‘A moral question is nothing more…’: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Negro Church

“A moral question is nothing more than a psychological question and social question; and above all a field where our churches should get busy.”-William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, “As The Crow Flies,” circa 1915

In many ways, the “vocabulary” for moral reform was precisely what a more scholarly reformer like W.E.B. Du Bois hoped to offer an alternative to when writing in periodicals in the late 19th and early 20th century. Unlike much of the dogmatism and didacticism associated with late 19th and early 20th century black churches and religious organizations, Du Bois insisted that an absence of education contributed to most of the immoral and unethical behavior in the large African American community. African American churches and religious organizations had as their reform pretext —mirroring sermons pronounced from their pulpits—a vague religious dogma that did not provide the kind of practical instruction that Du Bois’s sociological background offered.

Reverend Crawford Jackson of Atlanta, Georgia typified the late-19th century and early 20th century reform ideals of most Black churches and religious organizations when speaking at the Negro Young People’s Christian and Educational Congress held August 6-11, 1902: “We want our [reform] movement to be Christian to the core. If God the Father through Christ is not to be its very Alpha and Omega, then I must be counted out.”

Du Bois disagreed with this late 10th and early 20th century reform ideology arguing that dogma alone could not eradicate contemporary social problems that derived from slavery. Instead, he believed African Americans needed a firm historical and sociological grasp of a distinct American phenomenon that black ministers could not offer due to an inadequate educational background. When Du Bois suggested that “a moral question is nothing more than a psychological question and social question,” he effectively likened African American moral and ethical issues to a sociological field of activity; for Du Bois, this provided grounds for his own reform and uplift writings appearing in White, Negro, religious, civic and sacred periodicals that his scholarly occupation uniquely qualified him to offer. This vocation, in part, was fueled by his sociological studies on the African American community conducted and published from 1900 to 1910 while a professor at Atlanta University.