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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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Chapter 40. The Negro Church 875
Idea that a preacher should have education for his task is still usually lack-
ing, and the average preacher has not much more of it than do the members
of his flock.®^ The chief prerequisite for becoming a minister in most of the
denominations to which Negroes belong is traditionally not education, but
a ^^call” which is more often the manifestation of temporary hysteria or
opportunistic self-inspiration than of a deep soul-searching. There are many
exceptions, of course, and they are becoming somewhat more frequent,
but the preachers who come to their profession through a ^^call” are still
numerically significant. Such preachers tend to retain the emotionalism that
has traditionally been identified with the Negro’s religion.
The ministry was once the chief outlet for Negro ambition. Under
slavery, as we have noted, the preacher stood out as the leader and spokes-
man for his group. After slavery his monopoly of status in the Negro com-
munity diminished as business and professional men increased in number.^^
Increasingly status within the Negro caste is being based on education.
Since there is little in the way of special attention paid to the Negro minis-
ter’s education—except for a minority, practically all in the cities—he Is
rapidly falling in relative status. Upper and middle class Negroes deprecate
the common uneducated Negro preacher. Initiative and leadership in mat-
ters concerning the Negro community tend to pass to this new upper class
of Negro businessmen and professionals. Meanwhile, taking up preaching
is still one of the few possibilities of rising for the individual without a
professional training.
As a class Negro preachers are losing influence, because they are not
changing as fast as the rest of the Negro community. This is now on the
verge of becoming a most serious problem, endangering the future of the
Negro church. As improvements in education have been rapid in the last
decades, the bulk of the old Negro preachers are today below the bulk of
younger generation Negroes In education. Young people have begun to look
down on the old-fashioned Negro preacher.®® Lately the problem seems to
have become as serious in rural areas as in cities. It is true that city youths
are better educated and more sophisticated, but so also are city ministers
who occasionally make some attempt to adjust to the needs of youth.®^
It is difiicult to see how the continuing decline of the minister’s prestige
and leadership can be stopped. Few college students are going into the
ministry.®® The ministry is no longer a profession which attracts the
Mays reports that there were 253 fewer students enrolled in Negro seminaries in 1939
than in 1924. Including 92 Negro students in Northern white seminaries, there were only
850 Negroes enrolled in all seminaries in 1939, and only 254 of these were college
graduates. (Benjamin E. Mays, “The Negro Church in American Life,” Christendom
[Summer, 1940], pp. 389-391.)
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