Whether in the villages or on the plantations, the large majority of slave-holders felt a genuine compassion and an honorable responsibility for the helpless human beings brought under their care. They felt also an equal helplessness in the higher realms of guidance of the people who must yet learn the language of common intercourse. The constantly increasing importations introduced a mass of unacclimated humanity which, as constantly, postponed the day of this common language and common intercourse. The America of today knows something of the difficulties attending a too rapid immigration. But this modern problem pales before that of the primitive era of the colonies, which, beset by the new problems of new surroundings, must yet meet those of their composite social life within. The slave-master looked out upon the negro race, after a few years, in its varying stages from the newly-arrived slave to the domesticated servant, and saw manifest racial inferiority in every capacity through which he habitually measured worth.
The white settlers of America were distinctly Christian, though their religion was of widely differing brands. What were they to do as they faced the new problem of composite life? They did exactly that which was natural and normal to their varied religious principles. Those who were enough of Christians to realize religion as a paramount duty, at once began to associate the heathen Negro with their own Christian faith. At first, this was through the family or neighborhood services, prayer meetings, Sunday schools and the like. By and by, as life became more organized, churches were built, and the slave worshipped in his master’s church, and was taught by his master’s pastor. In many cases, the mistress and her daughters were his Sunday school teachers. In time, plantation churches were erected primarily for the Negroes, though generally attended by the Whites.
In this natural way, the Whites sought to maintain and perpetuate their own Christian culture, and to impart it to their negro families in such measure as the latter could receive it. It was difficult enough at best, where preachers and teachers were few, and where the struggle for a firm foothold, in a new land, was apt to develop the selfish and the sordid in human nature. It was increasingly difficult as the age of the deists and agnostics grew older and more aggressive under foreign and American leadership. It had its baneful effect upon the Christianizing of the Negro in producing that inexcusable variety of agnosticism which declines to see God’s image in His black children.
Thus naturally, yet under great difficulties, did the Christianizing of the Negro proceed until the last years of the seventeenth century, when recorded efforts become more frequent.
Prior to 1700, the Bishop of London, in charge of the Church of England in the Colonies, had attempted to supply the people with pastors, sending one or more commissaries; but these efforts had been only very partially successful.
Miss Helm, in The Upward Path, writes: “The first organized effort to give Gospel instruction to the Negroes in the American Colonies, was made in 1701 by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, a Church of England society, incorporated under William III. The first missionary, the Rev. Samuel Thomas, began work in South Carolina, where he and his successors met with ‘the ready good will of the masters, though much discouragement was felt because of the difficulties of the task, not many of the Negroes understanding the English tongue.’ The zeal of the Society and its missionaries increased, and in less than forty years the report was made of a ‘great multitude of Indians and Negroes brought over to the Christian Faith’ in different parts of the country; and, later, of a flourishing school at Charleston sending out annually about twenty young Negroes well instructed in English and the Christian Faith.” Thus the work of the Church among the Negroes in America owes its organization to the S. P. G.
Before entering upon the missions of our own Church, a general view of the Christian efforts made will be helpful.
The reports made in 1724 to the English Bishops by the Virginia parish ministers, are evidence that a few free Negroes in the parishes were permitted to be baptized, and were received into the Church when they had been taught the Catechism. This statement is equally true of the slaves. And what is true of the Episcopal Church is equally true of the Presbyterian. In all cases, the earlier converts were members of the white Churches. Indeed, in the early days, separate churches for Negroes were never contemplated.
The Presbyterian mission was begun about 1747 at Hanover, Va., with immediate success. Other missions were established, and many godly men devoted their time to work among the slaves both in the towns and on the plantations. In the Carolina colonies the same zeal was manifested, though for the most part the members of this Church dwelt in the upper counties where slaves were not so numerous. This, however, presented the occasion of even closer religious relations. There are no accurate statistics of converts at hand.
A little later came the activities of the Baptists and the Methodists, which ultimately swept into their various folds the vast bulk of the race. The Baptists, under their policy in which each congregation is a Church in itself, established negro churches in Georgia and Virginia as early as 1775. In 1793, the denomination, in its several branches, numbered about 18,000, and grew rapidly during the succeeding years. In 1860, there were about 400,000 negro Baptists, not including children and adherents under instruction which would probably run the total to more than a million.