The Defects of the Negro Church

The following stages may be noticed:

(1) Violent physical commotion followed by physical exhaustion.

(2) Loss of physical control.

(3) Loss of moral control. At this stage there is a feeling of abandon leading often to unchaste exposure of the person, wild cries as if demented, and all kinds of extravagances.

(4) Mental infection as well as emotional panic. At this stage there is pandemonium. Many obtain religion by the process of infection.

(5) A lowered physical as well as moral vitality. At the last meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, a thoughtful paper by Dr. Graham of Ireland showed that there was less insanity among Roman Catholics than Protestants in Ireland, due to difference in type of religion, Protestants of Ireland being intensely morbid and ascetic in their Calvinism. (Congregationalist, Nov. 29, 1902, p. 781.) I should not be surprised, if investigation was made, that similar results would be seen in America not only between Protestants and Roman Catholics, but among Protestants themselves. I should not be surprised that there were fewer maniacs among Presbyterians and Congregationalists than among Baptists and Methodists. May not students of physco-physics make this a study for the benefit of religion? To the use of emotions in religion the writer has no objections, he is heartily in favor, but he seriously objects to excessive emotionalism for the following reasons:

(1) It fails to recognize the moral and ethical judgment.

(2) It fails to recognize the volitional side of human nature. “With a man’s will-power dormant, undeveloped, unknown, all attempt at really training and moulding the character is foolish because impossible. Man sometimes attempts it; God never does. He calls into activity first of all a man’s will. He seeks to know what a man’s own free choice is. Then he knows what course to follow in his schooling of the soul.”1

(3) It fails to recognize the rational side of human nature.

(4) It is at variance with our concrete experience of life. In our daily experience we think, feel and will for action.

(5) It is sickly feminine and appeals to neurotics.

There are some general facts in connection with the philosophy of religion which are often overlooked in the study of the Negro religion. Two stages may be noticed in the history of the religious development of peoples, the primitive and the rational. The primitive stage is poetical and imaginative, in fact religion is then in its barbaric state. In its rational stage we see the religious man under a developed rule of conduct. He still feels but his feelings are controlled by reason. There is nothing new in the religion of the Negro. He is by no means a peculiar man from a religious standpoint. The physical contortions and gyrations noticed in his Christian worship are as old as the history of religion itself, if not older than it. In his worship we may see things which are found in the heathen rites of the native African, in the which are found in the heathen rites of the native African, in the Bacchanalia of the Greeks, among the Sali or dancing priests of the Romans, and among the Corybantes. The same effect which is produced on the feelings of the Negro has been produced on the feelings of the American Indian, as well as on the ancient bards of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Germany. Lord Macaulay, describing the Puritan, says: “In his devotional retirement he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of friends. He caught a gleam of the Beautific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire.” In the girlhood days of the late Elizabeth Cady Stanton her sensitive mind was nearly overbalanced, and she suffered terribly from the too vivid description of future punishment by the emotional Finney. The imagery of the Book of Revelation has a peculiar effect on the feelings of the Negro. Its mysticism acts like a spell over him. Says Macaulay, “The Greek Rhapsodists, according to Plato, could not recite Homer without almost falling into convulsions.” The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping knife while he shouts his death song. The Dijazerti in the region of the Sahara believe that communication with Allah is only possible in a state of trance, and accordingly they work themselves into a religious frenzy, while the ignorant among them repeat the name of Allah many thousand times till they fall into a state of unconsciousness.

We do not wonder, considering the primitive state of religion, why men were spell-bound under its influence. It is all the more conspicuous in tropical natures, for there youth is exuberant. In all primitive states of religion we notice the same abandonment, the same illusions produced on the imagination, the contortions of the body, the child-like credulity, the superstition, the depression, and exaltations of the feelings, “the agony, the ecstasy, the plentitude of belief.” They are the complement of barbaric faith, and not a peculiarity of the Negro. If in these primitive conditions we see the Negro tickled by a straw, or frightened by a ghost, or in moments of ecstasy spreading out his hands in an attempt to fly up to heaven without dying, these are the natural concomitants of such conditions. We pity, rather than censure him, more especially when we remember that for two hundred years in the house of bondage, his wild, primitive nature was left untrained.

What is needed for the proper religious development of the Negro is education, not repression or subjugation of his feelings. We cannot emphasize this fact too much. There is the danger, in the zeal of preserving the holy ark, of defiling it by unholy contact. The Negro needs more thought in his religion, but religion is not all thought. To have a proper balance in religion as in every-day life, the faculties of thought, feeling, and volition must be present, distributed in fair proportions. When reason is overfed in the exercise of religion, the result is a dry and barren rationalism. When the emotions are overfed the result is a wild and sickly sentimentalism, a neurotic religion.