I have noticed that whenever an untampered-with congregation attempts the renovated spirituals, the people grow self-conscious. They sing sheepishly in unison. None of the glorious individualistic fights that make up their own songs. Perhaps they feel on strange ground. Like the unlettered parent before his child just home from college. At any rate they are not very popular.

  This is no condemnation of the neo-spirituals. They are a valuable contribution to the music and literature of the world. But let no one imagine that they are the songs of the people, as sung by them.

  The lack of dialect in the religious expression—particularly in the prayers—will seem irregular.

  The truth is, that the religious service is a conscious art expression. The artist is consciously creating—carefully choosing every syllable and every breath. The dialect breaks through only when the speaker has reached the emotional pitch where he loses self-consciousness.

  In the mouth of the Negro the English language loses its stiffness, yet conveys its meaning accurately.

  “The booming bounderries of this whirling world” conveys just as accurate a picture as mere “boundaries,” and a little music is gained besides. “The rim bones of nothing” is just as truthful as “limitless space.”

  Negro singing and formal speech are breathy. The audible breathing is part of the performance and various devices are resorted to to adorn the breath taking. Even the lack of breath is embellished with syllables. This is, of course, the very antithesis of white vocal art. European singing is considered good when each syllable floats out on a column of air, seeming not to have any mechanics at all. Breathing must be hidden. Negro song ornaments both the song and the mechanics. It is said of a popular preacher, “He’s got a good straining voice.” I will make a parable to illustrate the difference between Negro and European.

  A white man built a house. So he got it built and he told the man: “Plaster it good so that nobody can see the beams and uprights.” So he did. Then he had it papered with beautiful paper, and painted the outside. And a Negro built him a house. So when he got the beams and all in, he carved beautiful grotesques over all the sills and stanchions, and beams and rafters. So both went to live in their houses and were happy.

  The well-known “ha!” of the Negro preacher is a breathing device. It is the tail end of the expulsion just before inhalation. Instead of permitting the breath to drain out, when the wind gets too low for words, the remnant is expelled violently. Example: (inhalation) “And oh!”; (full breath) “my Father and my wonder-working God”; (explosive exhalation) “ha!”

  Chants and hums are not used indiscriminately as it would appear to a casual listener. They have a definite place and time. They are used to “bear up” the speaker. As Mama Jane of Second Zion Baptist Church, New Orleans, explained to me: “What point they come out on, you bear ’em up.”

  For instance, if the preacher should say: “Jesus will lead us,” the congregation would bear him with: “I’m got my ha-hands in my Jesus’ hands.” If in prayer or sermon, the mention is made of nailing Christ to the cross: “Didn’t Calvary tremble when they nailed Him down.”

  There is no definite post-prayer chant. One may follow, however, because of intense emotion. A song immediately follows prayer. There is a pre-prayer hum which depends for its material upon the song just sung. It is usually a pianissimo continuation of the song without words. If some of the people use the words it is done so indistinctly that they would be hard to catch by a person unfamiliar with the song.

  As indefinite as hums sound, they also are formal and can be found unchanged all over the South. The Negroised white hymns are not exactly sung. They are converted into a barbaric chant that is not a chant. It is a sort of liquefying of words. These songs are always used at funerals and on any solemn occasion. The Negro has created no songs for death and burials, in spite of the sombre subject matter contained in some of the spirituals. Negro songs are one and all based on a dance-possible rhythm. The heavy interpretations have been added by the more cultured singers. So for funerals fitting white hymns are used.

  Beneath the seeming informality of religious worship there is a set formality. Sermons, prayers, moans and testimonies have their definite forms. The individual may hang as many new ornaments upon the traditional form as he likes, but the audience would be disagreeably surprised if the form were abandoned. Any new and original elaboration is welcomed, however, and this brings out the fact that all religious expression among Negroes is regarded as art, and ability recognised as definitely as in any other art. The beautiful prayer receives the accolade as well as the beautiful song. It is merely a form of expression which people generally are not accustomed to think of as art. Nothing outside of the Old Testament is as rich in figure as a Negro prayer. Some instances are unsurpassed anywhere in literature.4

  There is a lively rivalry in the technical artistry of all of these fields. It is a special honor to be called upon to pray over the covered communion table, for the greatest prayer-artist present is chosen by the pastor for this, a lively something spreads over the church as he kneels, and the “bearing up” hum precedes him. It continues sometimes through the introduction, but ceases as he makes the complimentary salutation to the deity. This consists in giving to God all the titles that form allows.

  The introduction to the prayer usually consists of one or two verses of some well-known hymn. “O, that I knew a secret place” seems to be the favorite.5 There is a definite pause after this, then follows an elaboration of all or parts of the Lord’s Prayer. Follows after that what I call the setting, that is, the artist calling attention to the physical situation of himself and the church. After the dramatic setting, the action begins.

  There are certain rhythmic breaks throughout the prayer, and the church “bears him up” at every one of these. There is in the body of the prayer an accelerando passage where the audience takes no part. It would be like applauding in the middle of a solo at the Metropolitan. It is here that the artists come forth. He adorns the prayer with every sparkle of earth, water and sky, and nobody wants to miss a syllable. He comes down from this height to a slower tempo and is borne up again. The last few sentences are unaccompanied, for here again one listens to the individual’s closing peroration. Several may join in the final amen. The best figure that I can think of is that the prayer is an obligato over and above the harmony of the assembly.

  Ritualistic Expression from the Lips of the Communicants of the Seventh Day Church of God*

  COMMANDMENT KEEPER CHURCH

  Rev. George Washington, Pastor

  . . .

  Communicants Interviewed:

  Bishop R. A. R. Johnson

  Rev. George Washington

  Mrs. Julia Jones

  Mrs. Izora Robinson

  Mr. Hugh Washington

  Mrs. Hattie Mae Washington

  Miss Carrie Washington

  Mr. Henry Moore

  Note:

  This Seventh Day Church of God, holiness, is a further or newer step in the sanctified church in the United States.1 To the Interviewer this church seems to be a protest against the stereotype form of Methodist and Baptist churches among Negroes. It is a revolt against the white man’s view of religion which has been so generally accepted by the literate Negro, and is therefore a version to the more African form of expression.

  Its keynote is rhythm. In this church they have two guitars, three symbols, two tambourines, one pair of rattle goers, and two washboards. Every song is rhythmic as are their prayers and their sermons. The unanimous prayer is one in which every member of the church prays at the same time but prays his own prayer aloud, which consists of exotic sentences, liquefied by intermittent chanting so that the words are partly submerged in the flowing rising and falling chant. The form of prayer is like the limbs of a tree, glimpsed now and then through the smothered leaves. It is a thing of wondrous beauty, drenched in harmony and rhythm.

  Explanation of a TARRY SERVICE

  This service is one of consecration beginning at 4:30 and going until sundown. The procedure is:

  Read the Bible

  Sing great number of songs

  All the members, starting with the pastor, kneel at the bench that they use for an altar, before which they have spread a piece of ragged carpet

  Sister Izora anoints the pastor

  They pray; when the oil touches their head, they go into a tremendous ecstasy which lasts several minutes, ending in a trance. When the ecstasy and trance is [sic] over, they get up and take their seats and start singing again. Just before the sun goes down the preacher preaches a short sermon. They say the doxology and go out just as the sun sets.2

  When we entered the sun was at the top of a long unshaded window of the 24 rectangular panes. The kneeling and anointing of heads from a bottle of oil began. After the prayer and ecstasy had ended the sun hung in the last low pane. Then there was whispered harmony, intense but soothing. The sun dropped out of the window and the service was at an end.

  Communicant Senior Bishop R. A. R. Johnson (about 82 yrs. old)3

  INTERVIEWER: “Bishop Johnson, will you tell me the religious experience that you had in getting religion and becoming sanctified?”4

  BISHOP JOHNSON: “Yes. I don’t mind telling you for I have had plenty of visions. First I will tell you of the beginning of the church.

  “I could not be satisfied with none of the different dogmas as was established among the different sects. So I would go to all the different churches to hear the great men preach their doctrinal sermon. None satisfied my spiritual longing. Some were very flowery, some consistent and rhetrical (rhetorical). Therefore I would remain by myself in secret seclusion, inquiring of God all wisdom and understanding with His intelligence. He expected (summoned) me at the spring one day with the natural voice: ‘I’ve ordained you to teach the people My laws, statutes and judgements. They stand fast and endure forever. Nothing can be added or taken away. I will make you wise, a great teacher of the old and the new, and you will find My commandments like a golden thread running from the beginning to the end.’ He said there was NO church is His name. My name must have the preference. ‘You will have to turn two or three pages of the book and literature of the different so-called churches before you can find My name.’

  “I decided then to establish a church to be known as THE EVANGELISTICAL METHODIST CHURCH OF GOD.5 I wrote a wonderful manuscript and turned it over to a committee for criticism and correction. They approved it as being timely and grammatical. I felt good at their recommendation. I left then joyful on my way to the printers.

  “My feet got heavy, a weakness befell me, and I could not move. I cried unto the Lord to know what is this and why. I felt bound in weakness. He seemed to scold me with a loud voice saying, ‘That is not the church I want you to organize. I want a church that is fully in My name, no surnames.’ I turned around to go back home. My feet got light, the weakness (spell) left me, and new life and strength penetrated my body. I begin to step lively. I left the book with Elder B. A. Dugger. I don’t know what became of it.

  “We fasted seven days for God to give us the name of His church. At the end of the fast we saw in a vision on a large window glass: HOLY CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD, THE PILLAR AND THE GROUND OF THE TRUTH, AND A HOUSE OF PRAYER FOR ALL PEOPLE. We shouted with joy and received with one voice of adopting the name. (Seven fasted.) And we looked upon a large window on the right side of the temple and there was an image of a swift flying eagle. I asked of the Lord what did that image mean and represent. The answer came immediately: ‘Power and swiftness is the growth and prosperity of My Kingdom.’

  “We then organized the Holy Church with the name that the Lord had given. To our great surprise, in our second general convocation in Philadelphia, a white gentleman from Bermuda listening to my explanatory notes in my American address, arose and asked might he speak. I granted his request. He said: ‘I know that you and I are one because the very church that you have outlined, I have set up the same in Bermuda. Can we be as one body?’ We answered with a loud shout and glorious applauges (applauses): ‘Yes! Yes! Yes! We are one.’ Well, to our surprise we found the church in Abyssinia with an organization nearly 4,000 years old.6

  “We then began to study the origin of the true church of the Living God. And its dates goes back beyond the flood,—even to the Garden of Eden where God Himself shepherded the church. And in the Holy Church of the Living God, Adam and Eve and their first child were members.7 So was Enoch who was translated, because he walked with God in perfection.8 We can prove that Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, all prophets, apostles and Jesus Christ were members of this Holy Church.”9 (End of the beginning of the church.)

  “When I come to religion it was like this: The night lit up as bright as day. The earth looked new and glorious. Even my hands looked new. I shouted and praised God in the highest strains. And the Devil he came and said: ‘You think you have something but you ain’t got nothing.’

  “I promised I wouldn’t say anything about it, but when I entered home, Mama asked what was the matter with me, and when I knew anything I was telling all in the house. (The Devil told him not to tell it.) And great crowds came to hear me talk. Many wept. Mother asked: ‘Do you want to join the church?’ I said yes. She carried me to church on Sabbath (Saturday) and I joined. We had another big shout on the first day, called Sunday. They carried me to the creek and baptized me, and returned back to the church and fellowshipped me into the membership. But my mood and manner of teaching and of speaking were peculiar to that old dogma (what he said would not agree with the conventional Baptist ritual). Therefore they began to persecute me and to reject me. Therefore I had to look to Jesus for protection. I condemned wine for the use of sacrament. I condemned the doctrine of ‘Once in Christ, never out.’ I condemned the doctrine that parents were responsible for the sins of their children until 12. That doctrine inspired my brother Charles and I to read the Bible through. After that we found no support in the script, for such heresies.

  “Well, they did not believe in children conversion. They thought Papa and Mama should beat those strange ideas out of me. But I was as hard to be understood by my parents as I was to the rest of the people.

  “My birth was most peculiar. I came in the time of the fight. My mother and a white man was stroving together and in the struggle I came. They had two doctors as quick as possible. They gave her stimulants. They examined me and said: ‘He cannot live.’ I was not quite a six months child. They advised the nurse to give me fresh cow milk boiled with no sweetening.

  “Out of that precarious condition God caused me to grow into maturity. I sit on the floor or wherever they would place me for five years. My brother William was born two years later. He learned to walk and then learnt me. White and black said I was a curiosity and a miracle. How that God caused me to live and then to grow. My sister Hannah, when she came to her death, she told Mother why God had raised me up. So peculiar was it. It was because He had ordained me from the foundation of the world to be a great leader and emancipator of His people. She said that I would reign over nearly all the different nations spiritually. Her prognostications have come to pass. I now have churches in 35 states; in British West Indies, in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, Bahamas, South India, Gold Coast, Liberia, and Abyssinia.”

  (VISION 2)

  “There was a minister who had a spirit of pride. He loved to drive fine horses, with fine vehicles. At last he bought what was called a Texas pony. One Sunday morning he hitched his new horse to the buggy. He asked his wife, weighing 240 pounds, to go for a ride. She said yes and got into the buggy. The reverend got in and took the reins and bid the pony move. The pony being high spirited jumped off with full running speed to the heights of his strength. The preacher hollered whoa! The horse got faster. His wife saw danger heaving before her. She leaped out, and was unhurt. Her husband had the reins twisted around his hands when the horse broke loose from the buggy with a long, strong certain pull and leap. The preacher was thrown out on some rocks. His right leg was broken. The doctors came and set the leg and put it in stock. They told him to be quiet for nine days and not to try to walk. After a few days the doctor relieved the stock and told him to stay in bed until doctors got back.

  “The preacher thought it was foolish to stay in bed as good as he was feeling. So he started to get up and walk around. His wife begged him not to. As soon as she went out, he gets up and begins to walk around. The weak knitted growth of bone broke loose and he fell. He hollered: ‘Wife! Come here!’ She had the doctor to come. The doctor was out done so he scolded the preacher. The preacher relapsed and seemed to be dying. I had a vision then.

  “I saw many people going up the King’s Highway.10 It seemed the Milky Way or path of the sky. The good passed in white garments, while others were coming down dressed in black. I asked: ‘Why are they dressed in black?’ I heard a voice saying: ‘These are they that was once near Heaven’s gate. They become [sic] discouraged and turned back.’ I looked down beneath me into a large dark valley, spread out in incomprehensible circumstance [sic] and in diameter. The ground shook and trembled like jelly. I saw thousands of souls prostrate on the jelly ground. As I was walking around looking at those lying there so miserable, in hunger and thirst, to my surprise I found the preacher in that dark habitation with the damned casted out from the presence of God.

  “I awoke and went to the preacher and told him my vision. His reply was: ‘I am lost. I will soon be where you saw me.’ And soon after that he passed away.”

  (VISION 3)

  “This vision was in the open day when the sun was shining bright. There was an unclouded sky.

  “I were in the field alone by myself. I was meditating on the great Judgment Day and wondering about the great conflagerated flames what shoot and sweep everything wicked from off the face of the earth.11 I was caused to stand still. I was told to look towards the south, west, north and east, I saw out of the four corners of the earth that a great volume of smoke came up and angry flames lashed here and there upon the firmament of Heaven until all seemed to have met in mid Heaven. I was told to look west. I saw great green orchard trees, shrubs and vegetation. I was told to look south. I looked and saw cities and weakened men’s houses. They were in the houses, gambling drinking of whiskey, wine, and beer. They were in pool rooms and moving picture shows. The fire were [sic] raging in the Heavens and the wind were blowing in great si-rock-ledams [sic], so much so that I said: ‘Lord how can I escape?’ He said: ‘The righteous will not be hurt and I will show you how I will save My people.’ Bout that time the weakened people saw the flames. They run and scream. The fire swept them and their houses away, leaving the righteous standing on a Mesa (tableland).