after all, not a Christian democracy, but an aristocracy of the white members. All right of voting was denied the colored. Even those two much-praised ancient Congregational churches at the South, the Circular in Charleston, and the Dorchester in Liberty County, Georgia, which took root in that soil, did so only by denying suffrage to the colored members. When one of the pastors of the latter, with the Bible in one hand and a whip in the other, drove his brethren as his slaves to their tasks, if that had been a genuine Congregational church, an appeal would have been taken to the brotherhood for an application of that Scripture: “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal.” One of the colored members of that church, now a worthy deacon, told me this bit of experience. His master, a fellow church member, had found him with a Webster’s spelling book in hand, trying to learn to read. For this crime he was tied down, with his face to the ground, his hands and feet made fast to four stakes, and then upon his bare back he received such a flagellation that, under the torture, he cried out: “Oh, massa, do stop, and I’ll never again look into a book as long as I live.” With a fine turn he said to me, “I gradulated then.” Now, if that brother had had the right of telling that trespass to the church, and if all the members had had the privilege of voting upon the case, that would have been a piece of pure Congregationalism. Evidently such a church system could not obtain in a slaveholding community. So it is entirely unknown in that region; and this fact becomes a disadvantage in introducing it now.
2. Another disadvantage is that the Freedmen are so largely wedded to other denominations. It is popular to belong to the church. The mass, although they may not be members, will call themselves either Baptists or Methodists. One of them on being asked, “Are you a Christian?” responded: “No, Sah, I’se a Baptist.” The spectacular element of immersion afforded by this church order, and the scope given by the other to the emotional nature, have proven a great attraction to these rude and simple souls. Then it is easy for their zeal to rise into sectarianism and superstition, bitter and hostile, such as leads them to denounce the new church as having no religion, because it has no dreams and visions, no physical contortions—such as lead them to sneer at our members as only “Bible Christians,” while they have, instead, direct manifestations of the Spirit. It is a surprising revelation to our teachers and preachers who go to the South with nothing but love in their hearts, and their hands full of the best things they could take, to find such heat of sectarian opposition as soon as it is proposed to set up the church life, which represents the educational effort that is so highly prized.
3. Another disadvantage for the time in setting up our churches, is the standard of intelligence and of morality to which we seek to bring them. The colored man who confessed that he had broken every one of the commandments, but blessed God that he had kept his religion, stood in part, at least, for a good many of his people. It is hard for us who come in contact with that state of things to accept the facts. Even then we would not wish to take the risk of making them public, only so far as is sustained by their own newspapers and official reports. The saddest part of it is the impropriety of the leaders, ministers, and official members. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the ditch. Each, in self-protection, condones the other’s guilt. We know that the system of slaveholding is largely responsible for this divorce of religion from morality. But the fact, as we have to confront it, is all the same. If you propose to set up a church that shall be clean and be kept clean, in pulpit and pew, you have undertaken a difficult task. The gravity of depravity is against you.
II. Its Advantages.
1. One is that our church system had not previously prevailed at the South, to become modified by the influences of slaveholding, and identified with it in the associations of the colored people. As individuals become intelligent enough to rise above the prevailing sectarianism; as they learn the anti-slavery history of our churches; and as they learn that the nature of our polity prevented it from coming South in the days of slavery, they turn to the Puritan way with avidity. It is to them a new discovery of friends, who had stood by them when they knew it not. Indeed, these people, whose ancestors were landed upon these shores the same year the Pilgrims came, appear to be the Yankees of the South. They fall naturally into the observance of Thanksgiving, and on that day they love to hear over and over the story of the Pilgrims and Puritans, their exile, their hardships, their poverty, their simplicity of life, their struggle for liberty. They soon learn that the Puritan ideas have taken possession of the North, are now penetrating the South, and are rising to a supremacy over the nation. As they advance in understanding they take in these ideas; and, more and more, will they be disposed to seek the church form which represents them.
2. Another advantage is the adaptation of this church system as an educating process for the colored people. Any one who considers the untutored quality of the communities in which the Apostles planted their self-governing churches, must give up the notion that they were New England people. Indeed, as one becomes acquainted with the qualities of mind and elements of character in these sable Christians, he can see that the Epistles of the New Testament were addressed to much the same sort of people. These can govern themselves as well as those. And, coming forth from the house of bondage, much more do they desire their largest liberty in Christ Jesus. The working of this autonomy of the churches is to them an educating process. It puts responsibility upon them. They must study its principles in order to exercise its function. Even such men as Senators Lamar, and Hampton, and Hendricks, in the North American, have argued that the elective franchise is not only the means of defense, but of education, among these new-made citizens. Precisely so does it work in church relations. Some of us, who have observed the process, have been surprised and delighted to see with what decorum and parliamentary skill they will handle a deliberative assembly. As, in the days of bondage, the only outlet for their native talent was the pulpit; and as their church was about their only arena for organic efficiency, so now they love most of all to handle their church affairs. And so does their self-governing fellowship become a means of education.
3. Another advantage comes from our preliminary educational work. At the first, it was thought by some that the Association was too tardy in advancing the church process. Soon it was learned that the right policy had been pursued in developing the educational interest, which was itself really missionary work, and which was the necessary preparation for a more organic way of Gospel propagandism. In connection with all our high schools and colleges, churches have been organized. These have been immediate sources of power and influence. They have also served as models and stimulus for others that have grown up around them. In almost every case our churches have been an outgrowth from these educational centres, or have been developed by the teachers and preachers who have been trained in them. Thus far, in the main, we have been preparing our machinery. I remember that our Elgin Watch Company spent its first two and a half years in erecting the factory and in manufacturing its own machinery. Now it is in competition even with London and Switzerland for the trade of Europe. We have been building up our Elgins—the Fisk, the Howard, the Straight, Atlanta, Talladega, Tougaloo, and Berea. They are furnishing us their approved mechanism. This correlation of the school work to the church work is after the wisdom of all successful missionary enterprise in foreign lands. In India the American Board tried the experiment of dispensing with the school process, only to put the mission back for years.
4. Another advantage is that by their slower growth, we can the more completely assimilate and mold the material of our churches. Drawn together by affinities of character, the more readily do they receive instruction and take over the ideas and the style of our system; the more certainly can discipline be maintained, purity and sobriety secured. Heterogeneous masses would swamp church order. At one of our Conferences, some of the brethren were bemoaning the slow growth of our churches. A Baptist minister being present, turned the tide by asserting that, for the present, there were advantages in that state of things, and that his denomination had suffered somewhat from the embarrassment of numbers. He said that when as a farmer’s boy he stood at the tail end of a steam thresher for shoving away the straw, if left alone, he found himself unable to keep up, and was soon covered down with the accumulation. So they were sometimes bothered in handling their great numbers in the way of discipline, and of effort at moral elevation.