The Negro's church,.

6

The Negro's Church

Negroes Receive Special Encouragement
For the most part, the idea of a separate church has been
satisfactory to white Americans and pleasing to a goodly
number of Negroes. The encouragement that Negroes have
received from white people to have their own churches has
served to increase the number of Negro churches. The
whites have stimulated Negroes to build or purchase their
own churches by direct acts of discrimination against them;
by financially aiding them to purchase or build churches or to
start new work; by separating the Negroes under white supervision; by giving church buildings to Negroes or encouraging
them to remain at old sites when the whites moved or built
new churches; by willingly granting the request when Negroes desired their own church; or by friendly counsel and
advice.
Examples of these types of encouragement are vividly reflected in the chapter on origins. Even Negro churches that
are organizationally a part of white denominations are separately set off; and possibly the greatest systematic financial
aid that Negro churches receive from white people comes
from those denominational bodies that are organically and
theoretically one body, embracing both whites and Negroes,
but in practice separate and distinct. For the whites, who
desire the separate Negro church, it solves a complex social
problem; for the Negroes, who are pleased with the separate
church, it furnishes an opportunity for self-expression and
leadership usually denied in the white church.
The Negro has also been encouraged by white people,
especially in the rural South and in small southern towns and
cities, by being "let alone" provided no militant doctrine was
preached and the Negro's religious emphasis was otherworldly. What the white people did not object to or prohibit
in the Negro's church life, he interpreted to mean sanction or
approval.