As soon as Sunday School children of the Race have grown old and large enough to understand and bear more weighty religious burdens, they are at once invited to join the present four million Colored church members, who are only too anxious to take in new members under the Divine leadership and protection of the fourty-three thousand churches owned by people of the Race in the United States. When it is proved by facts and figures that about one-third of the Colored people in this country are members in churches and that they have put over eighty-five million dollars of their hard earned money into these present church properties they own; it is plainly seen that people of the Negro race still have perfect faith and trust in and are continuing to work for and with the God, Who inspired the immortal Abraham Lincoln to free their slave working and hopeful praying foreparents.
(Ref.: Work’s Negro Year Book, 1918-1919 edition, pgs. 1-234-5-6-7).
Colored ministers of today, on account of their all-around advancements have been able to bring about a better understanding and knowledge of the true teachings of the Bible. For instance, they are teaching their congregations that the timely, proper and equal uses of emotional and practical religion are necessary. Thus the masses of people attending Colored churches are fast learning from their pulpits that there is just as much needs for Christianity in practical business and social dealings with each other on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, as there is for Christianity in their church emotional ceremonies conducted among themselves before the altars on Sunday. Also ministers of today have long since come to differ from most of those “old school” ministers (God blessed them for doing the best they knew how) who taught their people to live, think and say, to other races, “Give us Jesus and you can take the dollar.” So the “new school” and more businesslike ministers of these times are patiently teaching, fast convincing and gradually converting their congregations in the belief and truth that it is just as much Christianity in the honest earning, the frugal saving, the fair investment, the wise spending and the merciful sharing of a dollar with the poor and needy, as there is need for Christianity in the saving of their souls and the spreading of the gospel.
Along other practical lines these gospel leaders are having remarkable success, especially in large cities where many Colored people live. It is wonderful to see how these practical ministers have taught their congregations that they are showing as much reverence to God when they pass out of their churches after services and go quietly and orderly to their homes (instead of great numbers of them stopping right in front of their church doors with loud talk and laughter and blocking the whole pavement, against people who wish to go by, for fifteen and twenty minutes) as they do when sitting quietly and dignified in their church pews listening to the sermons. Such gospel leaders in every instance finally win their members over to their sides in such matters by pleasantly and plainly pointing out that people of other races seldom attend Colored churches of today and see the polished and refined ways people of the Race deport themselves. But if just two or three dozen members of a church come out after services and thoughtlessly block the side walks, go along the streets or ride in the trolley cars roughly laughing and loudly talking their church and private affairs to each other from one end of the car to the other; they are seen and heard by other races who class not only the church but the whole Negro race with those few loud-mouthed, absent-minded and sometimes vain Colored people who often use such shameful public manners to attract attention to themselves and their clothes; just like the same class of uncouth white people do.
Of course, when white men and women appear in public places acting and talking in noisy, unrefined and vulgar ways, the Colored man or woman (no matter how little learning he or she may have) who sees and hears such actions, never judges and stamps the intelligent, refined and well-behaved portion of the Caucasian race as a whole group of people also to be ignored and discriminated against. But when a person of color sees and hears such vulgar actions on the part of a white person, that Colored person merely comments to himself; “There is a human being who is a sample of the worse element among the white people and is far from being a fair and pure sample of the best people in the white race.” Then that broad-minded Colored person will at once throw the incident off his mind. He will then turn his back on the uncouth white person with disgust and in facing about will the very next moment give the fullest consideration, the most humane treatment, the most polite manners and the deepest respect to the white lady or gentleman whose Christian speech and civilized actions warrant and deserve such courtesies. And this is only one of the countless (big) little instances in which the American Colored people are daily showing their practical use of the Golden Rule; (cornerstone in the foundation and keystone in the archway of the white man’s Christianity).
Thus the brotherhood actions and manners of the masses of Negroes, (from the hod-carrier to the president of a university and from the scrub woman to the president of a national organization) in being broad-minded and big-hearted enough to fair-mindedly apply the Golden Rule to the Caucasian race, so as to mentally separate and treat accordingly the good white people from the bad, are certainly proving that the Colored people as a whole are daily putting into practical usages the Lord’s Golden Rule in much more Christlike ways than the white race is itself. Of course, there are exceptions in both races, but considering both from the standpoint of masses the above assertion cannot be truthfully denied.
A present day exception on the white side may be cited as follows:—During the summer of 1920 when Southern white savages turned Paris, Texas into a human slaughter house by lynching, torturing and burning alive of human beings, Rev. R. P. Shuler, (white) a prominent Methodist minister living in that community fearlessly denounced the mob at the time of its heathenish actions and at the risk of his own life. Later, when speaking of a former statement he had made regarding the lynching, according to an article in the July 24, 1920 issue of the Chicago Defender, he said:
“The above statement, I make in the face of the advice that has come to me from many friends that such a policy is and will be at present unsafe for me. I am informed that my life has been numerously threatened if I make such a statement. I am told that the mob used my name repeatedly in such a manner as to very much concern my friends. I can truthfully say that the attitude of this mob toward me does not in the least concern me. Better men than myself have died when far less was at stake. I am only concerned in doing my God-appointed duty in this situation. Therefore, without apology or plea for quarter, I unhesitatingly condemn the burning of these men in our city as an act of lawlessness, which if carried to its legitimate ends, would destroy our government and damn our civilization. And in making this statement I ask for neither the protection of my friends nor the mercy of my enemies.”
If all other white ministers were to take such fearless and open stands against such savage doings, that are heaping as much shame and stain on the United States as such crimes in Europe ever heaped on Turkey, they could in a few years make these United States a truly Christian land. And in taking such stands such ministers (if they showed the same kind of faith in God as Rev. Shuler did who is still living and preaching) they would also be delivered from a threatening mob. But where within the recent past or the present have there stepped out from the white ministry two Rev. Shulers? Among all the nationally famed white evangelists, which one or three of recent times have in preaching in all parts of the United States proved himself a second Henry Ward Beecher, an Elijah P. Lovejoy or a C. T. Torry, who fearlessly and fruitfully preached against all national as well as local sins, crimes and lawlessness that came under their notice?
Among all the white ministers in the United States, only they themselves can tell how many of them peacefully feel within their secret hearts and contentedly feel within their reasoning minds that they are giving full reverences to God, full honor to their calling and full service toward all weak and suffering humanity through their Sunday preachings against all sins and crimes? And among them only they can tell how many of them, through advising words in reasoning talks, are trying each Sunday (if only for five minutes) to blow out and drown the sinful sparks of jealousy, envy, malice and hate that instantly flame up in the breasts of so many of their church members as soon as they see a Colored person, even if that person is well-behaved, well-educated, well-dressed and well-to-do. Such feelings merely on account of color are not natural and God has not meant for such to be; for if He had, He would have made the brown earth white, the green grass white, the blue sky white, the yellow sun white. These are the greatest things in the world and all of them are colored. Even the water, that covers three-fourths of the earth (while it is supposed to be colorless) is more colored than it is white. Those white people who wish that there were no colored on earth should remember that God in His infinite wisdom fully realized in making the universe that if He made all things white the glare would be so great and intense that every seeing thing would be driven totally blind. So God put soft and blending colors on earth in order that humanity might retain its sight to see His works and learn to love them but not to look upon any of His works with scorn and hatefulness.