Ritual and Stratification in Chicago Negro Churches

Abstract

7 Problem and Method. Former studies of the church have not been concerned specifically with a natural and functional classification that *shows just how the several types of churches differ in their relationship to social structure, social status, and social situation. They have been concerned mainly with general activities and with external aspects which yield statistical and ecological data,' but the functions which churches perform can be interpreted properly only when one realizes fully the nature of the social situations in which various types of worshippers find themselves. The following study shows that Negro churches perform a triple function. Not only do they enable the communicants to express their religious life, but they also enhance the morale of members of a subordinate racial class, and through differentiation in ritual, minister to various classes within the Negro population. It is our hypothesis that religious ritual performs different functions for different classes within an urban American Negro population, while at the same time performing a function common to the entire class and one that is also common to all members of the particular denomination or sect with which the individual church is identified. In attempting to determine the relation of ritual and general church behavior in urban Negro churches to the part of the society in which these churches function, we have been concerned primarily with the church's function in the social adjustment of groups of persons. Hence, we have used the sermons, prayers, songs and behavior, in studying ceremonials and beliefs of types of communicants representing class and economic differences in urban Negro life. The types of ritual have been studied as indexes of the degree of adaptation to the social