ABSTRACT
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), a sociologist and cultural critic of American life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, offered incisive and at times controversial commentary on the role of religion in the United States. Well known for his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois made a distinction between the concepts of “church” and “religion.” A church, he wrote in his magazine The Crisis in 1933, is an organization that regulates the creedal beliefs, worship practices, financial obligations, and ethical goals of a group. He saw churches as human institutions grounded in social reality, complete with all the hopes and frailties that come with any human endeavor. Religion was for Du Bois a theory about the ultimate concerns of humanity and moral questions of right and wrong. Such a theory of religion permitted Du Bois to recognize the plurality of truth claims, the dangers associated with confessional exclusivity, and how the influences of religious beliefs and practices extended well beyond the walls of churches. The lives of most interest to Du Bois were those of African
Americans. In a chapter of The Souls of Black Folk entitled “Of the Faith of the Fathers,” Du Bois identified African American churches “as the social center of Negro life in the United States.” He described the historical development of African American churches in the contexts of both slavery and emancipation, always mediated by the prevalence of national trends in race and politics. And he ended the chapter with a kind of religious proposition of his own, one that challenged African Americans to organize against a society with a past, present, and future steeped in white supremacy. Although always suspicious of religion, Du Bois
couldn’t help but notice the power of religion to change the world, for better and for worse. Suffice it to say that Du Bois thought a lot about the American
experience of religion. Given the pervasiveness of religion in the United States today, it’s likely that many of us have given considerable thought to the same, although from our own personal perspectives and educational backgrounds. Like Du Bois, we all come to the subject of religion in America with certain expectations, prejudices, blind spots, and priorities. We all have our own theories of religion, some of them more or less refined according to professional standards that reflect the academic disciplines of history, sociology, psychology, and anthropology, to name a few. Moreover, we all carry with us some knowledge of American history, usually with an emphasis on the political contours of America’s past and a relatively thin understanding of the role of religion in that past. The goal of this book is to introduce you to the academic study
of religion in America and invite you to explore the complex tapestry of religious groups and movements throughout American history. We’re going to follow in the footsteps of Du Bois – and many others – by putting religion in conversation with other aspects of American society, including themes like history and memory; colonialism and nationalism; politics and law; race and ethnicity; gender and class; science and technology; and fundamentalism and pluralism. We’re going to see how religion works for some and against others, just as Du Bois so poignantly demonstrated in his many writings on the subject of race and religion. And we’re going to end with more questions than answers, for this is but a basic introduction to religion in America. Indeed, the success of this book depends on our ability to extend the investigation of religion in America well beyond these pages we turn in our hands.
