THE NEGRO'S GOD AS REFLECTED IN HIS LITERATURE

In his classic work, THE NEGRO'S GOD, As Reflected in His Literature, (Atheneum, Studies in American Negro Life, August Meier, Gen. Ed., New York: 1938, 1968), Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays, former President of Morehouse College, and former Dean of Howard University's School of Religion, strongly implied that there was no Negro theology, and that there were few Negro theologians. In his 1938 study of Negro religion, he wrote: “The most outstanding thing about this study is that the Negro's idea of God grows out of his social situation. The cosmological and teleological conceptions of God are conspicuous by their absence in Negro literature. Modern views such as … have not permeated Negro literature. The moral, traditional approach is the one “classical” Negro writers have used.... “His ideas of God, so to speak, are chiseled out of the very fabric of the social struggle. Virtually all of them express the unfilled yearnings of the Negro group, whether they be worldly or other-worldly. They developed, as can be validated historically, along the line of the Negro's most urgent needs and desires. Prior to 1860, the Negro's ideas about God, developed around slavery. After the Civil War, they grew out of the wrongs of Reconstruction. Since 1914, they are inseparable from the social and economic restrictions which the Negro meets in the modern world. “Unlike that of many people, the Negro's incredulity, frustration, agnosticism, and atheism do not develop as the results of the findings of modern science nor from the observation that nature is cruel and indifferent; but primarily because in the social situation he finds himself hampered and restricted. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Negro group has produced great preachers but few theologians. The Negro is not interested in any fine theological or philosophical discussions about God. He is interested in a God that is able to help him bridge the chasm that exists between the actual and the ideal. The Negro's life has been too unstable, too precarious, too uncertain, and his needs have been too great for him to become sufficiently objective to theologize or philosophize about God.” pp. 254-255