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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 40. The Negro Church - 6. Trends and Outlook
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Chapter 40. The Negro Church 877
in Chapter 34—it does give him prestige in the Negro community. But as
the Negro protest rises, the traditional Negro preacher alienates a growing
section of the Negroes from the church.
Care must be taken, however, not to over-state the criticism against the
Negro church on this point. In both the North and the South one quite
often meets Negro preachers who are active in the work for protest and
betterment. Progressive ministers are still exceptions, but their existence
might signify a trend. There seems to be less animosity against labor union?
among Negro preachers—reflecting the increase in power of the unionr
referred to in Chapter 38. As the Negro protest is rising, the preacher finds
generally that he has to change his appeal to keep his congregation in line.
When discussing the Negro church as it is and as it might come to be,
it must never be forgotten that the Negro church fundamentally is an
expression of the Negro community itself. If the church has been other-
worldly in outlook and indulged in emotional ecstasy, it is primarily because
the downtrodden common Negroes have craved religious escape from
poverty and other tribulations. If the preachers have been timid and pussy-
footing, it is because Negroes in general have condoned such a policy and
would have feared radical leaders. The rivalry and factionalism, the
organizational weakness and economic dependence of the Negro church, the
often faltering economic and sexual morals of the preachers and their
suspicion of higher education—all this reflects life as it is lived in the subor-
dinate caste of American Negroes.
When the Negro community changes, the church also will change. It is
true that the church has not given much of a lead to reforms but has rather
lagged when viewed from the advanced positions of Negro youth and
Negro intellectuals. But few Christian churches have ever been, whether
in America or elsewhere, the spearheads of reform. That this fundamental
truth is understood—underneath all bitter criticism—is seen in the fact that
Negro intellectuals are much more willing to cooperate with Negro
churches than white intellectuals with white churches.^^^ The Negro protest
and improvement organizations cooperate with all ^^respectable” Negro
churches. The solidarity behind the abstract church institution in the Negro
community is simply amazing. The visitor finds everywhere a widespread
criticism, but this is focused mainly on the preachers. Few question the
church as such, its benevolent influence and its great potentialities.
The Negro church is part of the whole circular process which is moving
the American Negroes onward in their struggle against caste. The increas-
ing education of the Negro masses is either making them demand some-
thing more of their church than praise of the other-world and emotional
catharsis, or causing them to stand aloof from the institutionalized forms
of religion. Not only the upper classes of Negroes are now critical of the
shouting and noisy religious hysteria in oldtime Negro churches and new
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