The Education of Negro Ministers

Abstract

It is not surprising that the Negro minister whose chief function it was to deal with religion in the realm of the supernatural would be the first to emerge in the Negro group and the first to achieve acceptance by the group. Nor is it strange that slave masters would permit a degree of freedom in religion before they would allow it to exist in social and economic areas. Religion is non-competitive. Frequently it does not deal with social and economic needs. Often it projects its hopes in a distant future or dreams of a heaven where the values sought here, but unattained, will be realized in some far-off glory land. The early religion of the Negro was, possibly of necessity, largely of this sort; so it was much easier for the Negro to achieve freedom in religion than it was for him to acquire it in other fields. It is probably true that leaders in great numbers, in social, economic and political areas, would have never been permitted to rise as rapidly as they were allowed to rise in religious circles. Since his religion was non-competitive and since the values sought were not directly those of this world, the Negro was allowed more freedom in church and religion. In a sense, nothing is more vitally a part of man than his religion. It is far more difficult to keep a man, though a slave, from expressing and practicing his religion than it is to prohibit him from expressing and exercising his social and political views. Religion is as close to man as breathing. Then, too, there was the element of fear. The Negro who said God had called him to preach and demonstrated it with convincing speech would naturally make an impression upon a few slave owners. There is a traditional belief that it is a dangerous thing to tamper with a man of God. Even since emancipation some whites have feared the Negro's influence with God. It is reported, and on good authority, that a prominent judge in an outstanding Southern town said on one occasion that he stood in fear of the prayers of C. T. Walker more than he did all the other forces in that state combined. Carter G. Woodson in The History of the Negro Church has pointed out that many decades prior to emancipation powerful Negro preachers impressed the whites by their eloquent speech which was an asset to the Negro in his quest for freedom. As previously stated, the Negro minister was the first to be accepted by the Negro group; primarily because of the nature of religion, partly because the minister was the first to be tolerated in appreciable numbers by the slave owners and because he