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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 40. The Negro Church - 5. Its Weakness
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874 An American Dilemma
current social life in the field of morals 5
the preaching of traditional
puritanical morals has little effect on the bulk of the Negro population, and
the real moral problems of the people are seldom considered in the church.
Practically all Negro leaders have criticized the Negro church on these
points. Booker T. Washington, for example, said:
From the nature of things, all through slavery it was life in the future world that
was emphasized in religious teaching rather than life in this world. In his religious
meetings in ante-bellum days the Negro was prevented from discussing many points
of practical religion which related to this world; and the white minister, who was
his spiritual guide, found it more convenient to talk about heaven than earth, so very
naturally that today in his religious meeting it is the Negro’s feelings which are
worked upon mostly, and it is description of the glories of heaven that occupy most
of the time of his sermon.^^
Ignorance, poverty, cultural isolation, and the tradition of dependence are
responsible for this situation, in the same way as they are factors keeping
Negroes down in other areas of life.
The frequent schisms in Negro churches weaken their institutional
strength. New Negro churches and sects seldom begin because of theological
divergences, but rather because a preacher wants to get a congregation,^®
because some members of a church feel that the minister is too emotional or
not emotional enough, because some members feel that they have little in
common with other members of the church, as well as because of outside
missionary influences and division.^® The competition between the preachers
is intense and, as we said, most churches are small. There is little collabora-
tion between the churches. Overhead expenses tend to be relatively high in
the small church establishments.®® Since, in addition, the membership of
the churches is composed usually of poor people, the economic basis of
most churches is precariously weak.*
Poverty often makes the Negro church dependent upon white benefac-
tors. It also prevents paying such salaries® that ambitious young men could
be tempted to educate themselves properly for the ministry.® In fact the
* Negro churches usually have poor business practices. There is little secretarial help, thus
there is poor accounting, and the money is sometimes just given to the minister or to a few
church officers to do what they please with it. There is probably a significant amount
of misappropriation of funds under this system. (See Mays and Nicholson, op, cit,^ pp.
168-197 and 259-265, and Hortense Powdermaker, After Freedom [1939], p. 238.)
‘’Mays and Nicholson {of, ciKy p. 189) reported from their 1930 sample study that
69.4 per cent of Negro ministers had an annual income of less than $2,000. The average
rural preacher got only $266 per church per year, but often he served several churches
or had some other outside source of income. See Chapter 14, Section 5.
* According to a sample study by Woodson, . . only seven-tenths of one per cent of
Negro high school graduates contemplate taking up the ministry, and many of those who
have been known to qualify themselves thus do not stay in the ministry.” (Carter G.
Woodson, The Negro Professional Man and the Community [1934], p. 80.)
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