Abstract
“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.”1With these words W. E. B. DuBois
states one of the two basic assumptions of much of the writing on black religion. The other is like unto it: “The Negro church of to-day is the social centre of Negro life in the United States and the most characteristic expression of the African character.” Few scholars who have dealt either superficially or extensively with the life or history of Afro-America have challenged these assumptions. One wonders, then, why these same scholars have dealt so carelessly or cusorily with these apparently critical dimensions of black American existence.