Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 November 1883 — Religious Life of the Freedmen. [ARTICLE]

Religious Life of the Freedmen.

The vast majority of the blacks art Baptist. Next in point of numbers come the Methodists. Lastly, thongl) vastly in the minority, stand the Presbyterians and the Episcopalians. In fact, the latter admit and deplore theii inability to carry out an adequate system of missionary work among the negroes. In only a few of the large towns do we find African Episcopal churches. True, all the white Episcopal churches have galleries set apart for the negroes, but they are unused, or at most sparsely occupied. It is not uncommon to see -a white Episcopal church with one or more colored members; but the chances are that one will turn out to be the well-paid sexton, and the rest a couple of superannuated carriage drivers, who, having in former days “ ’sociated wid the quality,” scorn to “take up wid poor folks and niggers.” As a rule the doctrine and ritual of this church seem utterly incomprehensible, and therefore repellent to the negro. He harbors an undisguised distrust of it. He does not consider il religion at all. He has not the faintest idea that it can save anybody. There is too little heat and too much'form; and the negro is the truceless enemy of form in religion or out of religion. He is a creature of emotion, impulse, noise. Restraint is odious, insupportable. An apt text, a familiar allusion, or simply the shout of a fellow listener, plunges him into ecstacies, and thenceforward he is alive only to the sound oi his own voice.— Atlantic.