Knock at the Door of Opportunity: Black Migration to Chicago, 1900-1919

5. Religion and Churches

112 5. Religion and Churches Sometimes one [the pastor] would say: “I did not write out my sermon.” With equal fervor the audience would cry out: “Praise ye the Lord.” —Carter G. Woodson, The History of the Negro Church, 1921 The church is the center of social life and the efforts of the people. What the church sanctions and supports is of the first importance and what it fails to support and sanction is more apt to fail. —Fannie Barrier Williams, 1905 As religion performed its primary function of promoting spirituality that ultimately led to salvation, it also provided comfort of a philanthropic nature in the material world. The form of religion practiced in the Protestant denominations, including various Baptist persuasions and Methodism, proved itself a wellspring of vitality and assertion in a hostile secular environment. In a manner unique to them, black religious practitioners converted a variety of physical spaces to become sacred in nature, disregarding white societal values concerning the worthiness of physical surroundings. Demonstrating the African American sense of triumph of the spiritual domain over the physical world, the living room, storefront, and vacated religious edifices of other faiths sufficed as suitable places of fervent worship to an immanent God. The natural offshoots of religion, philanthropy and benevolence, appeared expectedly from circumstances born of necessity and faith . Religion and Churches 113 The Character of African American Religion In the period of the new century preceding the Great Migration, about half of the African American population of Chicago believed in a God that was both immanent and transcendent, a belief that was expressed by their public profession, behavior, and church attendance. In this vein, religion, without a doubt, remained a dominant influence over various aspects of African American life as the twentieth century dawned. Theologically, this God-centered belief system allowed the faithful to sustain themselves in an unrelenting imbalance between godly aspects of life and earthly pleasures found in aesthetic and material culture. Individual and institutional racism aside, the attitude of religious-minded blacks was one in which they were convinced that they were under God’s protective wing as a people and as the truest of believers. Based on His grace and His will, they would prevail over any adversity or adversary. With their belief in the nearness of their savior, they communicated directly with the elements of the Holy Trinity whenever their faith called for comfort and reassurance in earthly matters. Without formality, ritual, or the need for intermediaries such as saints and priests, these black Christians experienced a level of closeness to their God that allowed the more expressive within their ranks to receive the Holy Spirit into their bodies—in the process of spiritual investment commonly referred to as “getting happy”—and communicate directly with Jesus Christ the Son as well as with God the Father. Furthermore, their unconditional, unquestioning faith allowed them to transcend any fear of death to the extent that a believer moved from labor to reward upon passing from an earthly, physical existence. With a sense of realization rather than resignation under the grace of God, they believed that all good things were possible and that at a God-appointed moment, theirs would be a heavenly reward superior to the instances of emancipation and the period of Jubilee in the aftermath of slavery. This belief in the triumph of saved spirit over death fit into the divine process of promised immortality for the truly faithful. In a manner reminiscent of West and West Central African religions, a metaphysical presence in the world of spirit carried as much significance as a bountiful, physical existence in the realm of the living. In stressing the importance of religion during the thirteenth meeting of the National Negro Business League in Chicago in the summer of 1912, Father J. B. Massiah, the rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, challenged Booker T. Washington’s very earthy, pragmatic assertion that blacks should “get more money and less Jesus.” From his pulpit, Reverend Massiah stressed, “It is bad logic, to say nothing of blasphemy, for any man of this race to advise his people 114 Religion and Churches to [follow this advice]. . . . In their abject ignorance and poverty, what was it that kept 9,000,000 of emancipated slaves so hopeful and cheerful, if not the Christian religion? With all the perplexing and contaminating influences since then, what has kept them together, if not the...