Edward
J. Blum. W. E. B. Du Bois: American
Prophet.
For Edward J. Blum,
religion is the key to understanding W. E. B. Du Bois. In W. E. B. Du Bois: American Prophet, Blum contends that too many
scholars have ignored Du Bois’s religious thought, and counters this “error” in
the scholarship by arguing that “Du Bois cannot be fully understood without
reference to his religious imaginations” (180). Further, Blum contends that this apparent
neglect within existing scholarship skews scholars’ views of one of the
twentieth century’s most perceptive, and public, intellectuals. Thus, Blum’s
goal is two-fold: to illuminate Du Bois’s religious message and imagination,
and to reclaim the secularized Du Bois as a religious thinker. Blum succeeds admirably
in both endeavors.
The scope of W.E.B. Du Bois: American Prophet is impressive.
While a slim volume compared to other works on Du Bois—it is a mere 220 pages
of text—Blum explores the breadth of Du Bois’s work, including his sometimes
overlooked novels and short fiction. By including such a wide range of works, Blum
finds multiple religious Du Boises: one is a consummate Harvard- and
German-educated New Englander—a religious modernist dedicated to a mechanistic
cosmology and the social gospel; another is a deeply spiritual, almost
mystical, African American who believes that Africa and Africans hold the key
to the world’s spiritual redemption. This is Du Bois’s religious double
consciousness, and squaring these two thinkers with each other is not a
particularly easy task. Blum tends to see the modernist Du Bois in Du Bois’s academic
works and the mystical Du Bois in his works of fiction, but those lines blur, especially
in The Souls of Black Folk; Souls encompasses
many genres and, therefore, reveals multiple Du Boises. As a result, Blum sees Souls as Du Bois’s most important
religious text (60). With Souls, Blum
argues, Du Bois claimed humanness for Africans that whites denied; he claimed that
Black Folk had souls, despite the racist teachings of a perverted white
Christianity which claimed they did not. With Souls, Du Bois countered “more than seventy years of white supremacist
theology and culture” (65).
For Blum, the heart of Du
Bois’s main religious achievement was countering the perversion of Christianity
that allowed whites to believe that God loved whites more than Blacks, and
possibly did not love Blacks at all. Blum thus places Du Bois as the heir to
Frederick Douglass in this assault on racist Christianity. Like Douglass, Du
Bois believed in a true Christianity that rejected racism. Blum’s analysis,
however, differs from that of David Howard-Pitney. Howard-Pitney, writing in
1986, saw Du Bois as reviving the Black Jeremiad in the wake of Booker T.
Washington’s more accommodationist stance. Still, Howard-Pitney is concerned
more with Du Bois’s position in American civil religion, and with his analysis
of
For Du Bois, the Black
experience of oppression tied Blacks to the suffering Christ. In both his
fiction and non-fiction, Du Bois transformed lynched Blacks from the
evil demons of white mythology to Christ-like martyrs; equally, he transformed
lynch mobs from the armies of salvation to minions of darkness (163). This
motif was clearly presaged in “Of the Coming of John” in Souls. While lynching was
not a daily occurrence in every Southern community, Du Bois believed that
church segregation was the day-to-day reminder that whites believed they were
connected to God in a way in which Blacks were not. Du Bois assailed the
churches for their racial segregation.
He also attacked the deeply revered myth that
If Blum is correct in
his assessment of Du Bois, how is it that scholars have labeled Du Bois secular
and irreligious, or even anti-religious? Is it that secular historians have
recognized the power of Du Bois’s intellect and sought to claim him as one of
their own? While Blum believes there are “dissenters” who have examined Du
Bois’s religious thought, including Phil Zuckerman and David Howard-Pitney (224,
fn#18), he does argue that, “the irreligious Du Bois presented by so many
historians, especially David Lewis, is a mythical construction that serves the
purposes of the secularized academy far more than [it] elucidates the ideas and
beliefs of Du Bois” (11-12). Like Blum, Zuckerman notes that other scholars
have essentially ignored Du Bois’s religious scholarship; but Zuckerman, unlike
Blum, does not concentrate on Du Bois’s own original religious ideas. Instead, he focuses on establishing Du Bois
as a major sociologist of religion, and on demonstrating the sophistication of
Du Bois’s religious scholarship.[2]
Four other possibilities
may explain the omission of Du Bois’s religious thought in much of the existing
scholarship: Du Bois was hostile to established religion, and this hostility
could appear to be anti-religious; Du Bois was complex and evolving, making it
difficult to determine what his religious beliefs were; Du Bois had multiple
religious “selves,” and their manifestations—especially in his academic
work—differed from what many scholars expect to find in African American
religious experiences; Du Bois became a Communist and defended the Soviet
Union. Blum clearly addresses the first
of these issues, noting that “while church orthodoxy enraged him, authentic
expressions of faith were entrancing” (21). Throughout W. E. B. Du Bois: American Prophet, Blum distinguishes between Du Bois’s views of churches and his
views of religion, while noting quite clearly Du Bois’s admiration for churches
and clergy who challenged racism in
The second issue
presents greater problems. Blum admits that no one can truly understand another
person’s relationship with God; indeed, Blum notes, “this book refuses the
audacious assertion that anyone can know such information” (19). How then is Du
Bois to be admitted to the “Congregation of the Righteous”—if, in fact, there
can be a recognized “Congregation of the Righteous” at all—where Blum argues he
belongs (19). First, Blum assumes that Du Bois wrote a fair representation of
what he believed. Yet Du Bois clearly
had an active and vivid religious imagination. Second, Blum seems to argue that
because people responded to Du Bois in religious ways, and found religious
inspiration in Du Bois’s message, Du Bois’s message must therefore have been
religious. It is possible, however, that it was the readers’ religiosity, and
not Du Bois’s, that sparked the religious nature of their responses to Du
Bois’s work. Blum has no way of disentangling the two strands.
The third possible
reason that Du Bois has been read out of the “Congregation of the Rightous” is
the existence of his multiple religious personas. Du Bois adhered to liberal
and modernist religious beliefs and accepted the major tenets of the social
gospel. This belief system put him solidly in the tradition of the educated
Northern elite and thus distanced him considerably from most African
Americans. While this difference was
most starkly apparent when he refused to lead a public prayer at
Last, Du Bois’s modernist
and social gospel leanings ultimately led him to view Communism as the
“political and economic manifestations of the teachings of the biblical Jesus” without
creating, for him, a theological conflict (193-194). Du Bois had long argued
that whites, convinced of their racial supremacy through a perverted view of
religion, had used that distortion to mislead millions of people; he was thus
comfortable with the idea of religion being the “opiate of the people.” Du Bois,
then, could reconcile Christianity with Communism in a way that struck most
Americans as impossible. The quick association that most Americans made, and make,
between Communism and Atheism makes it easy to cast the late-in-life Du Bois as
irreligious, possible even anti-religious. Blum recognizes this tendency,
noting that “Du Bois’s attempt to square the teachings of Christ with those of
Communism may sound hollow to historians” (194). This association may have been
easier to make had Du Bois merely been a Communist, but his vocal defense of
the Soviet Union associated him directly with a government engaged in religious
persecution.
Some of Blum’s attempts
to qualify Du Bois’s views as “religious” may seem stretched to scholars. Du
Bois praised the Soviet Union for disassociating religion and public life, declaiming
“who believes in miracles?” and thanking the Soviet Union for having the
“courage” to stop the teaching of religious “fairy tales and so-called
religious truths.” He also found in Communist China a people who were ethical
despite, not because of, religion (204-205). Such comments could certainly
appear anti-religious. Had Du Bois moved to an ethical system that needed no
God? And if so, can he still be called religious? Looking across the last
decade of his life, it is not entirely clear where Du Bois looked for the
ultimate truths he had pledged to pursue. Still, Blum is correct in asserting
that Du Bois was not alone in his efforts to square Communism and Christianity;
and he does muster evidence showing that Du Bois’s discourse, at least,
continued to draw upon Christian symbolism. To what extent Du Bois personally continued
to believe in Christianity cannot easily be determined. Here lies one of Blum’s
central problems: Blum claims it is not his intention to try to determine Du
Bois’s personal religious beliefs, and yet he argues that Du Bois should be
admitted to the “Congregation of the Righteous.” At some level, Blum is trying
to have it both ways.
In the final analysis,
Blum is convincing. He has contributed to the scholarly recovery of Du Bois as
a religious thinker, and he has outlined the major achievements of Du Bois’s
religious imagination. While the text should certainly be accessible to
advanced undergraduates, it ought to be considered seriously for any graduate
student studying the confluence of race and religion. Even the “dissenters”
whom Blum recognizes as having studied Du Bois’s religious thought—especially
Zuckerman and Howard-Pitney—have approached the subject in substantially
different ways than Blum has in W. E. B.
Du Bois: American Prophet. If, at times, Blum appears to overstate his
case, it is worth noting the degree to which he believes other historians have
overstated their cases for a secular, anti-religious Du Bois. Blum, thus, successfully achieves his goal of
providing a clear and persuasive rejoinder against the agnostic Du Bois.
Alan Scot Willis
Northern
[1] David Howard-Pitney, “The Enduring Black
Jeremiad: The American Jeremiad and Black Protest Rhetoric, from Frederick
Douglass to W. E. B. Du Bois, 1841-1919” American
Quarterly 38:3 (1986), 481-492.
[2] Phil Zuckerman, “The Sociology of
Religion of W. E. B. Du Bois,” Sociology
of Religion 63:2 (Summer 2002), 239-253.
[3] Duane Lockard, “American Subculture: The
Negro’s Paradox,” The Public Opinion
Quarterly 26:3 (Autumn 1962), 373.