Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [346]
They feel that religion is something they possess—they do not feel their need of religious instruction from the pulpit—for they have always had it here—they have been obliged to listen to white ministers provided, or placed over them by their masters, while they have had men among themselves whom they believe were called of God to preach, who were kept silent, by the institution from which they are now freed—& to have white preachers still placed over them, is too much like old times to meet with their approval. Their long silent preachers want to preach & the people prefer them.
While agreeing that educated ministers were preferable, she advised her supervisors in the North that the freedmen would have to be educated themselves before they could appreciate that virtue in their ministers. That being the case, she requested that no more clergymen be dispatched to her region, “unless they are specially asked for—by the church over which they are to preside as pastors.”22
Whatever church they chose to affiliate with, and whether a northern minister or a native preacher presided, the freedmen would not give up easily the religious practices and fervor that had sustained them through so many trials. It was not that they were unwilling to learn new ways but only that they often found these new ways too far removed from God’s presence. Not long after the close of the Civil War, a black woman rose during a religious meeting and felt called upon, perhaps because of the presence of some northern white visitors, to defend the worship to which she still felt committed.
I goes ter some churches, an’ I sees all de folks settin’ quiet an’ still, like dey dunno know what de Holy Sperit am. But I fin’s in my Bible, that when a man or a ’ooman gets full ob de Holy Sperit, ef dey should hol’ dar peace, de stones would cry out; an’ ef de power ob God can make de stones cry out, how can it help makin’ us poor creeturs cry out, who feels ter praise Him fer His mercy. Not make a noise! Why we makes a noise ’bout ebery ting else; but dey tells us we mustn’t make no noise ter praise de Lord. I don’t want no sich ’ligion as dat ar. I wants ter go ter Heaben in de good ole way. An’ my bruddren an’ sisters, I wants yer all ter pray fer me, dat when I gits ter Heaben I wont nebber come back ’gain.
No sooner had she taken her seat than the congregation added their confirmation in song.
Oh! de way ter Heaben is a good ole way;
Oh! de way ter Heaben is a right ole way;
Oh! de good ole way is de right ole way;
Oh! I wants ter go ter Heaben in de good ole way.
After the service, which ended in a wild emotional outburst, complete with shrieks, shouts, and the stamping of feet, the white visitors stood outside the church shocked and shaken by what they had seen and heard. “A few moments more, and I think we should have shrieked in unison with the crowd.… More than one of the party leaned against the wall, and burst into hysterical tears; even strong men were shaken, and stood trembling and exhausted.” Several years later, however, this spectator lamented that the missionaries and benevolent societies had not done enough to correct such perversions of Christianity. “By our presence and silence,” she wrote in 1870, “we sanctioned their extravagances; and they stand now self-confident, proof against remonstrance and instruction.”23
3
EVEN BEFORE they embarked for the South, most of the missionaries and teachers—whites and blacks alike—assumed that nothing short of a massive moral and religious transformation could liberate southern blacks from the remaining vestiges of slavery. But the question of how to structure that transformation and whether whites or blacks should assume primary responsibility and leadership precipitated tensions within this biracial movement that would persist into the Reconstruction Era, with implications for the political as well as the moral reformation of the postwar South. Since early