After Emancipation, and still earlier in
the North, the Negro churches largely severed such affili-
ations as they had had with the white churches, either by
choice or by compulsion. The Baptist churches became inde-
pendent, but the Methodists were compelled early to unite for
purposes of episcopal government. This gave rise to the great
African Methodist Church, the greatest Negro organization in
the world, to the Zion Church and the Colored Methodist,
and to the black conferences and churches in this and other
denominations.
The second fact noted, namely, that the Negro church ante-
dates the Negro home, leads to an explanation of much that is
paradoxical in this communistic institution and in the morals
of its members. But especially it leads us to regard this
institution as peculiarly the expression of the inner ethical life
of a people in a sense seldom true elsewhere. Let us turn,
then, from the outer physical development of the church to
the more important inner ethical life of the people who com-
pose it. The Negro has already been pointed out many times
as a religious animal,--a being of that deep emotional nature
which turns instinctively toward the supernatural.
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