The Souls of Black Folk · Chapter
X: Of the Faith of the Fathers explained
Du Bois examines the evolution of Negro religion from slavery through Emancipation, highlighting its role as a social, ethical, and political center for Black Americans.
What happens
Du Bois examines the evolution of Negro religion from slavery through Emancipation, highlighting its role as a social, ethical, and political center for Black Americans. He explores the dual consciousness of African Americans, the tension between accommodation and radicalism, and the church as a microcosm of Black life, while critiquing the hypocrisy and limitations imposed by the Veil of color.
Themes in this chapter
Double Consciousness
Du Bois describes the 'double life' of African Americans, torn between their identity as Negroes and as Americans, leading to moral hesitancy and self-consciousness.
The Veil
The Veil is invoked as the barrier separating Black and white worlds, causing bitterness and a sense of doubt and bewilderment.
Religion and the Black Church
The chapter centers on the Negro church as the social, ethical, and religious hub of Black communities, detailing its institutional power and cultural significance.
The Sorrow Songs
Du Bois references the spirituals and Jubilee songs as expressions of the Black religious experience, noting their influence on American hymnody.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
Provides analytical perspective on the development and role of Negro religion.
Key passages
“For fifty years Negro religion thus transformed itself and identified itself with the dream of Abolition, until that which was a radical fad in the white North and an anarchistic plot in the white South had become a religion to the black world.”
Over five decades, Black religious thought merged with the abolitionist cause, turning what was seen as a fringe idea in the North and a threat in the South into a central faith for African Americans.
Highlights the politicization of religion among enslaved and free Blacks.
“From the double life every American Negro must live, as a Negro and as an American, as swept on by the current of the nineteenth while yet struggling in the eddies of the fifteenth century—from this must arise a painful self-consciousness, an almost morbid sense of personality and a moral hesitancy which is fatal to self-confidence.”
The dual identity of being both Black and American, caught between modern progress and historical oppression, creates a deep self-awareness and indecision that undermines self-assurance.
Illustrates the concept of double consciousness.
“Such churches are really governments of men, and consequently a little investigation reveals the curious fact that, in the South, at least, practically every American Negro is a church member.”
Black churches function as governing bodies for their communities, and in the South nearly all African Americans are affiliated with a church.
Emphasizes the church's role as a central institution of Black social and political life.