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Books by Bonhoeffer
No Rusty Swords /
The Cost of Discipleship /
Letters and Papers from Prison /
Sanctorum Communio
A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings /
Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible /
Ethics
No Difference in the Fare: Dietrich
Bonhoeffer and the Problem of Racism
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The Negro Church
By Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The race question has been a real
problem for American Christianity from the beginning. Today
about one American in ten is a Negro. The turning aside of the
newly arising generation of Negroes from the faith of their
elders, which, with its strong eschatological orientation, seems
to them to be a hindrance to the progress of their race and
their rights is one of the ominous signs of a failing of the
church in past centuries and a hard problem for the future. If
it has come about that today the 'black Christ' has to be led
into the field against the 'white Christ' by a young Negro poet,
than a deep cleft in the church of Jesus Christ is indicated.
We may not overlook the fact that many white
Christians are doing their best through influential
organizations for a better relationship between the races and
that discerning Negroes recognize the difficulties.
Nevertheless, the picture of a racially divided church is still
general in the United States today. Black and white hear the
Word and receive the sacrament in separation. They have no
common worship. The following historical development lies
in the background. At the time of the arrival of the first large
shipments of Negroes in America, who had been plundered as
slaves from Africa, there was a general rejection of the idea of
making the Negro Christian, particularly by the white
slave-owners.
Slavery was justified on the ground the the
Negro was heathen. Baptism would put in question the
permissibility of slavery and would bring the Negro undesirable
rights and privileges. Only after a dreadful letter of
reassurance from the Bishop of London, in which he promised
the white masters that the external conditions of the
Negro need not be altered in the least by baptism, that baptism
was a liberation from sin and evil desire and not from slavery
or from any other external fetters, did the slaver owners
find themselves ready to afford the Gospel an entry among the
Negroes.
Finally it was even found to have the
advantage of keeping the slaves more easily under supervision
than if they were left to continue their own pagan cults. So it
came about that the Negroes became Christians and were admitted
to the gallery at white services and as the last guests to the
communion table. Any further participation in the life of the
congregation was excluded; holding offices in the congregation
and ordination remained reserved for whites. Under these
circumstances worship together became more and more of a farce
for the Negro, and after the complete failure of all attempts to
be recognized as equal members in the community of Jesus Christ,
the Negroes began to attempt to organize themselves into their
own Negro congregations.
It was a voluntary decision which led the
Negro to this, but one which circumstances made inevitable. A
number of incidents, particularly at the time of the Civil War,
which brought about the abolition of slavery, gave rise to the
formation of independent Negro churches. Since then the great
denominations have been divided, a significant example of the
make-up of a denomination in the United States.
The most influential contribution made by the
Negro to American Christianity lies in the "Negro
Spirituals," in which the distress and delivery of the
people of Israel ("Go down, Moses . . ."), the misery
and consolation of the human heart ("Nobody knows the
trouble I've seen"), and the love of the Redeemer and
longing for the kingdom of heaven ("Swing low, sweet
chariot . . .") find moving expression. Every white
American knows, sings and loves these songs. It is barely
understandable that great Negro singers can sing these songs
before packed concert audiences of whites, to tumultuous
applause, while at the same time these same men and women are
still denied access to the white community through social
discrimination.
One may also say that nowhere is revival
preaching still so vigorous and so widespread as among the
Negroes, that here the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the savior of the
sinner, is really preached and accepted with great welcome and
visible emotion. The solution to the Negro problem is one of the
decisive future tasks of the white churches.
Source: No Rusty Swords: Letters,
Lectures and Notes 1928-1936 from the Collected Works of
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Volume 1. Edited and Introduced by
Edwin H. Robertson. Translated by Edwin H. Robertson and John
Bowdin. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1947, pp.
112-114
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updated 4 November 2007 |
