Black Conversion to Catholicism: Its Implications for the Negro Church

Catholicism and discusses the significance that this change of church affiliation may have for the traditional Negro Church. The change is viewed as emerging from the breakdown of the Negro Church's importance as an over-arching, multifunctional institution serving the social, political and economic needs, as well as the religious needs, of the Black communities. Because of the centrality of the Negro Church to Negro life in the South, the change of Blacks from their traditional forms of religious expression is seen as a special case of the general phenomenon of church-change. Change from communal forms of religious expression to church affiliations premised on individual initiative and responsibility emerges as a dominant pattern in this instance of church-change.