-•5 The Americo-Liberians 



people — excess of religion. With a few rare exceptions the 

 mass of the Americo-Liberian community suffers from 

 religiosity. 



Almost without exception they belong to various branches 

 of the Protestant Church. They are Episcopalians (Methodist, 

 Protestant, and African ^), Free Methodists, Baptists, Pres- 



115. METHODIST CHURCH, MONROVIA 



byterians, Lutherans, Zionists, and so forth. They betray 

 little or none of the superstition that clings to the uncultivated 

 West Indian Negro or to the Negroes of Spanish, French, and 

 Portuguese America ; but they have erected the Bible into a 

 sort of fetish. They exhibit the Puritanism of New England 

 in the eighteenth century almost unabated. 



^ These three adjectives represent three separate Episcopahan bodies in 

 America and Liberia. 



VOL. I 



353 



23 



