Loe raamatut: «The Defects of the Negro Church», lehekülg 3

III. THE NEGRO MINISTRY

One of the defects of the Negro Church is the defect in the culture of its ministry. In spite of all that has been said and done to create prejudice against the higher education of the Negro, statistics have failed everywhere to show that our schools have turned out a large percentage of College or University graduates. There are a few College or University graduates in the ranks of our ministry. A larger percentage has failed even to get through a High School course. The defect in scholarship and culture constitutes a grave problem in our church life. The leader of a people must be a man of broad culture, wide sympathies, and in touch with all the varied interests of the people. It is not enough to be able to read the Bible or pass an examination in denominational theology. The modern teacher and preacher of today must be acquainted with the humanities. If not a scientist he must know the trend of scientific thought and its relation to the Bible. The best poetry of nations should be at his command on account of the refining influence which it has always exercised on mankind in all ages. The masterpieces of the world’s best prose writers, the history of art, the study of the philosophy of history, and the too neglected study of the history of ethnic religions must be in his possession, not simply in the library of his home but in the library of his mind. Most if not all of these studies may be prosecuted outside the college, but the college curriculum has the advantage of system which the average preacher does not have. College and University courses are excellent, not so much for what one can remember out of the many things studied in them, but for the system and mental discipline as well as the social culture through which one passes. The interests of the church demand that the pulpit shall lead the pew. Considering the influence which the Negro ministry has over its laity, the demand becomes more and more imperative. It is not a learned ministry but a cultured ministry, a ministry with higher tastes and aspirations, a ministry which in spite of the materialism of the times will make the time to study and see the beautiful, the good, and the true, in God’s handiwork. It is this lack of culture which makes many a preacher narrow-minded. To them the beauties of nature are dead. To their barren minds nature is a barren wilderness.

(2) From being uncultured the Negro ministry finds it an easy descent to being immoral. It must be borne in mind that all the defects enumerated of the ministry or laity are defects not of the whole ministry or laity, but are defects found among them to a large extent. The salvation of the church and the race is due to the faithful few, pure and noble men and women among us. They are the salt of the race and are growing in numbers as years increase. The future is full of hope. It is painful nevertheless to know that there is still a large number of immoral preachers, though not as large as there used to be. Churches and church authorities, and the educated sentiment of the race are on the alert and are quickly displacing these men whenever they are found. In the conflict of the church with the Titan of immorality, the church needs as helpers, men with a hundred hands like Briareus to hold down this elusive monster. The term immorality may include all kinds of conduct which the custom of our times supported by enlightened sentiment disapproves. But the object of the writer is not to charge the Negro ministry with all kinds of misdemeanors. There is only one kind of conduct which is so far-reaching in its results because it is fundamentally subversive of and destructive to the best interests of society, that the writer wishes to bring up as a defect of our ministry. It is sexual unchastity. There are causes for this depravity among a certain class of Negro ministers. It is not a constitutional disease in the Negro as many of the detractors of the race have affirmed. Acquaintance with the ancestral life of the African shows without the shadow of a doubt that the morality of the heathen as relates to sexes is part of the religion of most African tribes before they are brought into contact with a foreign civilization. Plantation life in American society where illicit sexual intercourse was the rule and not the exception, fostered and encouraged by white masters of the past, and still practised though less extensively by white men, is a product of Anglo-Saxon civilization. The environments of country life encourage illicit living, and to men already reared among them are a snare. Some of these environments are found in the log-cabin in which families are crowded together like cattle, and sexual privacy and decorum are impossible. The plantation log-cabin finds its counterpart in the slums of cities with their crowded alleys. The landlord in both cases is at the bottom of these evils. It is but fair to state that these environments when found in the cities or among the peasantry of Europe, as in France and Russia, reveal social evils even worse than those found among Negroes in the United States. But the point we wish to emphasize is this, that environments help to make the man, and the man helps to make his environments. There is a class of men among Negro preachers whose environments have not been other than those in the plantations, these are the men who are unfit to be the leaders of the people. When on account of their natural ability and gift of speech they are set aside as preachers, it only gives them a larger opportunity to demoralize themselves and those with whom they come into contact. It will always take men of the strongest moral fibre in any race to elevate those who live either in the slums of cities or in the cabin life of plantations, otherwise the gain to Christian missions will be in quantity rather than quality. Hence the need of specific training of the best kind in schools where students of the race will find healthy environments to inspire them to higher and nobler living. Hence the need of higher education for the race because it subjects the recipient to an atmosphere of healthy environments long enough to saturate his life. For his own interest the Negro preacher should do his utmost to improve the social condition of his people in city or farm, since that condition reflects for good or evil upon his own character.