# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1922_S27
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1922. 27

souls won in their care. Four years later (1891) the Lord of the harvest led the Negro Mission to North Carolina. The work now took a gratifying upswing. At the end of the twentieth year there were in 18 places 1400 baptized members or souls, and at the end of the thirtieth year in 30 places 1900 souls. Then for about seven years it went forward somewhat slowly. As a result of the building of the college at Greensboro, the mission treasury groaned under a great burden of debt. God helped not only to pay off this debt but, around the end of 1915, quite unexpectedly opened a wide door to a new, hopeful field in the Black Belt of Alabama. There our dear missionaries have been permitted, within six years, to carry the bright light of the Gospel ever farther into the darkness of sin, superstition and unbelief, and the Gospel proclaimed by them has, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, enlightened hundreds and again hundreds of poor black people to eternal life. In the first half of the present year they received about 200 souls into the Lutheran Church through holy Baptism and confirmation. Although congregations and preaching places (2) already exist in 17 places, only the surface of this mission field has yet been touched. It is a great, hopeful field. "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest!" Through the work in the Alabama field especially, the mission has in the last six years experienced the unforeseen increase of more than 1350 souls. The number of souls at present is 3725.

According to the latest census, 10,463,013 Negroes live in the United States. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of these are without a church and sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. Countless numbers of those who do belong to a church nevertheless know nothing of the grace of God in Christ Jesus. Nothing of this grace is preached to them. Instead, their often ignorant and immoral "preachers" preach to them their own dreams. It is almost unbelievable what is done there in the name of the Christian religion. They do not care about the salvation of their hearers' souls. Their main aim is to knock money out of people's pockets. They are for the most part blind leaders of the blind. Most of them never studied at a preachers' school. Many have not even attended an ordinary school and can neither read nor write. But shout and bellow they can, like the biblical bulls of Bashan. Shepherd and flock live not seldom in quite open shames and vices. It is pitiable. That we do not exaggerate may be shown by a statement of a competent and impartial person.

The well-known Negro leader Booker T. Washington (died 1915) says: "Three fourths of the Baptist and two thirds of the Methodist Negro preachers are neither in intellectual nor in moral respect able to preach the Gospel to others or to be a leader to others.