Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 40. The Negro Church - 3. The Negro Church and the General American Pattern of Religious Activity - 4. A Segregated Church
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
868 An American Dilemma
down to the people. In a veritable struggle for life they have had to go into
competition with all other demands on peoples’ money and time—and
into competition with each other. Occasionally this is dangerous for the
minister’s integrity. He has to be a diplomat and a businessman and may
have to compromise his ideals. The Negro churches are forced in the same
direction as are white churches, but much more so.
In one particular respect the great split into denominations and individ-
ual congregations in America is anti-democratic in its results. It makes for
a greater manifestation of social class distinction than there would be if
most people belonged to the same state-supported church.^^ Belonging to
one church or another serves in America as a means of class identification,
just like membership in clubs. Even in this respect Negroes conform to the
American pattern, but they exaggerate it slightly as high social status is
rarer and respectability more precious in the lower caste.
4. A Segregated Church
Both the strength and the weakness of the Negro church as a power
agency for the Negro people is related to the facts that the Negro church
is a segregated church and that there is astonishingly little interracial
cooperation between white and Negro churches. In both respects the South
is extreme, but the situation in the North is not very different.
This virtual isolation between institutionalized religious life in the two
castes is somewhat more easily explainable when we remember that
churches in America have come to have significance for the social class the
individual church member belongs to or aspires to belong to. Nevertheless,
church segregation is a great moral dilemma to many earnest Christians
among the whites. Embree^ explains to us;
Segregation in Christian churches is an embarrassment. In a religion whose central
teaching is brotherly love and the golden rule, preacliers have to do a great deal of
rationalizing as they expound their own gospel.^®
Among Negroes all over the country this point is constantly made to prove
the insincerity of white people.
Southern whites usually succeed in keeping the Christian challenge of
religious brotherhood off their minds. The observer feels that the very
incompatibility between the uncompromising Christian creed, on the one
hand, and the actual caste relations, on the other hand, is a reason why
white ministers in the South keep so aloof from the race problem and why
the white church in the South has generally played so inconsequential a
part in changing race relations. It is also a reason why the white minister
has been closely watched by his congregation so that he does not start to
draw practical conclusions from Christian doctrine that would favor the
improvement of race relations. Bailey complained a generation ago:
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
