The History of the Negro Church Part 10

The ministry was sufficiently attractive also to Dr. George W. Lee, who began his career in North Carolina. After having distinguished himself by efficient service in that State, he was, in 1885, called to the pastorate of the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church to succeed the Rev. J. H.

Brooks, its founder, who pa.s.sed away the previous year. Dr. Lee was noted especially for three significant elements of character. He was a promoter of African missions, was always disposed to help the under-man in a struggle, and made himself a patron of the youth aspiring to leadership. His pastorate was characterized by important achievements bearing on the progress of not only his congregation but that of his denomination. Noted for his originality and ability to master a situation, he soon attracted a large following and increased the membership of his church almost to 4,000. He easily became a man of national reputation, and in his travels abroad so impressed the people wherever he went that he pa.s.sed as an international character.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. GEORGE W. LEE]

With the possible exception of Dr. C. A. Tindley, the talented Methodist minister of Philadelphia, probably the greatest preacher of power developed during the last generation has been Dr. C. T. Walker. Coming under the influence of Christian missionaries and of the Atlanta Baptist College, he had his beginnings determined in an atmosphere of religious education. For forty years, excepting five years when he had charge of the Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, New York City, he was pastor of the Tabernacle Baptist Church of Augusta, Georgia. His church in Augusta was attended not only by thousands of his own race, but by hundreds of winter tourists, who heard him with unusual satisfaction. Among these were former President Taft, John D. Rockefeller, Gen. Rush C. Hawkins, Dr. David Gregg and Lyman B. Goff. With the support of such a large number this church undertook to supply the needs of the community, developing into an inst.i.tutional enterprise with all of the activities of a social welfare agency. This expansion necessitated a new building, which he erected at a cost of $185,000.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. C. T. WALKER]

Dr. Walker was interested in all things promoting the uplift of the race. He was the founder of the now s.p.a.cious 135th Street Branch, Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation, New York City, and figured largely in the establishment of a similar branch for his people in Augusta, Georgia. He was one of the prominent figures of the National Baptist Convention of the United States, being vice-president of the organization when he died, as well as vice-president of the Georgia Baptist State Convention and moderator of the Walker a.s.sociation. He traveled extensively in Europe and the Holy Land and was the author of a number of books of travel and also of sermons. His main work at home and abroad, however, was that of an evangelist whose fame as such so rapidly extended that he was one of the most popular speakers in the country, attracting larger crowds than any other Negro of his time.

CHAPTER XII

THE CONSERVATIVE AND PROGRESSIVE

It is clear from the account set forth above that the Negro church as such had some difficulty in finding itself. There was still a question as to what its functions and ideals should be, and this very question all but divided the church into conservative and progressive groups. The conservative element in control became so dogmatic in its treatment of the rising progressive minority that the inst.i.tution for a number of years lost ground among the talented tenth. For this reason the ministry once became decidedly uninviting to young men. Young people so rapidly lost interest in the church that the Sunday sermon denouncing the waywardness of the wicked generation was generally expected; and, if a special discourse of this vitriolic nature did not periodically follow, pastors availed themselves of the opportunity to digress from the discussion of the hardships of slavery, h.e.l.l, and the grave to express their deep regret that the intellectual youth were disinclined to walk in the footsteps of their fathers. Such sermons frightened some into repentance, but drove as many away from contact with the Christian element of the community.

The waywardness of the youth, however, was not so much a wickedness as it was a divergence in the Negro social mind. The ex-slaves had remained conservative. The old-time religion was good enough for them. They rejoiced to be able to sing in freedom the songs of their fathers, and deemed it a privilege to testify in "their experience or cla.s.s meetings"

and to offer at their Sunday services long drawn out invocations which afforded them the once forbidden exercise of the outpouring of a pent-up soul. Preachers who came down from that well-fought age appreciated, of course, the unique position which they then occupied. For all a new world had been created, so to speak, and what they needed then was only to enjoy the new boon vouchsafed to the lowly. The Negroes should thank G.o.d for their freedom, and the only way to express that grat.i.tude was through vociferous praise and stentorian thanksgiving within the courts of the Lord. G.o.d had brought the Negro up out of Egypt through Sodom and Gomorrah, and to show his grat.i.tude the chief concern of the Negro should then be "to be ready to walk into Jerusalem just like John."

The Negroes then under the instruction of well-enlightened missionaries from the North could not long remain in this backward state. Although not taught radical doctrines but, on the contrary, influenced by conservative religious teachers, the educational process itself had to work some changes in the young Negro's point of view, inasmuch as he was taught not what to think but how to think. The young Negroes, therefore, had not attended school very long or moved very much among persons mentally developed before they found themselves far removed from the members of their race less favorably circ.u.mstanced. They developed an inquiring disposition which leveled shafts at the strongholds of churchmen whose chief protection lay in their unfortunate plight of being embalmed in their ignorance along with a majority const.i.tuency hopelessly lost to the "eternal truths" coming into the mind of the Negro youth by "natural light."

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, therefore, the conservative and progressive elements in the church unconsciously drifted far apart. In the course of time it was no longer a struggle between the old and young. The difference in age ceased to be the line of cleavage. It was rather a difference of ideas. These groups were widely differing in their interpretation of religion, in their ideas as to the importance of the church in the life of the community, in their att.i.tudes as to the relation of the church to the individual, and in their standards of public conduct. On the whole, there was an effort to stand together; but in spite of themselves the line of cleavage had to be recognized and dealt with as a fact. As poverty is jealous of opulence, so is ignorance jealous of intelligence; and in this case the jealousy all but developed into caste hate.

The progressive element commonly dubbed by the conservatives as the educated Negroes could not accept the crude notions of Biblical interpretation nor the grotesque vision of the hereafter as portrayed by the illiterate ministers of the church. This developed mind found itself unwillingly at war with such extravagant claims and seeking a hearing for a new idea. Religion to the progressives became a Christian experience rather than the wild notions of revelation, which among some of the uninformed too often bordered on superst.i.tion and voodooism of the middle age, after the restraint of slavery had been removed and the Negroes as groups exercising religious freedom could indulge their fancy at will.

The educated Negro, moreover, no longer thought of religion as the panacea for all the ills of the race. Along with religion he would insist that education should go as its handmaiden, inasmuch as there can be little revelation of G.o.d where there is arrested mental development.

The very example of Christ himself, as understood by the progressive Negro, furnished no evidence as to the virtue of unrestrained emotion resulting from a lack of understanding and from an unwillingness to search the Scriptures for the real revelation of G.o.d.

Being weak on the intellectual side, the conservative Negro churchman could not fail to decry the educated communicants as a growing menace to the church. The church militant was ordered forward to attack the strongholds of this unbelief lest the inst.i.tution might be shaken from its very foundation. The toleration of such views might bring upon this generation the wrath of G.o.d, who would visit the race with condign affliction. The educated cla.s.s had information, not judgment; and the principles of religion, moreover, must be accepted as they are without question. The effort here was to crush the scion because it was producing a more vigorous species than the root from which it sprang, to destroy life because in the new generation it meant living too abundantly.

The churchmen of the conservative order observed with regret, moreover, that the talented Negro had a differing conception as to the relation of the church to the individual. Among the conservatives, the church, the only inst.i.tution in which they could partic.i.p.ate in the days of slavery, engaged their undivided attention with the exception of politics in self-defense during the Reconstruction period. The conservatives believed that the individual should sacrifice all for the church. On Sunday, they would come from afar to swell the chorus of the faithful, and there they would remain during the day, leaving their net earnings in the hands of the management, given at the cost of a sacrifice placed on a common altar. The educated Negro, on the other hand, thought of the church as existing for the good of the individual. It was to him a means for making the bad good, and if the inst.i.tution were defective it might be so reshaped and reorganized as to serve the useful purposes of man.

The church, moreover, as the progressive Negro saw it, was not necessarily Christlike unless the persons composing it were of such character themselves. As there were too often found here and there impostors serving as important functionaries in churches in which they masqueraded as Christians, the educated Negro insisted upon a new interpretation of Christian doctrine, boldly a.s.serting new principles as to the relation of man to his fellowman and man to G.o.d. Religion, the progressive element insisted, is a social virtue not an individual boon.

Man cannot by his professed periodical baring of his soul to G.o.d set himself aright when his conduct has not been in conformity with the teachings of Jesus. Since an individual is what he does, an inst.i.tution composed of individuals, too often shamed with ignorance and vice, could not be the ideal Christian organization to which Christ looked as his representative following here on earth.

The Negro in freedom, moreover, when given an opportunity for mental development, gradually became a.s.similated to the white man's standard of conduct. The educated Negro began to see little harm in dancing and card playing when representative white churches abrogated such prohibitions or suffered them to fall into desuetude. Taunted as to the evil desire for the ways of the world, the talented man usually retorted that while his conduct was questioned by his own people it was in keeping with the ethics of the most enlightened of the land, whereas the conservatives tended to follow the policy of practicing almost any sort of vice clandestinely and to masquerade as Christians until exposed.

This argument was of little worth; for many of the so-called vices of the Negro members of the church could be reduced largely to unconfirmed reports and indulgences of the imagination of persons having foul minds.

While the writer offers no brief for the religious workers of long ago, he must insist that we have no evidence to justify the sweeping generalization that the Negro Christians of the conservative order were, as a rule, morally corrupt or that they generally harbored unclean persons in their group. Their record rather shows a most healthy att.i.tude toward maintaining a high standard of morality. The adulterer, the gambler, the thief, and the like, were usually summarily expelled from the church as undesirables, who should not sit in the congregation of the righteous. In fact, had it not been for the hold of Christianity on these freedmen, their standards of morality would have been so much lower; for they saw for emulation little of the righteous in the white people with whom they came into contact when these generally imposed upon the blacks by lying and stealing and openly sought Negro women with whom the flower of southern families lived in open adultery. The conservatives stood for the right, although they were often too narrow to overlook the so-called vices which supplied to those of talent the harmless pleasures of this world.

The progressive element seriously objected to church management. Negro ministers and the governing bodies of the churches often manifested more zeal than tact in the conduct of church affairs. They too frequently built rather costly edifices, paid their pastors disproportionately large salaries, and lavished unduly upon them and their families gifts which the poor of their congregations could ill afford. The Negroes wanted a well-groomed leader in a heaven on earth to lead them to the heaven beyond. The management then incurred debts of such magnitude that the church too often developed into a money raising machine dominated from without by white speculators who profited by this folly. The progressive element militantly arrayed itself against this outlay made at the expense of the moral and religious life of the community. In their zeal they too often denounced the conservatives in control as tricksters and grafters, when, as a matter of fact, the management lost more by inefficient administration than it acquired by so-called corruption.

The progressive Negroes boldly advocated a change in the worship.

From the more advanced white churches they had learned to appreciate the value of serious and cla.s.sical music, of intelligent sermonizing, and of collecting offerings in the pews. The old-time plaintive plantation hymns, they insisted, should give place to music of a refined order, supported by the piano, organ, or other instruments; the tiresome minister, covering all things in creation in his discourse, should yield to a man prepared to preach to the point at issue; and instead of the dress-parade lifting of collections the raising of funds to support the church should be reduced to a business transaction conducted without ostentation. The conservatives, however, would not have in their churches the musical instruments used in theaters and dance halls, would not even listen to an attack on their backward ministry, and scoffed at the proposal to supplant time-honored customs by innovations taken from the practices of their former cruel oppressors.

The general result was that in many communities a much larger number of intelligent people were driven from the church or rendered inefficient therein than were saved to it. There was little chance for cooperation so long as the conservatives were unyielding; and the progressives, unable to treat the conservatives diplomatically, failed to put aside complaint to begin with the ma.s.ses where they were that they might carry them where they should be. Some of the progressive element left their names on the church books only to forfeit membership by non-attendance or the failure to pay required dues. Others saw themselves excluded for violation of the sacred rules of the congregation proscribing partic.i.p.ation in the worldly joys. A few who felt compunction of conscience on realizing how disgraceful in the eyes of the community it seemed to put one's hand to the plow and then turn back, had their backsliding healed and returned to the fold.

Those who left the conservative churches were often received by the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, and the Catholics, who, having a more flexible att.i.tude toward the pleasures of the world, offered asylum to the outcasts driven from the former sanctuaries. This separation included not only laymen but in some cases ministers, who, on connecting themselves with some other denominations, served their people in churches differing widely from those which were so handicapped by unprogressive elements that they had no hope to toil upward therein. The large majority of the members of these smaller denominations were once members of Baptist or Methodist churches or were the children of persons who were once thus connected.

It was not necessary, however, for a large number of Baptists thus to be lost to that denomination. Unlike the Methodists, who are restrained by episcopal government, the Baptists needed only to exercise the privileges of democracy guaranteed in that church. A dissatisfied group of the "upper crust" in a Baptist Church could at any time organize another Baptist Church without any restraint except that of the fear of the failure of the enterprise from the economic point of view.

Schismatic churches or exclusively aristocratic congregations, therefore, followed in large cities where a sufficient number of the malcontents in the various denominations could unite for this common purpose.

This schismatic movement was followed by both good and bad results. The separation of the progressive and the conservative elements in the church made it impossible for the unprogressive to learn by example from those with whom they came into contact. Each remained happier in the new state so long as the results of this divergence were not strikingly apparent. The conservatives could better remain what they were and the progressives could more easily become what they wanted to be. The cessation of hostilities, however, did not always follow; for both churches representing different points of view made their appeals to the same community, endeavoring to secure financial and moral support. In small communities what was done for the one could not be done for the other for the reason that the community had so much and no more to spare. The success or failure of the one or the other, therefore, too often meant grudge or ill will.

This contest between the progressive and conservative, however, has been more than local. There have arisen serious situations, some of which have been handled so diplomatically as to avoid outbreaks in the ranks, and others which have led to radical changes. For example, the progressive Negro in the Methodist Episcopal Church for a number of years bore it grievously that, although the members of the race const.i.tuted an important element in this denomination, they were not allowed freely to partic.i.p.ate in its management. The objective was to make a Negro one of the regular bishops, but conservative whites insisted that the time had not come for such a radical step.

During this long struggle in the Methodist Church the progressive group became very impatient. It was in favor of separation from the white connection either to establish an independent church or to join one of the African Methodist churches already in the making. The conservative element frowned down upon any such proposal as a suicidal scheme, believing that in cooperating with the whites the Negroes had much more to gain than to lose. The advocacy of continued union with the whites under the prevailing circ.u.mstances, however, was dubbed by the progressive Negroes a manifestation of the spirit of servility resulting from a slavish attachment to their former masters. The counsel of the conservative prevailed, however, and although the Negro membership does not enjoy exactly the same privileges as the white, it has steadily gained ground.

The best example of a situation which could not be thus handled is that of the repudiation of the white Baptists by the progressive Negro element of this church. The white Baptists, of course, had no actual control of the Negro communicants, but had some very strong moral claims on them. White missionaries of this denomination had distributed literature, organized churches, constructed edifices, and established schools among Negroes; and the boards supporting the missionaries had supplied some of the funds by which most of these inst.i.tutions were maintained. To say anything derogatory to the policies of the management directing this beneficent work, therefore, seemed to the conservative Negroes all but blasphemous.

The progressive Baptist element, however, had a different att.i.tude.

Thousands of Negro teachers and preachers whom these Baptist schools had trained had entered upon their life's work with the hope that they would figure conspicuously in the life of their people. When they faced the stern realities of the situation they too often found their way was blocked. White men, to be sure, did not aspire to the pastorate of Negro churches; but they undertook to dictate the policy of a.s.sociations and conventions to retain their hold on the Negro Baptists. The conflict came when Negroes after being refused the privilege of partic.i.p.ating in the management of the American Baptist Home Mission Society began to question the motives of its official staff. More fuel was furnished for the flames when, after having all but agreed to accept contributions of Negroes to its Sunday school literature, the American Baptist Publication Society, upon protest from Southern churchmen, receded from that position. The issue was then joined. The National Baptist Convention, a union of the Negro Baptists, was effected in 1886, and as the struggle grew more intense every effort was made so to extend it as to destroy the influence of white national bodies among Negroes.

The Negroes had a just cause for complaint. If under the leadership of the white Baptists their way to promotion would be blocked and their literary aspirations crushed, what hope was there for the race to rise and of what benefit would education be to the Negro, if it did not equip him to do for himself what the white man at first had to do for him? How could the motives of the white Baptists be lofty, moreover, if they did not believe that Negroes should rise in the church and school? To this the whites replied that they looked forward with the most pleasant antic.i.p.ation to the day when the Negroes would be prepared to enjoy the good things for which they clamored, but that the time for the Negroes to dispense with the leadership of the whites had not then come. Many years of education and social uplift were still necessary before the Negroes could successfully set out to do for themselves.

This argument had little weight with the progressive Negroes and they were not wanting in logical speakers to place their case before the world. There was that courageous leader, Dr. Harvey Johnson, of Baltimore, who belabored his former friends as enemies of the race.

Equally effective, too, was the eloquent Dr. Walter H. Brooks of Washington, who fearlessly took up the cudgel and dealt the white Baptists many a blow from which they never recovered. With the National Baptist Convention emerging as a common concern of Negroes under the organizing hand of Dr. E. C. Morris, and the National Baptist Publishing House extending the circulation of elementary literature throughout the country under the direction of the efficient Dr. R. H. Boyd, this self-a.s.sertion of the Negro Baptists became a factor to be reckoned with.

All problems, however, were not immediately solved. The progressive Negroes had the right spirit, but did not every time have adequate understanding. They had had no experience in editing literature and practically none in raising sums of money necessary for the maintenance of educational establishments and missionary enterprise. The majority of the Negro Baptist ministry trained in the schools of the American Baptist Home Mission Society at first adhered to this organization and persisted in using the Sunday school literature of the American Baptist Publication Society, deriding the publication efforts of the Negro Baptists as the greatest travesty on Biblical literature. This criticism was most uncharitable, but nevertheless effective, for the reason that some who at first wished the movement well made the mistake of despising the day of small things.

The struggle was most intense in the Southeast. The influence of Shaw University in North Carolina and Virginia Union University in Richmond had given the white Baptists an all but firm hold on the Negroes in these and adjacent States. The presidents of these inst.i.tutions and the white agents of the denomination attended the Negro a.s.sociations and conventions, hoping to dictate their policies; but this interference only widened the breach. Under the leadership of that forceful orator and successful leader, Gregory W. Hayes, a large number at first and finally a majority of the Baptists of Virginia disclaimed connection with these white friends and concentrated their efforts on supporting the Virginia Theological Seminary and College through the Baptist State Convention of that commonwealth. The leading Baptists of North Carolina, however, still adhered in large numbers to the American Baptist Home Mission Society, cooperating therewith through the local a.s.sociations, their State conventions, and the conservative national body known as the Lott Cary Convention, which had also many adherents in Virginia and scattered followers throughout adjacent States. In other parts, the factions about equally divided, except in the southwestern section of the country, where the Negroes have tended to break away from the white Baptists.

As to which faction was right, history alone will tell. Even at the present, however, one can see a decided advantage in the independent Negro movement. Every one will admit that the Negro must eventually rely solely upon himself, and that not until he emerges from a state of dependency can he hope to secure the recognition of the other groups.

The white man is rapidly tiring of carrying the so-called burdens of the Negro. The Negro home, church, and school must, as fast as possible, become sufficient unto themselves. The sooner they attain this stage in their development, the better will it be for the race. The Negro inst.i.tutions which during the turbulent period have, in separating from the whites, learned to supply their own needs, have made a step far in advance of those dependent on the whites. In this day, when the northern philanthropists are either withholding their donations to Negro schools or restricting them to Hampton and Tuskegee, it is difficult for some of these establishments to eke out a subsistence, while the independent Negro schools, having had years of experience in developing a following, find their prospects growing brighter from year to year. The National Training School for Girls, founded and successfully directed by the noted Nannie H. Burroughs, obtains practically all of its funds from Negroes. The Virginia Theological Seminary and College, under the direction of the efficient Dr. R. C. Woods, depends for its support altogether upon Negroes, who contribute to it annually about $60,000.00.

There is not in this country a Negro inst.i.tution dominated by whites that can raise half of this sum in this way. A few years ago when Wilberforce University was heavily indebted and it seemed that it needed some one to rescue it, the State of Ohio proposed to buy the church portion of the inst.i.tution; but the trustees, with the spirit of the progressive Negro, emphatically replied that the whole State of Ohio did not have enough money to buy Wilberforce. Rallying under the leadership of Bishop Joshua H. Jones, the African Methodists raised $50,000 in one year and cleared the inst.i.tution of debt.

In this changing order, moreover, when the white administrators of Negro schools find themselves deprived of the former financial support received from the North, they veer around to the position of southern white people, accepting and sometimes enforcing in Negro inst.i.tutions themselves the unwritten laws of caste that the white management may curry favor with the prejudiced community. As these administrators must under such circ.u.mstances lose the support of the Negroes and experience has not yet shown that many southern white men will make sacrifices for Negro education, the inst.i.tutions in the hands of such misguided white friends of the Negro will probably suffer.

CHAPTER XIII

THE NEGRO CHURCH SOCIALIZED

The Negro church as a social force in the life of the race is nothing new. Prior to emanc.i.p.ation the church was the only inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tution among other groups differently circ.u.mstanced 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 emanc.i.p.ation, 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 a.s.sociations 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. W. R. PETTIFORD

A business-like minister in Alabama.]