y expressed the longing, disappointment,
and resentment of a stolen and oppressed people. Thus, as bard,
physician, judge, and priest, within the narrow limits allowed by the
slave system, rose the Negro preacher, and under him the first church
was not at first by any means Christian nor definitely organized;
rather it was an adaptation and mingling of heathen rites among the
members of each plantation, and roughly designated as Voodooism.
Association with the masters, missionary effort and motives of
expediency gave these rites an early veneer of Christianity, and after
the lapse of many generations the Negro church became Christian.

Two characteristic things must be noticed in regard to the church.
First, it became almost entirely Baptist and Methodist in faith;
secondly, as a social institution it antedated by many decades the
monogamic Negro home. From the very circumstances of its beginning,
the church was confined to the plantation, and consisted primarily of a
series of disconnected units; although, later on, some freedom of
movement was allowed, still this geographical limitation was always
important and was one cause of the spread of the decentralized and
democratic Baptist faith among the slaves. At the same time, the
visible rite of baptism appealed strongly to their mystic temperament.
To-day the Baptist Church is still largest in membership among Negroes,
and has a million and a half communicants. Next in popularity came the
churches organized in connection with the white neighboring churches,
chiefly Baptist and Methodist, with a few Episcopalian and others. The
Methodists still form the second greatest denomination, with nearly a
million members. The faith of these two leading denominations was more
suited to the slave church from the prominence they gave to religious
feeling and fervor. The Negro membership in other denominations has
always been small and relatively unimportant, although the
Episcopalians and Presbyterians are gaining among the more intelligent
classes to-day, and the Catholic Church is making headway in certain
sections. After Emancipation, and still earlier in the North, the
Negro churches largely severed such affiliations as they had had with
the white churches, either by choice or by compulsion. The Baptist
churches became independent, but the Methodists were compelled early to
unite for purposes of episcopal government. This gave rise to the
great African Methodist Church