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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - X. The Negro Community - 43. Institutions - 3. The Negro Church in the Negro Community
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938 An American Dilemma
The second point is that the great periods of Negro conversion to
Christianity were periods when the emotional forms of religion were taking
hold of the whites too. In the Great Revival of 1 800, it was common to see
large groups of whites, gathered in a field upon the advertisement of a
traveling revival leader, shouting, crying, laughing, ^^speaking with
tongues,” barking, dancing, rolling around, and manifesting all the traits
associated with extreme ^^possession.” Negroes occasionally participated, but
more often just watched from a distance or had their own imitations with
the help of white missionaries.^® Negroes—and lower class whites in iso-
lated communities in the South—have retained these religious practices in
a relatively subdued form. Negroes have been losing them, but not as
rapidly as have whites. Certain practices of the Negro Baptist and Metho-
dist churches—such as permitting persons to become clergymen without
having an education—and the geographical and cultural isolation of
Negroes in the rural South, have helped to keep the Negroes behind the
whites in the trend toward less emotionalism.
It may be that emotionalism in religion is well suited to take the Negroes
mind off his degradation and frustration. It is commonly said that it is
religion that “keeps him going.” The feeling of “possession” is used the
world over to produce euphoria when circumstances are unduly unpleasant
—^although in most groups, drugs and drink rather than religious excite-
ment produce the effect. Whether or not there is any relation between the
decline of emotionalism in religion and the growing resentment and
caustic bitterness among Negroes could not be proved, although it is
plausible.
Just as emotionalism was borrowed from and sanctioned by religious
behavior among whites, so were the smaller religious sects taken over by
Negroes after they were started by whites. The generation following 1880
saw the origin of a large number of lower class religious movements, espe-
cially among whites in the Middle West.^^ These movements gained most
headway, perhaps, among the poor whites and the Negroes of the South.
To this group of sects belong the Holiness Church, the Disciples of Christ,
the Church of God and twenty-odd others.^®
The Negro church is a community center far excellence. In the South,
there are few public buildings for the recreation of Negroes, except some
of the schools, upon the use of which many limitations are laid. Negroes
are usually too poor to build special community centers. Only in large cities
does private enterprise provide halls for Negro meetings and recreation.
Negro homes are almost always too small to have more than two or three
guests at one time. Only the church is left, and in many ways it is well
fitted to serve as a community center. It is usually located in the heart of
the community it is meant to serve, often closer to most of the homes than
is the school. It is owned by the Negroes themselves, and they can feel
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