CHAPTER XIII

THE NEGRO CHURCH SOCIALIZED

The Negro church as a social force in the life of the race is nothing new. Prior to emancipation the church was the only institution which the Negro, in a few places in the South and throughout the North, was permitted to maintain for his own peculiar needs. Offering the only avenue for the expressional activities of the race, the church answered many a social purpose for which this institution among other groups differently circumstanced had never before been required to serve. It was, in the first place, a center at which friend looked forward to meeting friend, contact with whom was denied by the rigorous demands of slavery. It was then a place of enlightenment through the information disseminating from the better informed or by actual teaching in the Sunday school. It served often as an outlet for expression of the Negro social mind, now for a renewed determination to break their chains through prayer, then to resort to concerted action on the basis that he who would be free must himself first strike the blow.

After the emancipation, moreover, the Negro church developed a social atmosphere which somewhat strengthened its hold on the youth about to go astray. Not only education found its basis in the church, but fraternal associations developed therefrom. Business enterprises accepted the church as an ally, and professional men to some extent often became dependent thereupon. Most movements among the Negroes, moreover, have owed their success to the leadership of Negroes prominent in the church. No better examples can be mentioned than W. W. Browne, a minister who organized the True Reformers fraternity; W. R. Pettiford, another preacher, who became one of the pioneer Negro bankers; John R. Hawkins, the Financial Secretary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who in applying efficiency to the business of his office secured for his denomination an unusually large income, and Dr. W. F. Graham, who in addition to his significant achievements in the church, has well invaded various businesses, in which he has exhibited evidence of unusual ability.

Since the Civil War, the Negro church as a factor in general uplift has become what the oppressed Negro longed to make it prior to that conflict. In the first place, Negroes regularly attend church whether Christians or sinners. They have not yet accumulated wealth adequate to the construction of clubhouses, amusement parks, and theaters, although dance halls have attracted many. Whether they derive any particular joy therefrom or not, the Negroes must go to church, to see their friends, as they are barred from social centers open to whites. They must attend church, moreover, to find out what is going on; for the race has not sufficient interests to maintain in every locality a newspaper of its own, and the white dailies generally mention Negroes only when they happen to commit crimes against white persons. The young Negro must go to church to meet his sweetheart, to impress her with his worth and woo her in marriage, the Negro farmer to find out the developments in the business world, the Negro mechanic to learn the needs of his community and how he may supply them.

Attached to the church is the Sunday school. Many a Negro had in attending it learned clandestinely to read and write before the war. Now they without fear of punishment eagerly studied in the churches on Sunday, learned the alphabet, the spelling of words with one, two and three syllables, and finally to read the Bible, that they might know for themselves the truths hitherto kept from their fathers but now revealed to their children in freedom. Education here was decidedly easy, the motive actuating the student being the immediate results in the form of a better knowledge of one's Christian duty and the reward awaiting the faithful. Many of these Negroes often learned more on a single Sunday than the average student acquired in a day school during a week. In these Sunday schools, not a few Negroes laid the foundation for the more liberal education which they thereafter obtained in the schools established by the religious and philanthropic friends of the Negroes working in the South immediately after the Civil War.

The church not only promoted education through the pulpit and Sunday school, but through its emphasis on the Bible unconsciously stimulated the efforts toward self-education. Whether a Negro attended Sunday school or not, he heard read to him from the Bible two or three times a week dramatic history, philosophical essays, charming poetry, and beautiful oratory. Hearing these repeated again and again and under circumstances securing undivided attention, he had many of these precious passages sink into his heart like seed planted in fertile ground to bring forth fruit fourfold. Under the continuous instruction of the Negro preacher, who in expounding the Bible drew such striking figures and portrayed life, death, and the beyond in a dramatic fashion, the youth not only experienced the emotion so characteristic of the Negro communicant but had his intellectual appetite whetted with the desire to seek after the mysteries.

The majority of Negroes, therefore, became Bible readers. Reading the Bible, they not only found what a minister of limited education could point out, but facts drawn from the best thought of the ancient world. And it was not mere reading; for many of them committed to memory choice passages of the Scriptures. Hundreds of them could recite accurately chapter after chapter of the treasures of Holy Writ; almost as many could give a crude but logical exposition of these literary treasures. From the study of the Bible the Negro developed, moreover, a desire for Biblical literature. He heard the moral appeal and gladly accepted the message to those in quest of the higher life in Christ.

This influence of the Bible, moreover, did more than lead to the reading of literature of a kindred nature. Some read books on ancient and medieval history, and finally works on the history of modern Europe. Others more seriously concerned were by this mere exposition of the Scriptures led to study collaterally commentaries on the Bible and to take up theology. In this they exhibited the power of self-education which with a strong spirituality combined with unusual imagination made so many Negroes preach with success. They had no more formal education than to read, and that was often picked up in the Sunday school; but they had the experience of a seeker, the light of the Bible, and the guidance of men who eloquently expounded it to the waiting multitude. These they freely drew on and from them they obtained help abundantly. Crude sometimes as the language might be, the thought of this self-made philosopher was original and few heard one preach without wondering how men of limited opportunities could speak so fluently and wisely.

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.

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.

A church on this order takes the name of the institutional church. At the head of this body, of course, is the pastor of the church; but in charge of this work sometimes is a director well trained in the social sciences and with the modern method of attacking the problems of to-day. The work scheduled is more than the mere supervision of clubs voluntarily organized. The director has a program which that particular community needs, and he is there to show the people how to work out their social salvation. If he is wise in presenting the case, he usually secures the coöperation necessary to organize the community for the purpose of self-education. The community is given an introduction to itself. Every talent lying dormant is here given an opportunity to be helpful in some way. What the individual from afar may bring for the good of a few through this well-organized community service becomes the heritage of all. No club can be large enough to accommodate the large membership in a city, but what the clubs of one church acquire is communicated to similar groups in another through such friendly rivalry as athletic contests, debates, periodical reports, and conferences. Many of the persons participating in this work are not in the beginning spiritually inclined, but the experience of the church in working with such groups has shown that the church has a better chance for success in making its evangelical appeal to persons under its control than in the case of delivering its message to those who have not been to any great extent influenced by Christian contact.

Churches which have undertaken this work have had varied experiences. The Institutional Church in Chicago under Dr. R. C. Ransom helped to blaze the way in this new field of endeavor. Under Dr. J. Milton Waldron and later under Dr. J. E. Ford, the Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Florida, made itself, through its clubs and Bible Institute, an effective community center. Dr. H. H. Proctor, a Congregational minister of Atlanta, practically converted his church into an organization of such groups as the day nursery, kindergarten, gymnasium, school of music, employment bureau, and Bible school.

Dr. W. N. DeBerry, the pastor of a Congregational church in Springfield, Massachusetts, has probably solved the problem about as well as any of these workers. In the first place, the church has a well-equipped modern plant so beautifully located and managed as to attract large numbers. It has, moreover, a parish home for working girls and a branch church at Amherst, Massachusetts. In the main plant are maintained a free employment bureau, a women's welfare league, a night school of domestic training, a girls' and a boys' club emphasizing the handicrafts, music, and athletics. This church has solved the problem of supplying the needs of the people during the week as well as their spiritual needs on Sunday, by emphasizing some life activity for every day in the week.

Other ministers of the gospel, who have not seen fit to carry out in their parishes in such detail the establishment of social welfare work, have nevertheless done much along special lines to socialize their churches. One hears of that indefatigable worker, the Rev. Mr. Bradby, of Detroit; R. W. Bagnall, the rector of the Episcopal Church of the same city; the fearless George Frazier Miller, an Episcopal rector of Brooklyn; the talented leader, Dr. W. H. Brooks of New York City; the popular western worker, Dr. S. W. Bacote of Kansas City; Dr. J. M. Riddle of Pasadena, California; and Dr. W. H. Jernagin, of Washington, D. C. Others of this group are Dr. Richard Carroll of Greenville, South Carolina; Bishop Sampson Brooks, as pastor of the Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore; Dr. W. D. Johnson of Plains, Georgia, now a bishop of his denomination; the picturesque pulpit orator and beautiful word painter, Dr. Peter James Bryant, of Atlanta, Georgia; and that popular preacher of the social gospel, Dr. W. W. Browne, of the Metropolitan Baptist Church in New York City.

Dr. L. K. Williams, pastor of the Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago, has doubtless surpassed all in this group. Under his direction the church conducts forty-two departments and auxiliaries with 512 officers, among whom are twenty-four paid workers. The membership of both church and Sunday School enormously increased through these agencies, that of the former being 8,743 and of the latter 3,100. This church has two edifices and five assistant pastors. During 1919 it collected $56,209 and disbursed $54,959. In an eighty-day rally it raised $29,235 in cash. In fact, so effective has been the socializing influence of this church that the community, in consideration of its inestimable value, gladly responds to any call it makes.

The Negro ambitious to rule, moreover, finds in the church about the only institution in which he may freely exercise authority. Fortunately here the Church and State are no longer connected. In the extension of the boon of toleration, the Negroes in countries in which they have been found in large numbers, have been permitted to conduct their spiritual affairs as they like. There are in the South to-day, however, white men who regret that immediately after the Civil War they permitted the Negroes to establish their separate churches. As these bodies are to-day being used to promote truths and foster movements which are prejudicial to the interest of the Southern restriction program for the Negro, the heirs of the former master class now rue the day when their fathers permitted these Negro churchmen to get from under their control. They complain that, whereas formerly they could learn from their Negro servants exactly what was going on in their group, the development the Negro church has in our day produced a reticent Negro loathe to disclose the forces operating in their churches.

No one understands this better than the Negro himself. The law of the South otherwise interpreted to the detriment of the Negro vouchsafes to him a little protection in the exercise of religion and in most parts public opinion has not become so unhealthy as to warrant action to the contrary. The Negro preacher, therefore, is granted more freedom of speech and permitted to exercise more influence than any other Negro in his community. Some fearless Negro ministers, like Bishop Lampton, have been driven out of the South because of utterances which enraged the whites, who have considered the exercise of free speech among Negroes an attack on their social laws; but, as a rule, the Negro minister may in criticism of the white race and in the defense of his people say things which other Negroes of good standing in the South would not dare to utter. Although the State may chide an outspoken minister here and there, it will hardly be so unwise so to restrict the Negro church as to interfere materially with its development as the South has done in the case of the Negro school in making Negro education altogether industrial. The church serves as a moral force, a power acting as a restraint upon the bad and stimulating the good to further moral achievement. Among the Negroes its valuable service is readily apparent when one considers the fact that this race, oppressed as it has been by the government of the State and nation, is at heart rebellious, while the church, as outspoken as it may seem, is not radical. Coming under the influence of the church, the safety valve in the South, the race has been dissuaded from any rash action by the patient and long suffering ministry reiterating the admonition that "vengeance is mine, I will repay."

Yet some men, like the sanguine and prophetic Kelly Miller, see in the Negro church of to-day the opportunity to become the unbridled servant of the people. The support of the Negro preacher comes from the people and he can fearlessly speak for them within the limits of public opinion. The Negro teacher or politician must be careful as to what he says; for, inasmuch as his support comes through the white race, he must proceed cautiously lest he be deprived of his position. As a rule, their lips are forever sealed on the rights of the Negro. As social proscription has retarded the development of the Negro lawyer, the impetus toward the uplift of the race must come from its ministry, and with the entrance of a larger number of intelligent men upon this work the masses of the Negro race will be willing to have them lead the way.

The ministry too is more attractive among Negroes than among whites. The white minister has only one important function to perform in his group, that of spiritual leadership. To the Negro community the preacher is this and besides the walking encyclopedia, the counselor of the unwise, the friend of the unfortunate, the social welfare organizer, and the interpreter of the signs of the times. No man is properly introduced to the Negro community unless he comes through the minister, and no movement can expect success there unless it has his coöperation or endorsement. The rise of the Negro physician has during recent years comparatively diminished the influence of the Negro preacher, but the latter is still the greater force in the community and will remain so unless the Negro learns to imitate the white people in substituting in their faith the doing of the will of their race for that of doing the revealed will of God.

The importance of the position of the Negro minister is apparent when one considers the large following which some of these churches have. Here the minister controls not only hundreds but thousands, as in the cases of Rev. J. E. Willis of the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church in Washington, of the Rev. Mr. Adams of the Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn, Dr. M. W. Reddick in the leadership of thousands of Baptists in Georgia, and the eloquent Dr. M. W. D. Norman, who after years of service as a minister in North Carolina and Virginia and as Dean of the Theological Department of Shaw University, succeeded the lamented Rev. Robert Johnson at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington, where thousands wait upon Dr. Norman's words. Some of these ministers are drawing very large numbers, because, instead of merely building large edifices and buying fine clothes and gifts for themselves, they are putting efficiency in the management of the churches, as in the cases of R. H. Bowling in Norfolk, Mordecai W. Johnson in Charleston, and Dr. A. Clayton Powell in New York City. In the Negro churches, moreover, as with Dr. J. C. Austin in Pittsburgh, there are being organized banks, housing corporations, insurance companies, and even steamship projects in keeping with the ideas of Dr. L. G. Jordan. Yet despite this change in point of view, the Negro church has not become a corrupt machine. Its affairs are still in the hands of men who, as a majority, are interested in their race rather than in themselves. The opportunity here sought is not that of leadership but that of service.

One service of which the race is in need, as the Negro minister is beginning to understand it, is the prevention of poverty. The poor you have with you always, and the poor will sometimes steal before they will starve. The masses must be elevated above dependence on another race for what they shall eat or drink or the wherewithal they shall be clothed. The saving of young men and women of the race from those pursuits in which they are unduly exposed to the temptations of the low and the contemptible of both races, is becoming a most important concern of many Negro churches. The Negro minister is now beginning to realize that every time he saves a youth from such undesirable conditions he himself becomes like unto Christ, a savior of man. If to do this it will be necessary to establish a business enterprise or make the church a fraternal insurance company, the new Negro minister will act accordingly. This is the way the race should go. The minister is the shepherd of the flock. The sheep know the voice of the shepherd and a stranger they will not follow.

Out of the exercise of these many privileges in the Negro church, moreover, has come unusually important results. Although the Negro learned in this way much that he had to forget, received many impressions which led to improper expression, the experiences in the end redounded to the good of the race. Misinformation when detected served but to emphasize the need of information; imposition accentuated the necessity for honest leadership; and the results of too much credulity led to conservatism in the masses. It was the school of experience for the Negro community. The church furnished the opportunity for this experience and the people learned their lesson well. They learned how to discriminate, how to think for themselves, how to take care of themselves in a critical situation, in short, how to be self-sufficient.

The most important of all lessons the Negro has learned through his church has been that of perseverance in coöperative effort. This is the most striking result of this social work. Negroes have not readily responded to the call of men in other fields, but the fact that these church groups, large and small, have held together for decades, and even generations, in the sacrificing effort to purchase houses of worship for which some of them have well paid two or three times because of thieves within and thieves without--that fact alone is evidence of the development of the power of consolidation among Negroes, an asset which in our day is being drawn upon for organization in education and in business and bids fair to have tremendous results when properly exploited by honest leaders enjoying the confidence of the masses.