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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
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864 An American Dilemma
community. The difference is mainly that Negroes—together with some
poor, isolated groups of whites—are lagging about half a century behind."
Today it is probable that a greater proportion of Negroes than of whites
belong to churches as formal church members. According to the United
States Census of Religious Bodies, which is very inaccurate but has the best
data available for the country as a whole, Negro churches claimed 5,660,618
members in 1936 and white churches 50,146,748.® Even if we make all the
assumptions that work in the direction of under-enumerating Negro church
membership, the Negroes still have a larger membership: 44.O per cent of
the Negro population are members of Negro churches, as compared to 42.4
per cent of the white population in white churches.”^ Actually the discrep-
ancy is much greater, since we have neglected the significant number of
Negroes who are members of white churches. The census overlooks many
of the small denominations to which Negroes adhere more than whites j
we have not subtracted Orientals and Indians from church figures but have
done so for our population base^ we have ignored the fact that whites
belong, in greater proportion, to those churches that count membership
from birth rather than from confirmation (for example, the Roman Catholic
Church) i
we have neglected the fact that the Jewish churches report as
members all persons living in communities in which local congregations
are situated.
America as a whole is still predominantly Protestant in spite of the ‘^new”
immigration j
Southern whites and Negroes are even more Protestant. In
American Protestantism various low church denominations with less formal-
ized ritual have always been predominant. The great majority of Negroes
belong to the Baptist and Methodist churches or to small sects which have
branched out from them, and the ritual of these churches tends to have
little elaborateness or formality.® As in the white American population,
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