Crisis flashback: The words and wisdom the W.E.B. Du Bois

On Religion:

My religious development has been slow and uncertain. I grew up in a liberal Congregational Sunday school and listened once a week to a sermon on doing good as a reasonable duty. Theology played a minor part, and our teachers had to face some searching questions. At 17 I was in a missionary college where religious orthodoxy was stressed; but I was more developed to meet it with argument, which I did. My "morals" were sound, even a bit puritanic, but when a hidebound old deacon inveighed against dancing I rebelled. By the time of graduation I was still a "believer" in orthodox religion but had strong questions which were encouraged at Harvard.

In Germany I became a freethinker, and when I came to teach at an orthodox Methodist Negro school I was soon regarded with suspicion, especially when I refused to lead the students in public prayer. When I became head of a department at Atlanta, the engagement was held up because I again balked at leading in prayer, but the liberal president let me substitute the Episcopal prayer book on most occasions. Later I improvised prayers on my own.

Finally I faced a crisis: I was using Crapsey's Religion and Politics as a Sunday School text. When Crapsey was hauled up for heresy; I refused to teach Sunday school. when Archdeacon Henry Phillips, my last rector, died, I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war.

I think the greatest gift of the Soviet Union to modern civilization was the dethronement of the clergy and the refusal to let religion be taught in the public schools.

Religion helped and hindered my artistic sense. I know the old English and German hymns by heart. I loved their music but ignored their silly words with studied inattention. I worshipped cathedral and ceremony, which I saw in Europe, but I knew what I was looking at when in New York a Cardinal became a strike-bearer and the Church of Christ fought the Communism of Christianity.

- From The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois

On the Christian Church:

In the red blood-guiltiness of the Christian Church in America toward black folk, the Episcopal Church has an undoubtedly larger share than any other group. It was the Episcopal Church that for 250 years made itself the center and bulwark of man stealing and chattel slavery. it was the Episcopal Church that deliberately closed its doors in the face of the praying slave; it was the Episcopal Church that refused after the war to educate freedmen, and is still refusing... Is not this...great institution ...the church of John Piermont Morgan and not the church of Jesus Christ?

December 1913

On the White Christ:

It seems fair to judge the Christianity of white folk by two present day developments: the World War and Billy Sunday.* As to the widespread and costly murder being waged today by the children of the Prince of Peace, comment is unnecessary it simply spells Christianity's failure.

As to Billy Sunday there is room for opinions. Personally we@do not object to him; he is quite natural under the circumstances and a fit expression of his day. He is nearly the same thing as the whirling dervish, the snake dancer and devotee of Mumbo jumbo.

Such methods of appealing to primitive passions and emotions have been usual in the history of the world. Today, they are joined, in the case of Mr. Sunday, to picturesque abuse of the English language, unusual contortions and a curious moral obtuseness which allows Mr. Sunday to appropriate a whole speech belonging to Robert Ingersol and use it as his own. The result has been a large number of converts and widespread demand for Mr. Sunday's services. All this seems necessary.

Evidently Mr. Sunday's methods are the only ones that appeal to white Christians. Reason does not appeal- Suffering and poverty do not appeal. The lynching and burning of human beings and torturing of women has no effect. Yet the contortions of Mr. Sunday bring people down the "sawdust" trail.

Selah!

But hereafter let no white man sneer at the medicine men of West Africa or the howling of the Negro revival. The Negro church is at least democratic. It welcomes everybody.

It draws no color-fine.

- March 1915

*BILLY SUNDAY, full name WILLIAM ASHLEY SUNDAY (1863-1935), American Fundamentalist preacher Sunday played professional baseball from 1883 until 1891, when be began working for the Young Men's Christian Association in Chicago. Sunday was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1903, seven years after be bad become an evangelist His approximately 300 revivals, conducted throughout the US, attracted audiences estimated at 100 million, a total thought by some to be the largest number ofpeople ever evangelized by one person before the use of broadcasting Sunday was also a leader in the Prohibition movement, and his largest revival. held in New York City in 1917, was organized to advance that cause.

Copyright Crisis Publishing Company, Incorporated Nov/Dec 1999
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