The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson Edited - TopicsExpress



          

The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson Edited with an Introduction by Charles H. Wesley and Thelma D. Perry First Published in 1933 Large numbers of Negroes drift into churches led by the uneducated ministers who can scarcely read and write. These preachers do not know much of what is found in school books and cannot hardly make use of a library in working out a sermon; but they understand the people with whom they deal, and they make such use of the human Laboratory that sometimes they become experts in solving vexing problems and meeting social needs. They would be much better preachers if they could have attended a school devoted to the development of the (mind) rather than to cramming it with extraneous matters which have no bearing on the task which lies before them. Unfortunately, however, very few of such schools of religion now exist. For lack of intelligence guidance, then, the negro church often fulfills a mission to the contrary of that which it was established. Because the Negro church is such a free field and it is controlled largely by the Negroes themselves, it seems that practically all the incompetents and undesirables who have been barred from other walks of life by race prejudice and economic difficulties have rushed into the ministry for the exploitation of the people. Honest ministers who were trying to do their duty, then, find their task made difficult by these men who stoop to practically everything conceivable. Almost anybody of the lowest type may get into the Negro ministry. The Methodist claim that they have strict regulations to prevent this, but their net draws in proportionately as many undesirables as one finds among the Baptist. The large majority of preaches today, then, are doing nothing more than to keep up the mediaeval hell-fire scare with which the whites have long since abandoned to emphasize the humanitarian trend in religion through systematized education. The young people of the Negro race could be held in church by some such program, but the Negros Christianity does not conceive of social uplift as a duty of the church; and consequently Negro children have not been adequately trained in religious matters to be equal to the social demands upon them. Turning their back on medievalism, then, these untrained youth think nothing of taking up moonshining, gambling, and racketeering as occupations; and they find great joy in smoking, drinking, and fornication as diversions. They cannot accept the old ideas, and they do not understand the new. What the Negro church is, however, has been determined largely by what the white man has taught the race by precept and example. We must remember that the Negroes learned their religion from the early white Methodist and Baptist who evangelized the slaves and the poor whites when they were barred from postulating the aristocracy. The American white people themselves taught Negros to specialize unduly in the praise of the Lord, hallelujah worship. In the West Indies among the Anglicans and among the Latin people negroes did not show such emotionalism. They are cold and conservative.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 10:29:41 +0000

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