Tired of reading? Add this page to your Bookmarks or Favorites and finish it later.
|
|
Moreover, the religious growth of millions of men, even
though they be slaves, cannot be without potent influence
upon their contemporaries. The Methodists and Baptists of
America owe much of their condition to the silent but potent
influence of their millions of Negro converts. Especially is
this noticeable in the South, where theology and religious
philosophy are on this account a long way behind the North,
and where the religion of the poor whites is a plain copy of
Negro thought and methods. The mass of "gospel" hymns
which has swept through American churches and well-nigh
ruined our sense of song consists largely of debased imitations
of Negro melodies made by ears that caught the jingle
but not the music, the body but not the soul, of the Jubilee
songs. It is thus clear that the study of Negro religion is not
only a vital part of the history of the Negro in America, but
no uninteresting part of American history.
The Negro church of to-day is the social centre of Negro
life in the United States, and the most characteristic expression
of African character. Take a typical church in a small
Virginia town: it is the "First Baptist"--a roomy brick edifice
seating five hundred or more persons, tastefully finished
in Georgia pine, with a carpet, a small organ, and stained-glass
windows. Underneath is a large assembly room with
benches. This building is the central club-house of a community
of a thousand or more Negroes. Various organizations
meet here,--the church proper, the Sunday-school, two or
three insurance societies, women's societies, secret societies,
and mass meetings of various kinds. Entertainments, suppers,
and lectures are held beside the five or six regular weekly
religious services. Considerable sums of money are collected
and expended here, employment is found for the idle, strangers
are introduced, news is disseminated and charity distributed.
At the same time this social, intellectual, and economic
centre is a religious centre of great power. Depravity, Sin,
Redemption, Heaven, Hell, and Damnation are preached twice
a Sunday after the crops are laid by; and few indeed of the
community have the hardihood to withstand conversion. Back
of this more formal religion, the Church often stands as a real
conserver of morals, a strengthener of family life, and the
final authority on what is Good and Right.
|