The History of the Negro Church

by Carter Godwin Woodson

As a preparation to this end the afflictions of the Negro have adequately developed self-control in the race. The watchword of the Negro church has been patience while waiting on the Lord. The Negro has learned not to avenge his own wrongs, believing that God will adjust matters in the end. The Negro agrees with Professor Joseph A. Booker, that he that taketh up the sword shall perish by the sword. Even during these days, when we learn much about the lawless, the behavior of the Negroes is no exception to the rule. An investigation shows that the Negroes never do any more than to defend themselves in keeping with the first law of nature. White persons who once found it possible to intimidate the whole group by shooting or lynching one or two now face persons of color bent upon defending their homes. At heart, however, the Negro is conservatively Christian and looks forward to that favorable turn in the affairs of man when the wrongs of the oppressed shall be righted without the shedding of blood.

The Negro church is criticized by a few radical members of the race as a hindrance to the immediate achievement of the aims of the race, in that the white race in the exercise of foresight encourages and even subsidizes the Negro ministry in carrying out this conservative program. This will tend, it is said, to keep the Negro down, whereas the white people themselves do not actually believe in such doctrine; for their own actions show that they use it as a means to an end. This, however, is hardly a fair criticism of the Negro church of to-day. No force from without can claim control of this institution, and certainly no one can bridle its fearless speakers who stand for the Negro of to-day. The Negro churchmen, moreover, are not any more conservative than other leaders of the people. They may be more generally effective because of their greater influence. That the Negro church is conservative is due to teaching and to tradition, and it is fortunate that Providence has had it so. Acting as a conservative force among the Negroes, the church has been a sort of balance wheel. It has not been unprogressive but rather wise in its generation in not rushing forward to a radical position in advance of public opinion. In other words, the Negro church has known how far it can safely instruct its people to go in righting their own wrongs, and this conservatism has no doubt saved the Negro from the fate of other oppressed groups who have suffered extermination because of the failure to handle their case more diplomatically.

This does not mean, however, that the Negro church of to-day is not alive to the sufferings of the race and is not critical of the attitude of the so-called Christian elements in this country. Some Negro ministers like Dr. F. J. Grimké are decidedly outspoken, even to the extent of being classed with the militant Reds now being deported. Dr. Pezavia O'Connell, a gentleman of scholarship and character, has all but suffered professional martyrdom because he has always fearlessly championed the cause of the Negro. Inasmuch as such an advanced position does not always harmonize with the faith of his communicants, he has been proscribed in certain circles. R. W. Bagnall, George Frazier Miller, and Byron Gunner have actually preached the use of force and encouraged resistance to the mobs to the extent that some Negroes have probably addressed themselves vindictively to the task of retribution. Through the Negro churches, and these alone, have the Negroes been able to effect anything like a coöperative movement to counteract the evil influences of such combinations against the race as the revived Ku Klux Klan.

The church then is no longer the voice of one man crying in the wilderness, but a spiritual organization at last becoming alive to the needs of a people handicapped by social distinctions of which the race must gradually free itself to do here in this life that which will assure the larger life to come. To attain this the earth must be made habitable for civilized people. Funds are daily raised in Negro churches to fight segregation, and an innocent Negro in danger of suffering injustice at the hands of the local oppressor may appeal with success to the communicants with whom he has frequented a common altar. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People would be unable to carry out its program without the aid of the Negro church.

Although Negroes are not now attracted to the church as much as formerly, the census reports still show that there are more Negroes in the ministry than in any other profession. The only really close competitor of the Negro in this profession is the southern white man. While the educated white men of the North are taking up scientific pursuits and business, the southern whites are carrying out their designs on the ministry, in keeping with the well-laid plans by which they have succeeded in getting partial control of the northern press. During recent years so many southern white students have crowded northern schools of theology that, in keeping with the spirit of Beelzebub, some of these institutions now deny Negroes admission. The pulpits of the North are being gradually taken over by the apostles indoctrinated by the medieval agents of race hate.

Since the Negro ministry is still the largest factor in the life of this race, it naturally conflicts with the propaganda of the ministry preaching caste. These representatives of the master and slave classes must, in the capacity of spokesmen of widely differing groups, work out the solution of the problems of the church in the United States; for either the one or the other must dictate the religious program of the economically mad North. The North cares little about priest-craft. The struggle there for dollars and cents and for opportunities to spend them in riotous living is too keen to spare time for such matters as Christian living and the remote hereafter. The South, on the other hand, has never lost its bearing. In spite of riots here and there and lynchings almost anywhere, that section still considers itself a Christian land and, in its way, has lifted high the name of Christ without being influenced by his life. The North, then, if it ever awakes from its lethargy, will probably accept either the principles of Jesus of Nazareth as they have been preached and practiced by the Negroes, or the Anglo-Saxon-chosen-people-of-God faith for which many misguided white communicants have jeopardized their own lives and have taken those of Negroes unwilling to worship at the shrine of race prejudice.

The white people of this country are not interested in the real mission of Christ. In the North the church has surrendered to the capitalistic system and developed into an agency seeking to assuage the pains of those suffering from the very economic evils which the institution has not the courage to attack. In the southern portion of the United States, the white churches have degenerated into perfunctory machines engaged in the service of deceiving the multitude with the doctrine that the Anglo-Saxon, being superior to other races by divine ordination, may justly oppress them to maintain its supremacy and that the principles of Jesus are exemplified in the lives of these newly chosen people of God when they permit their so-called inferiors to eat the crumbs let fall by those whom their idol god has carefully selected as the honor guests at the feast. If the humble Nazarene appeared there disturbing the present caste system, he would be speedily lynched as he was in Palestine.

In spite of the Negroes' logical preaching of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, however, the North now seems inclined to accept the faith of the South. Science has long since uprooted the theory that one race can be superior to another, but the northern churches are loath to act accordingly. The same churches, which prior to emancipation, championed the cause of the Negro, are to-day working indirectly to promote racial distinctions. The southern white man, wiser in his generation than most of his competitors, easily realized that he could not legally reënslave the Negro, but early devised a scheme to convert the North to the doctrine of segregation, educational distinctions, and the elimination of the Negroes from the body politic, to make it improbable, if not impossible, for the Negroes to attain the status of white men. The Christian spirit of the North at first rebelled against the very idea; but, already pledged to the policy of the economic proscription of Negroes through trades unions, that section, once bristling with churches dominated by abolitionists, soon yielded to the temptation of sacrificing the principles of Jesus for dollars and cents. The Negro of to-day, therefore, is hated as much by the northern religious devotee as by the southern enthusiast at the shrine of race prejudice.

Evidence as to such conditions obtaining is not wanting. In the midst of the changing order involving all but the annihilation of the Negro, the race has repeatedly appealed to the "Christian" element of the North only to have a deaf ear turned to its petition. Inasmuch as the northern ministers are influenced by rich laymen whose businesses have so many ramifications in the South, they refrain from such criticism or interference in behalf of the Negro, since it might mean economic loss. Negroes at first secured from northern churches large sums of money to establish adequate private schools and colleges throughout the South, but before these institutions could be developed these funds were diverted to the support of industrial education which the South openly interpreted to signify that no Negro must be encouraged to become the equal of any white man, and that education for him must mean something entirely different from that training provided for the Caucasian. The northern white man, more interested in developing men to produce cotton and tobacco than in the training of a race to think for itself, again bowed to mammon. Churches which once annually raised sums for the maintenance of various Negro schools have now, as a majority, restricted their contributions to Hampton and Tuskegee, where, it is believed, the ultimate distinctions of the whites and blacks can, by the process of safeguarded education, be best effected. Practically all of the so-called Christian philanthropists have followed their example.

The Negro church, however, finds itself facing still another problem. During recent years Negroes have manifested more interest in the redemption of Africa. Negro churches have long since contributed to missions and the periodical return of the apostle to the lowly far away has been awaited with the anticipation of unwonted joy; but it is only recently that the church has begun to make sacrifices for the cause. Whereas a few years ago a congregation felt that it had done its duty in raising a missionary collection of ten or fifteen dollars, that same group is to-day supporting one or two missionaries in Africa. The raising of funds for this purpose and the administration of it have been of late so well extended, as noted above, that the national church organizations have had to assign this work to boards, whose business is to supply the missionaries at the various posts and extend their operations by establishing schools where they have sufficiently well established the work to require systematic training.