THL CHURCH ANDTHL NLGRO A 5TATLMLNT CONCERNING OUR WORK WITHIN THL BORDLR5 OF THL UNITED 5TATL5 THL BOARD OF MI55ION5 281 FOURTH AVLNUE. NEW YORK w- nwi •ST. I’AIJI/S NORMAL AND INDUSTHIAL SCHOOL. LAWHI'.NCKVILI.K, VA. THE CHURCH AMONG THE NEGROES By the Rev. SAMUEL H. BISHOP THE “PROBLEM” O NE of the happy signs of the Church’s life and growth in these days is the increasing sense of sureness of touch in her missionary work. Problems vast and comple.x do not now stun her into silence, nor difficulties turn her into sloughs of hesita- tion. China, Japan, the Philij)pines, Alaska, are no longer the stuff out of which dreams are made, but the open promises of a working day; they are dis- tinctly set within the horizon of the possible to a calculating sense as well as to an obedient faith. Only in one field does there -seem to be uncertainty of touch, hesitating judgment, and faltering effort. About the Negro and about the methods of ai)peal to him we seem divided in mind, troubled in heart, and confu-sed in action. Perhai)s we may simply note a few of the reasons for this anomalous condition which distresses us. One is that we are as a matter of fact a national church, with a democratic form of government; and national action on difficult and perj)lexing questions is always a compound of varying, ami possibly of antagonistic -sectional needs, motives, and forces. Another is that certain racial facts and necessities have flung our Church machinery out of gear. Still another is that we somehow lack the staying power which would keep us thinking at a hard and wearisome problem until we have .solved it ; hence our interest is spasmodic and fleeting, instead of abiding, insistent, and compelling. 3 as it ought to be. And lastly, we have almost no Negro specialists among the laity — men who view the work of missions Negro-end-to. But it would be utterly false if we gave THE PAST the impression that our Church’s work for the Negro has been or need be a failure. In ante-bellum days, notwithstanding all the faults of slavery, there was carried on an extraordi- narily successful missionary activity which was blessed, not only with large numbers of communicants, but also with a very real religious and ethical development of Negro life and character. For example, in the old registry of Bruton Parish we find thirty-three con- secutive pages entirely devoted to the record of bap- tisms of slaves or colored servants. This record ex- tends from 1746 to 1797. During that period there were 1,122 Negroes baptized, and during the year 1750 the record of baptisms of Negroes in Bruton Parish alone was larger by one than the total number of infant and adult baptisms of Negroes in the Diocese of Southern Virginia during the year 1903. In 1724 the Reverend IVilliam Beech reported to the Bishop of London that he instructed and baptized (during 15 years) 200 slaves, and that the owners of slaves were generally careful to bring them to baptism. Sim- ilar work was being done in South Carolina. In St. Michael’s record (Charleston) for the year 1818 there were registered 130 colored communicants to 350 white; and in St. Phillip’s for the same year 180 colored to 320 white communicants. In 1856 there were in the diocese 3,022 colored to 2,971 white communicants. The real fact is that the Christian people of the South felt deeply their responsibility for the moral and religious training of the Negro; and to some measure of fulfilment of that responsibility is due the fact that the Negroes acquired during that period so much of ethical character and of the spirit of Jesus Christ as to enable the best of them to become teach- ers of their people, and to make all of them capable of the generous fidelity they manifested during the war. It was not infrequent in religious families of the South to find a white-haired saintly old Negro bearing witness to the things of God before white and black alike. There is no way of ascertaining THE PRESENT definitely what proportion of the Negroes in this land were at the beginning of the war between the States baptized members of the Church. In 1859 there were recorded 468.000 members of the various churches in the South, of which it is perhaps fair to assume that more than 50.000 w'ere baptized members of our Church. There are now about 20,000 communicants in the whole Church, twenty independent parishes and about 200 chapels and missions; many of which are steadily gaining in self-reliance, in appreciation of opportunity and of duty, and in courageous and faithful attack upon the hard and difficult tasks which confront them. In at least two southern dioceses the Negroes give to the work of the Church $5.00 per capita; in a North Carolina town a congregation of working people gave for a new church building over $8,000, besides at the same time maintaining and extending parochial work; a New Jersey mission, also of working people, gave over $7,000 toward a new building — nearly one-half of its cost; it was a Negro congregation which vied with St. Thomas’s, New York, in giving to missions an amount received for a new church building to replace one destroyed by fire; it was a Negro barber who bought and paid for from his own earnings a building lot, paid most of the cost of a chapel building, and still bears most of the expense of a parochial school with 200 pupils; it was a graduate of St. Augustine’s School who in Christ’s name gave up personal ambi- tion to become a farmer in a backwoods community, and at the same time to teach a school for which public provision could not be obtained; it was another graduate of St. Augustine’s who trained fiv'e lay- readers, and with their help started a mission. Work among the Negroes has its peculiar diffi- culties, some of which are attributable to our Church’s own inertness and lack of vital and commanding interest, others to other causes. We do not give to the Negroes the same governmental initiative which they find in other bodies; and in consequence the Methodists and Baptists alone have nearly four million Negro members, and influence 75 per cent of the total population. But the loyalty and staying quality of our people, and especially of the graduates of our schools, under all conditions and amid all discouragements, are remarkable evidence of the Church’s abiding power and influence. There is probably less leakage of cultivated and thoughtful young people from our Church than from any other body. An eminent judge in a southern state, himself a Methodist, paroles first offenders among Negro youth only to members of our Church; and the secretary of a great home-mission board has recently declared that upon the type of character which our Church tends to produce depends the whole hope for the moral and religious progress of the Negroes of this land. Recognizing then, as we must, that from the time when the Reverend Absalom Jones, the first Negro 6 ordained to the ministry of the Church in this country, began his work in Philadelphia in 1795, to the present time, much devoted and heroic work has been done. Still the present conditions must be unsatisfactory to anyone who loves and believes in the Church, and who realizes how critical is the need of the Negro people in this land, and how serious the Negro problem is likely to be unless the Christian forces in the country shall awaken to the fact that this problem, like all of our great social problems, requires not so much a solvent as a solver. That Solver we believe to be Jesus Christ; and notwithstanding the smallness of our numbers, we believe the Church has a peculiar work to do, one of which many of the best colored people are conscious, and which they desire to see her accomplish. THE CHURCH’S AIMS Notwithstanding the uncertainty I. A ]\IINISTR\ of which we have spoken, the Church is doing some things which are sure in insight, definite in aim, and certain in promise — the things which the Negro most needs, and the e.xperience of the world most clearly certifies to be wise. We offer in our divinity schools a high order of training for those who are to be priests and prophets to their j)eoi)le; and we have one divinity school especially for Negro students, which is meeting with peculiar intelligence and skill the needs of men who are to serve in the cities and rural districts of the South. AMien one considers the lack of adequate previous training of some of our boys, and hence the necessarily extended course of study, it seems well within the limits of modesty to say that in wise adjust- 7 A CLASS OF TRAINED NURSES AT ST. AGNES’S HOSPITAL, RALEKHL N. C. TAc /lev. A. B. Tlunler, Principal of St. Augustine's School, and Afrs. Hunter, stand in (he center. Dr. Hayden sits tn front of Valley school — St. Paul’s so 9 well and favorably known as to need no description here other than to say that it has under God morally and economically re-made the Negroes in a district comprising two or more counties, and is influencing southern Virginia and northern North Carolina. The Fort Valley School is the most important Negro school in Georgia, and a state supervisor of schools says it is doing what the white schools are talking about doing. Aside from the schools mentioned, we have eight secondary and industrial schools in eight dioceses, progressing slowly but steadily toward high standards of competency and efficiency — teaching and inspiring the practice of real religion, sound manners, honest industry, and useful citizenship. Again, there are about III. PAROCHIAL CARE loO parochial schools at- tached to parishes and missions, whiph are training about 5,000 pupils in the beginnings of religion and in the principles of right living. There is a widespread opinion, even among Churchmen, that parochial schools are a questionable good, in that they may have the effect of releasing the state from its obligation to educate all its children. But there is one simple fact of history which should calm that fear, namely, that the prompting to public education — indeed, the prompting and typical example for practically every form of public care of helpless life — has come from the Church. This is not to say that public hospitals, homes for the aged and the defective, orphan asylums and schools would not have come sometime; but only to state that as a matter of fact they did come from the Church. With all their faults and poverty parochial schools for Negroes are better than the majority of public schools, and therefore still have suggestive and typical value. 10 The South with its expensive system of double schools, though it is heroically trying, has not yet given school opportunity to more than 52 per cent of its Negro school children, and to those only for about an average of four months in a year. This case of the parochial school might rest on an appeal to the method of history; but there are other matters, like reverence, purity of character, faith, the discipline of God, the lack of which in too many of our American youth of all classes — not to speak of inability to use English, or of cluttered minds and untrained talents — may well give the critics of the parochial school pause, and induce an unwonted modesty of judgment. Whatever the future may determine, it is not yet time to abolish the Negro parochial school; though it should be unselfish, suggestive, and exemplary. The policeman who patrols the beat in which St. Mary’s (Columbia, S. C.) is situated, says that school has transformed a section which was formerly one of the worst slums in the city. Now we must turn to our church and mission work. That depends largely upon our Negro clergy; and of them it is our joy to say that they are men of uni- formly high character, fine purpose, real consecration, and steady faith. Many of them are lonely, most of them ill-paid, none in easy fields, few with even fair parish equijjment, yet they work uncomplainingly, zealously, hopefully, devotedly, for their Lord, as Chiistian missionaries should. And their work bears fruit in an increased number of communicants, in moralized homes, in leavened communities, and in a saner and higher religious life for all the Christian bodies of Negroes. In every diocese but one where Negroes are, the number of our communicants has increased each year for several years; in three dioceses 11 the gain has been proportionately greater among Negroes than among whites; three parishes have more than tripled the number of communicants in five years; giving is steadily increasing; service of the community is more intelligent and effective; where the Church is strong, race relations are good and Negro crime and vice diminish; in Brunswick County, Virginia, the jail has been empty for many months; in short, Christ is the Solver, and the Church is His representative. But men and means are needed; established schools must be equipped and strengthened; missions and parishes should be a thousand instead of a hundred; ignorance, disease, and immorality are still wofully rife; fear and sullenness stalk where love and con- fidence should reign; life is scant where it should be joyous and abundant; advancing ambition and in- creasing power need subjection to the Master of Love. We ask for this work, interest, prayer, faith, and money. FOR OUR WORK AMONG NEGROES O Lord, our Saviour, WTio hast told us that Thou wilt require much of those to whom much is given; grant that Thy Church may more fully discharge her responsibility to extend Thy Kingdom among the Negro people in our land. Raise up native ministers to lead them in the paths of righteousness. Guide them in their work and send down Thy blessings, temporal and spiritual, upon all the members of thb race. All this we ask in Thy Name. Amen. This pamphlet may be obtained from the Literature Department^ Board of Missions, 281 Fourth Avenue, New York, Ask for No. 700, All o^erings for Missions should be sent to Mr. George Gordon King, Treasurer, Church Missions House, 281 Fourth Avenue, New York, 1 Ed., 2-14. lOM. R. P.