Such, then, is the large development of the Negro church
since Emancipation. The question now is, What have been
the successive steps of this social history and what are the
present tendencies? First, we must realize that no such institu-
tion as the Negro church could rear itself without definite
historical foundations. These foundations we can find if we
remember that the social history of the Negro did not start in
America. He was brought from a definite social environment,
--the polygamous clan life under the headship of the chief
and the potent influence of the priest. His religion was nature-
worship, with profound belief in invisible surrounding influ-
ences, good and bad, and his worship was through incantation
and sacrifice. The first rude change in this life was the slave
ship and the West Indian sugar-fields. The plantation organi-
zation replaced the clan and tribe, and the white master
replaced the chief with far greater and more despotic powers.
Forced and long-continued toil became the rule of life, the
old ties of blood relationship and kinship disappeared, and
instead of the family appeared a new polygamy and polyan-
dry, which, in some cases, almost reached promiscuity.
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