Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement: A Biography

4. The Negro’s God

80 80 —4— The Negro’s God What is it that man will live for, fight for, and die for? What is it to which man gives his ultimate allegiance and ultimate loyalty? Whatever that thing is, that’s his God. —mays, Quotable Quotes of Benjamin E. Mays Black churches were weekly topics of conversations in black communities. Black periodicals regularly covered the building of new churches, denominational conventions, famous preachers, and church scandals.1 And black churches were everywhere—on busy streets in storefronts, on quiet corners in buildings with impeccable masonry, and on rural roads in structures built with rustic clapboards. As northern migration advanced, black religiosity transformed the American urban landscape.For Mays, black Protestant churches were the central institutions in the everyday lives of countless black Americans and therefore needed to be understood historically and sociologically and modernized theologically. And that is exactly what he set out to do throughout the 1930s. In 1930, Mays and Joseph W. Nicholson were the recipients of an Institute of Social and Religious Research (isrr) grant to carry out a study on black churches. The isrr, which was founded in 1921, was an independent institute funded by John D. Rockefeller Jr., who, over a thirteen-year period, contributed $3,000,000. “In its thirteen years of work, the Institute carried on research covering a wide range of topics including church organization, foreign missions , religious education, and race relations.”2 The isrr had previously funded a study titled The Education of Negro Ministers, authored by William Andrew Daniels in 1925, and Negro Problems in the Cities, by T. J. Woofter Jr. in 1928. In 1927, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (asnlh), whose chief executive was the historian Carter G. Woodson, had been awarded a grant by the isrr to study Negro churches. The Howard University historian Charles Wesley, an African Methodist Episcopal clergyman, and his colleague Lorenzo Greene directed the field research.3 Woodson rejected a draft of the study, calling it “worthless.” Woodson did not believe that Wesley possessed sufficient objectivity because of his religious convictions. Dissatisfied with Wesley’s study Woodson then sought out the sociologist E. Franklin Frazier the negro’s god : 81 to take it over. When Frazier refused, Woodson was forced to return the grant to the isrr.4 Three years later, the isrr approved Mays’s proposal for a new study of the Negro’s church. John R. Mott, the president of the isrr board, and Trevor Arnett, its treasurer and a Rockefeller Foundation official, wrote to John D. Rockefeller Jr. informing him that the “study of the Negro Church is notable in that it marks the first attempt to study the most influential factor in Negro Life.” In the isrr’s pre-publication literature, the study was called “A Study of Representative Negro Churches: A pioneer study, covering a sample of urban and rural churches in both South and North, by B. E. Mays and J. W. Nicholson.” Mays had come to the attention of John Mott through his work in the ymca. Channing Tobias, senior secretary of Interracial Services of the ymca aided Mays in securing the position as the lead researcher on this project.5 Nicholson, like Mays, had attended seminary and was a Ph.D. student at Northwestern University in Chicago researching black clergymen. Mott and Arnett considered the potential survey by Mays and Nicholson to be a vitally important contribution to the work of the isrr.6 The institute was pleased because “noted Negro churchmen and educators” had given their stamp of approval.7 Mays and Nicholson received the funding just as the Great Depression began. Mays recalled that the two-year study “if not sent [from heaven], must surely [have been] heaven-bent.”8 By the summer of 1930, the study by Mays and Nicholson was under way. In a letter to Jesse O. Thomas of the National Urban League (nul), Mays outlined the study’s intent: “The plan is to study the Negro Church as it actually exists, to appraise it on the basis of factional data, to discover causes for significant factors obviously at work in the Church and religious life to the extent to which the Church is a dominant factor in Negro life, and to indicate, if possible, the trend of the Negro’s religious life as revealed in the Church.” Mays thought that two years “was not sufficient time to make an extensive and exhaustive study of the Negro...