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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5614
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 28, 2007 - 07:46 pm: | 
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Celebrating the 'Rogue Saint'
By Joanna Brooks
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
W. E. B. DuBois, a towering figure in African-American and American history, a pathfinding historian and sociologist, a public intellectual, a civil rights leader, a peace activist, an expatriate, a Communist . . . a Sunday School teacher, a singer of hymns and spirituals, a religious visionary?
SDSU professor Edward Blum offers this revelatory reassessment in his new book "W. E. B. Du Bois: American Prophet" (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), which is available in the SDSU Bookstore. Blum, author of the award-winning "Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865 – 1898," joined the history faculty in 2007.
Du Bois' Spiritualism
"W. E. B. Du Bois: American Prophet" corrects a decades-old consensus view of Du Bois as a man of little or no religious feeling. Carefully combing the extensive Du Bois archive, Blum has discovered striking evidence of the religious worldview of this revolutionary American intellectual.
When Du Bois began his public career at the turn of the twentieth century, American Christianity had been hijacked in the service of white supremacy. Radicals claimed on spurious Biblical grounds that Black people had no souls, while mainstream churches portrayed racial whiteness as a form of divinity. Christian churches remained mostly silent while thousands of Black men were lynched, often by white crowds claiming religious justification and brandishing crosses.
Undeterred by these dark times, in 1910, Du Bois wrote a prayer for his students at Atlanta University: "It is never too late to mend. Nothing is so bad that good may not be put into it and make it better and save it from utter loss. Strengthen in us this knowledge and faith and hope, O God, in these last days. Amen."
Landmark Statement
Du Bois used his status as a public intellectual to launch a devastating attack on white supremacist theology. His landmark statement on Black life and consciousness, "The Souls of Black Folk" (1903), celebrated African Americans as a chosen people consecrated by their historical sufferings and endowed with special spiritual insight. It was received as a "sacred text" by black and white readers alike, and its author was celebrated as a "prophet."
"I believe in God who made of one blood all races that dwell on earth," DuBois wrote in his 1904 Credo, which hung on the walls of many African-American homes. Black Christs and black Madonnas appeared in his poems, short stories and novels. In one essay, Du Bois depicted God as a black woman, anticipating claims black womanist theologians would make in the 1970s and 1980s.
According to Blum, Du Bois was uninterested in minor points of doctrine or institutional fidelities. Like Frederick Douglass before him, he criticized the complacency and hypocrisy of American Christian churches, and he challenged Black churches to become engines of empowerment. Preferring "honesty over orthodoxy," Du Bois did not claim to be certain about the nature of God or the eternities, but he was uncompromising in his reverence for peace and justice.
Blum's illuminating history celebrates DuBois, the "rogue saint," as an important ancestor for many modern and contemporary intellectuals who draw their inspiration and strength from lives of robust, if unorthodox faith.
http://www.sdsuniverse.info/story.asp?id=53958 |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8712
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - 03:21 pm: |
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The credo of W.E.B. Dubois is so much more inspiring and ethereal than all of the bible thumping of vindictive judgmental staunch "Christians". |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2382
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - 05:52 pm: |
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I'll have to read it...although he was elitist as hell, he is one of my favorite people! |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5624
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - 07:26 pm: |
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You are exactly the person I had in mind when I posted this, Yukio! I’m glad you got it.
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Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2071
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - 07:37 pm: |
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He was a fascinating figure. I have a HEAVY (weight, not necessarily content LOL) biography on him that is on my summer reading list.
Tonya--I am glad you have apparently forgiven Yukio! |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5625
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - 07:46 pm: |
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LOL, I FORGOT I was mad at him Yvette, LOL!
Now you know that’s bad!
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Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2385
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - 11:11 pm: |
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Me too, Yvettep! Tonya is a sweetheart! |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4535
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 30, 2007 - 01:40 pm: |
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He might have felt that way in 1900 but by 1960 he was a Communist and I assume therefore an atheist.
So we have some so called Christians trying to tell a lie that they'll have to account for on the day of judgment. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2386
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 30, 2007 - 10:28 pm: |
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yes, he was a member of the communist party, but i doubt if he necessarily a "traditional" communist. He aligned himself w/the communist because of his disenchantment with so-called U.S. democracy, and began to embrace the politics of the USSR because they were--so he thought--more amenable to black people. One thing you must understand about DuBois, he is a moody son of a...he is irreverent enough not to be an atheist communist. |
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