# The Lutheran Pioneer_St. Louis_1926_S136
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

134

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

training-schools for the 818 counties where Negroes
make up one-eighth or more of the total population
are more than graded elementary schools. Only
five States and three cities in the South provide
normal training-schools for Negro teachers.

Religious Conditions.

About one half of the Negroes in our country
are church-members. The last religious census
showed that the colored people of our country had
almost 38,000 church-buildings. Their church
property was worth $73,000,000, on which there

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of character and training are to be found also
among the rural Negro ministers, but not often.
There is also a marked tendency among not a few
Negro preachers to separate religion from morals,
to which fact is largely to be attributed the same
tendency among the members. We have heard il-
literate Negro preachers boast of their inability to
read, and we have heard them declare that the life
a man led mattered little if he only was able to lay
claim to “having got religion.” In our younger
days we found it impossible to induce a certain
bigamous Negro preacher, who called himself

First Joint Conference of All Workers in Our Negro Missions.

‘rested a debt of about $6,000,000. The average
Negro country church is an unpainted frame
structure, furnished with rough, benches and
a simple pulpit on an uncarpeted platform. Ser-
vices are generally held once or twice a month.
The preacher is usually a person who lives at some
distance from his church or churches and works at
some other occupation on week-days. As a rule,
he arrives on Saturday evening or early on Sunday
morning and leaves again after his work on Sunday
is done. His educational preparation for the min-
istry is generally very inadequate. It may be even
at this date that he is not able to read. But he is
very often a man of natural eloquence and of con-
siderable emotional fervor. Here and there men

a “Baptist,” to see the error of his ways, and we
know of a case where a man who had “got religion”
stole a suit in which to get baptized in.

The Negro needs above all things an eaneated!
consecrated ministry. Progress has been made,
but there is still much left to be done. Then, too,
trained colored teachers of sterling integrity are:
needed, men and women who have a full concep-
tion of their high calling. Especially Christian
teachers are needed who in Christian’ day-schools
may daily have opportunity to teach and apply the
principles of Christ’s Gospel while also imparting
the knowledge useful for this life.

But we must go beyond the preacher and ~
teacher. Colored parents must be led to see their