Rope & Faggot/Chapter 3

It is exceedingly doubtful if lynching could possibly exist under any other religion than Christianity. Not only through tacit approval and acquiescence has the Christian Church indirectly given its approval to lynch-law and other forms of race prejudice, but the evangelical Christian denominations have done much towards creation of the particular fanaticism which finds an outlet in lynching. The responsibility of the Christian Church for mob-law against Negroes is not much less than its responsibility for slavery, for of all the great religions of mankind Christianity is the only one to draw the colour line and thus set up an elaborate array of invidious distinctions which assure the white Christian of his immense superiority. "Color was never a badge of slavery in the ancient or medieval world," says DuBois in The Negro, "nor has it been in the modern world outside of Christian states."

It was Christian nations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that made African slaves supply the demand for cheap labour in Christian lands; it was Christian nations that despoiled Africa, and Christian Belgium that cut off hands and ears in the Congo; it ​was Christian nations that sought as long as they possibly could, their own hands being stained, to avoid recognizing the misdeeds of Leopold in the Congo and to escape taking action to end his barbarities; and it is Christian England and France and Italy that have their iron heel upon Africa and India and China, and Christian America with hers upon the Caribbean nations today. It is the Christian South, boasting of its imperviousness to the heretical doctrines of modernism, that mutilates and burns Negroes, barbarities unmatched in any other part of the world.

In permitting colour to be used as a cover and a justification of the emotions of cruelty which religious fanaticism engenders, Christianity stands indicted among the religions of the world. It is no accident that in these states with the greatest number of lynchings to their discredit, as is seen in the table on pages 248–249, that the great majority of the church members are Protestants and of the evangelical wing of Protestantism as well.

For as long as religion has existed, which is almost from the day when man first crawled upwards from primeval slime and stood erect, religion has led not only to acts of self-abnegation, nobility, and martyrdom, but has as well given birth to deeds of cruelty, greed, and savagery almost beyond belief. The greatest solace man has known in times of sorrow or fear, it has also, in the words of Lewis Browne in ​This Believing World, given birth to such pictures as this: "Men have slaughtered and ravished in Jerusalem because they had—religion. Men have gouged eyes and ripped bellies because they—believed! . . . Strange potency, this thing, we call religion. It has made men do barbarities beyond the reach of credence. For it men have done foulnesses below the foulness done even by beasts. . . ." And it is both axiomatic and understandable that whenever and wherever men have been devout to the point of fanaticism, their excesses, both of generosity and barbarism, have been in proportion to their devoutness.

That religion has inspired its adherents to deeds of frightful cruelty and of magnificent nobility is accepted. For reasons too numerous to be entered into here, colour and colour prejudice have profoundly influenced Christianity to a far greater extent than any of the other great religions. Skin colour in the United States has served as a focusing-point for much of the cruelty engendered by emotional religion in much the same fashion as in other countries Jews have been the target of pogroms. Foul pages in American history have been written by means of lynchings and burnings in those very states which most vociferously have adhered to evangelical Protestantism as represented by the Baptist and Methodist Churches.

How true this is can be seen by anyone who is even slightly familiar with the aftermaths of violently emo​tional revival services, when men and women are stirred to frenzy. It is a well-known fact that revivals and camp-meetings often produce an increase in hospital cases of mental disease. No person who is familiar with the Bible-beating, acrobatic, fanatical preachers of hell-fire in the South, and who has seen the orgies of emotion created by them, can doubt for a moment that dangerous passions are released which contribute to emotional instability and play a part in lynching. Like periodic waves of insanity these evangelical disturbances have swept the South and the Middle West. Experts in mental diseases have long since established the danger of such revivals. However vigorously these preachers may exhort their hearers to abstract Christian principles and virtues, the human mind, its more violent emotions once loosed, does not always direct its actions into the paths urged. It is impossible to estimate the extent of the misdirection of such fanatical religious outbursts; but there can be no question that, however honest the preacher may be, the very violence of the emotions stirred up has contributed to release through lynching.

But, the objection may be raised, fanatics have stirred people before and Negroes were not chosen as victims. Why, therefore, should responsibility for lynching, however small, be laid at the doors of Methodists and Baptists and other emotional, hysterical, primitive religions?

The answer lies in the prejudices, fears, and super​stitions of the people whose emotions are released. In Salem in 1692 religious fanaticism led to the choice of "witches" as victims of persecution; in Seville eighty years later the Holy Inquisition condemned a woman to death by burning for practising the black arts; in England sixty years earlier than the Seville episode and in Germany twenty years afterwards there were waves of religious persecution against so-called witches.

In the United States Protestantism has swung far away from the teachings of tolerance and human brotherhood preached by Jesus and has become, in the words of André Siegfried, "the religion of the Anglo-Saxon or 'superior' race," in spite of "sincere protestations to the contrary." Such a course is seen to have been practically inescapable when the history of the Church during the two and a half centuries of slavery in America is examined. Not only did the Church, by adroit sophistry, dodge the issue of human bondage, but theologians actually utilized the Bible and the teachings of Jesus Christ in defence of the system, and thus committed the Church to a course and a point of view on the question of race and colour which ever since have afflicted it. Puritans in New England quieted their conscience over profits from the slave-trade by loudly proclaiming that their primary motive in bringing the African to the United States was to give him the blessings of white civilization and Christianity. Hurd's The Law of Freedom and Bondage tells of the general attitude in ​squaring conscience with slavery: "Opposition to slavery was . . . largely stilled when it was stated that this was a method of converting the heathen to Christianity. The corollary was that when a slave was converted he became free. Up to 1660 it seemed accepted . . . that baptism into a Christian church would free a Negro slave. Masters, therefore, . . . were reluctant to have their slaves receive Christian instruction. . . . Virginia finally plucked up courage (in 1667) to attack the issue squarely and declared by law 'Baptism doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom, in order that diverse masters freed from this doubt may more carefully endeavor the propagation of Christianity.'"

The same state furnished a spokesman in the House of Representatives for a full theological defence of slavery, which is quoted by Charles and Mary Beard. The Virginia Congressman ended his lengthy plea in these words: "I believe that the institution of slavery is a noble one; that it is necessary for the good, the well-being of the Negro race. Looking into history, I go further and say, in the presence of this assembly and under all the imposing circumstances surrounding me that I believe it is God's institution. Yes, sir, if there is anything in the action of the great Author of us all; if there is anything in the conduct of His chosen people; if there is anything in the conduct of Christ Himself who came upon this earth and yielded His life as a sacri​fice that all through His death might live; if there is anything in the conduct of His apostles who inculcated obedience on the part of slaves towards their masters as a Christian duty, then we must believe that the institution is from God."

While such specimens of hypocrisy and sophistry may cause a smile today, yet so far as the Negro problem is concerned, the Protestant Church in the lynching states has changed fundamentally but little in the years since such sentiments were voiced. The chief difference lies in the fact that so unblushing a defence of slavery or of lynching would hardly be dared today. But in so far as actions are concerned, the Church in states like Mississippi has changed very little. If approval of lynch-law is not expressed as frequently or as vehemently as it was twenty years ago, seldom is there clerical condemnation of mob murder. Protestantism in the lynching states has become the stronghold of bigotry, directing its onslaughts against Negroes, Catholics, and Jews. It is no accident that William Joseph Simmons, a Methodist lay preacher, should have been the one to resurrect the infamous Ku Klux Klan. No especial shrewdness was needed by him and his fellow workers to realize that Baptist and Methodist preachers were the very best material for Klan organizers. William J. Robertson, himself a Southerner, in The Changing South declares that the post-World-War Klan "was the direct result of the extra-Christian campaigning of ​the so-called Christian brethren in the Methodist and Baptist ranks." André Siegfried points out in his America Comes of Age that the Klan drove in communities "run by a narrow-minded middle class and inspired by a Protestant clergy. . . . The Baptist minister is usually in sympathy with the Klan and is often appointed Kleagle or local publicity agent. When a hooded band marches mysteriously out to offer a well-filled purse to some worthy preacher, the choice . . . falls . . . always on a Baptist or a Methodist."

The proclivity to join and spread the doctrine of the Klan, "consecrated as Protestant to the teaching of the Christian religion, and pledged as white men to the eternal maintenance of white supremacy," was but a more concrete evidence of white, Southern Protestantism directed against the Negro; it was the organization of anti-Negro sentiment which in the past had even at times witnessed ministers of Jesus Christ leading lynching mobs.

Direct and extra-legal action against those who have incurred the ill will of this ministry has long been the rule in the South, whether it led to the tarring and feathering of some man or woman who was suspected of wrongdoing, the burning, as in Mississippi, of textbooks mentioning the theory of evolution, or finding expression in the rope or faggot. The people, held fast in the grip of this ministry, have exemplified the soundness of the ancient Hebrew proverb; "As the people, ​so the priests." Lacking the healthy sense of critical examination of religious beliefs, the South has largely been unable to smash or rationalize "the fervour, the intensity, the passion back of the assertion that the South holds aloft the torch of Anglo-Saxon ideals, racial integrity, and religious purity." Unrestrained, unintelligent emotions have given rise to varied forms of intolerance which have retarded the South's mental development. Self-imposed standards of ritual scrupulousness and conformity to ancient precepts; opposition to attendance of Southern students at Northern universities for fear that their faith might be undermined there; the tendency of more intelligent and independent-minded men to enter other professions than the ministry add to the seriousness of a situation in the South which is acute enough in an age of scepticism in all parts of the country.

Against such a background the efforts of a few courageous ministers towards a more humane, intelligent attitude towards the Negro stand out as miracles. The vast majority indirectly and directly have fed the passions of the lynching mob and helped pile up the shameful number of mob murders. Lynchings seldom occur where there is enlightenment. The holding fast to outworn and faulty ideas, the retention of ignorance with all its vicious by-products, provide the fertile soil from which springs the rule of the mob, whether it be one to burn a Negro or flog a white woman or to wage a cam​paign for compulsory reading of the Bible or to enact an anti-evolution law. Intolerance can grow only in the soil of ignorance; from its branches grow all manner of obstacles to human progress.

Against this depressing picture of an ignorant, prejudiced, intolerant ministry waging relentless warfare upon the colleges and universities, stirring up racial and religious antagonisms to the point of frenzy, dominating state legislatures and newspaper columns, what is there of hope? The answer to this question is not reassuring either to the South or to the Negro. Yet there are a few signs of light, faint it is true, but still worthy of hope.

First there is the exceedingly revolutionary change for the South of a spirit of honest scholarship, of inquiring scepticism, which is being seen in some of the Southern universities and which is challenging the absolute dominance that the Church has so long held over these institutions. The University of North Carolina is by far the most outstanding of these; Vanderbilt University, Tulane, and the University of Georgia are following in somewhat modified fashion.

Second there is the beneficial effect of the farce enacted at Dayton in 1925 during the Scopes trial. Critics of the course pursued by the defence attorneys, including even so astute an observer as Professor Siegfried, have questioned the wisdom of riddling the late William Jennings Bryan by means of ridicule. These critics have said that the puncturing of the smug com​placency of Bryan and the exposure of the imbecility of some of his beliefs deified Bryan in the eyes of those who believed with him. That may be true, but it also is probably true that these would never have changed their minds had Bryan not been exposed. The net effect of the whole trial has been to make the more backward states of the South exceedingly sensitive to ridicule, so that a number of Southern legislatures which were on the point of passing anti-evolution measures have by one means or another evaded doing so. More important, a keen interest has been created, not only in evolution, but as well in other subjects heretofore forbidden. There is to be seen here and there in the South evidences of the birth of a tendency to scrap many of the old ideas and to form new ones in line with the development of modern science and enlightenment. This includes even the hitherto dogmatic beliefs and assertions concerning race. Here and there the light begins to break through.

The growing industrialism of the South, though bringing its own problems, is tending to wean away adherents from the Church and widen the horizon of those who come into contact with the newer order. It is no wonder that the embattled fundamentalists are fighting so lustily—even the most stupid of them cannot fail to realize that their reign ends when intelligence gains a foothold.

There are some signs of hope in changes that are taking place in the theological seminaries of the South. ​A prominent Southerner who, perhaps more than any other man, has had the opportunity of seeing what is going on among the various denominations writes: "There has been an increase in the attendance of theological seminaries in the South since the War and my observation is that the men are of somewhat better calibre than those who were in the seminaries before the War. It may have always been, it has certainly been true within the last twenty years, that the men of the most initiative who enter these seminaries rarely ever remain long in the pastorate. . . . It is encouraging, however, to remember that up to ten years ago white theological seminaries never gave any consideration whatever to the racial situation in the South. It was never mentioned when I was in school and I waited until I was out of the University to discover that the race question was one of the severe tests of our so-called 'ethical ideas.' That is not true today. Most of the seminaries are giving some serious attention to the question and many of them are giving it very thorough attention. On the whole, the young men who are coming out of the theological seminaries are of the liberal type. . . . The younger ministers . . . are very superior to the older ones.

"Whenever I speak to the Methodists or Baptists I almost always preface my remarks with some sort of careful statement regarding 'social equality.' If I do not—it matters not what I say about Negroes or lynch​ing, 'social equality' is about the first thing they think of and it makes them go into a sort of insane rage. The Methodists now are worse than the Baptists. This is not true of the Episcopal or Presbyterian Church. . . .

"The most hopeful element in the church situation is the fact that women are coming into a larger and more effective place in the life of the church. Women, having recently come through their struggle for representation and self-expression, are very sensitive to any situation that denies this to others—hence, in the churches of the South, the group most sensitive to the race situation is the women. . . ."

Even the most honest Southerner, familiar with the appalling ignorance of the great majority of ministers in the South, both urban and rural, may feel that these steps are on a scale with the proverbial attempt to bail the Atlantic Ocean with a tea-spoon. Contrasted with the great ignorance of the past and the absence of efforts towards more enlightened attitudes on race and other controversial subjects, however, these efforts give evidence of a new tendency which is hopeful. At present the incubus of a narrow, prejudiced ministry, relieved only by a few men of higher calibre, presents the South with one of its most serious problems. Hope of a more enlightened type of religious leader, who will lead the South from the paths of mobbism and resistance to enlightenment and to decency, does not rest in the present generation of ministers. As death and age thin their ​ranks and the effect of the efforts now beginning towards greater liberalism becomes evident, then and only then will Protestantism in the South turn from its advocacy of mob-law, its crippling of universities, its opposition to knowledge, and its handicapping of Southern mentality.