The Negro's church,.

12

The Negro's Church

Denominational Rivalry
Denominational rivalry, though not peculiar to the Negro,
has also made its contribution to the multiplication of Negro
churches; and it has possibly helped to swell the number of
Negro church members. It frequently happens that Baptist
and Methodist churches are like the Western Union and the
Postal Telegraph. Where one is found the other is not far
away. There is a desire on the part of denominations to
swell their numbers-both with respect to churches and members. This urge to be "big" in numbers is largely responsible
for padded reports in church statistics. Though there may
be hardly enough members in a given community to warrant
a Baptist church if a Methodist church is there, or vice versa,
one frequently hears the argument that the denomination
must take care of its folk. Hence hundreds of Baptist and
Methodist missions are found in localities where they are absolutely not needed. There is no authority able to keep the
Baptists from organizing; and as for the Methodists, the
bishop often feels that if he does not allow certain ones to
organize, they will join the Baptist or some other church and
thus be lost to Methodism. In a small Georgia community
where a Baptist and Methodist church exist with only sixty
members each, including children, and where both churches
were in very poor physical condition, the investigators asked
one of the officials what were the possibilities of merging the
two. The officer simply replied that it would take God to do
that. This case could be multiplied scores of times in the
sixteen centers comprising the rural and urban study.
In addition to blind loyalty to a particular denomination
with respect to locating or building churches, there exists in
many cases an honest conviction that their church is "the
church" of churches. Instances like these do exist and have
significance. This attitude cannot be classed as mere denominational rivalry, and it is a factor in church development.