Du Bois’s humanism represents another central component of his conception of freedom. Numerous essays in this volume discuss Du Bois’s political thought, as does this chapter. But this piece also argues that Du Bois’s embrace of communism was closely tied to his agnosticism. His critiques of both white and Black Christianity and his dogged nonbelief in God throughout his life represent another aspect of “freedom of soul” and “freedom of thought” that he believed were crucial to the Black freedom struggle. While Du Bois certainly demonstrated ambivalence toward Black Christianity and a nuanced perspective on religion in general, as Phillip Luke Sinitiere’s essay points out, sometimes praising its potential and other times condemning religion’s ties to racism, the main thrust of his personal writings on the topic situate him squarely in the ranks of twentieth-century Black freethinkers.
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Before he enrolled in college, Du Bois adhered to the theological tenets of the First Congregational Church, the congregation he attended in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. David Levering Lewis notes that during his teenage years, his beliefs “were superficially orthodox and anchored in the rigorous Calvinism of New England Congregationalism.” This Calvinism posited that humans were sinners by nature, sinners were doomed to spend eternity in hell, salvation came only through faith in Jesus, and the Bible should be interpreted literally. Had Du Bois grown up in the same town one hundred years earlier, he likely would have also believed in predestination, which held that humans could do nothing to influence their spiritual fate.
Indeed, Du Bois did seemingly subscribe to a different aspect of predestination, namely that of the Elect, the small percentage of the world that God deemed worthy of salvation. On a practical level, church attendance represented an opportunity for Du Bois to practice and show off his Greek language skills and to demonstrate his facility with biblical interpretation during Sunday school. While he eventually abandoned his adherence to Calvinism, Lewis argues that it continued to influence Du Bois throughout his life, although it became secularized. Instead of salvation coming from faith in God, it would come from the social sciences. Damnation awaited all those who lived morally dissolute lives or wasted their talents, and the Elect transformed into the Talented Tenth for Du Bois, at least early in his career.