The History of the Negro Church

by Carter Godwin Woodson

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.

DR. M. C. B. MASON
A pulpit orator in the Methodist Church.

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.

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.