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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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936 An American Dilemma
community, probably more important than in the average white commu-
nity. In this section we shall seek’ to sketch this role.
Probably the chief “function” of the Negro church has been to buoy up
the hopes of its members in the face of adversity and to give them a sense
of community. This is, of course, true of any church, but it is especially
true of Negroes, who have had a hard lot and to whom so many channels
of activity outside the church have been closed. Negroes have had to place
their hopes for a better life in religion. As a Negro poet puts it, “Our
churches are where we dip our tired bodies in cool springs of hope, where
we retain our wholeness and humanity despite the blows of death from the
Bosses. . .
.”® It is this need, perhaps more than anything else, which has
attached the Negro so strongly to his church and accounts for his reputation
as a religious person. In the colder and more critical words of Mays and
Nicholson,^® “It is not too much to say that if the Negro had experienced
a wider range of freedom in social and economic spheres, there would have
been fewer Negroes ^called’ to preach and fewer Negro churches.”
The denominations to which Negroes belong do not tend to have a
heavy, formal ritual.* It is true that a significant proportion of church-
going Negroes belong to the formalized Episcopalian and Catholic
churches, but the great majority belong to the Baptist and Methodist
churches or to the many little sects that have grown up in recent years.
Lower class Negroes more than middle and upper class Negroes adhere
to these latter churches. The small upper class of Negroes tends to belong
to the Episcopalian, Congregational, and Presbyterian churches, since for
them a main function of church membership is to give prestige.^^
The religious service in Negro churches is often characterized by extreme
emotionalism. The old-fashioned preacher employs gestures, intonation of
the voice, sobbing, and words calculated to arouse emotion.^^ His audience
aids with interjections at certain points and with stamping of the feet.
There is a great deal of choir and congregational singing, and use of musical
instruments of the percussion type.** These “rousements” bring most of the
congregation into some degree of “possession.”
* For the facts concerning the distribution of Negro churches by denominations, see Chapter
40, Section 3.
**
Allison Davis lists the rituals of Negro churches which arouse emotions as follows
:
‘‘i. Narration of ‘visions* or ‘travels* as public evidence of individuals religious con-
version.
“a. Highly dramatized baptism in public setting, in a river, creek, or (usually in Old
City and its environment) in a hog-wallow.
“3. Communion service in which members shake hands with one another, and march
around minister and church officers in a closely packed circle, while they sing and stamp feet.
“4. Communal participation by members in both sermon and frayerSy with antiphonal
structure in which members reply to preacher or deacon, or interrupt him. Communal sing-
ing, of same antiphonal form.
“5. Funeral service in which all congregation views corpse, and participates in both
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