ABSTRACT
I began the previous chapter with a discussion of W.E.B.Du Bois’s classic The Souls of Black Folk. I homed in on chapter 12 from that book, “Of Alexander Crummell,” discussing the racism young Crummell experienced as a black Christian in nineteenth-century America. I did so as a way to illustrate the notion that religion is always affected by the sociocultural environment within which it dwells. Because racism was so rampant and pervasive in nineteenthcentury America, it was inevitable that the major religion of the country-Christianity-would echo, reflect, and at times even reinforce that racism.
