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The Negro Church in America/The Black Church Since Frazier (Sourcebooks in Negro History)

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In my studies of Sociology and Religion I was able to see the evolution of the African American church by first seeing the beginnings of the church during slavery in America. Frazier offers an excellent assesment of how the church grew and answers questions such as how the negro churches became agencies of social control and when the walls broke down and the church left its status as a refuge. But the best thing about this book is that you're given the freedom to read what Lincoln has to say about post-Frazier times and the black church. I, however, feel that Lincoln is very biased in his assesment and doesn't offer an objective view. This book is very useful to any other person interested in the sociology of religion.

Edward Franklin Frazier (1894-1962) was an American sociologist, who wrote Black Bourgeoisie: The Book That Brought the Shock of Self-Revelation to Middle-Class Blacks in America, The Negro family in the United States; revised and abridged edition. and The Negro family in the United States; revised and abridged edition. (which won the 1939 Anisfield Award for the most significant work in the field of race relations). C. Eric Lincoln (1924-2000) was a professor of religion and sociology at Union Theological Seminary, as well as Fisk University and Duke University; he was also an ordained United Methodist minister. He wrote other books such as Black Muslims in America, The (Third Edition), Coming through the Fire: Surviving Race and Place in America, and Race, Religion, and the Continuing American Dilemma.

Frazier writes in the Introduction to his essay, "the basis thesis ... (is) that the changes in the religious life of the Negro in the United States can be understood only in terms of the social organization and social disorganization of Negro life... This study ... is therefore concerned with the broad problem of the relation of religion to social structure or, more specifically, the role of religion in the social organization of Negro life in the United States."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"The schools and colleges maintained by the Negro church denominations have never attained a high level as educational institutions. They have generally nurtured a narrow religious outlook and have restricted the intellectual development of Negroes even more than the schools established for Negroes by the white missionaries." (Pg. 46)
"White churches may open their doors to Negroes and a few Negro ministers may be invited to become pastors of white churches; the masses of Negroes continue, nevertheless, to attend the Negro churches and the Negro church as an institution continues to function as an important element in the organized social life of Negroes." (Pg. 75)
"The striving for status and the searching for a means to escape from a frustrated existence is especially marked among the middle-class Negroes who cannot find a satisfactory life within the regular Negro church organization." (Pg. 84)
"The Negro Church is dead because the norms and presuppositions which structured and conditioned it are not the relevant norms and presuppositions to which contemporary Blacks who represent the future of religion in the Black community can give their asseveration and support." (Pg. 107)
"Black theology is in some sense what is missing from white theology." (Pg. 145)