EHS_Du Bois_Double_Consciousness.doc

Evangelical Homiletics Society 2016 W. E. B. Du Bois: Double Consciousness, the Negro Problem, and The African American Political Pulpit Rodrick Oliver Sweet, Th.M, PhD Student Adjunct Professor of Biblical Studies and Homiletics Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Houston Campus Abstract This critical examination of W. E. B. Du Bois' Double Consciousness Theory and the Negro Problem will demonstrate how both shaped his understanding of the Christian faith, thus leading to Pan-Africanism. Then, it will critically examine how this affected the understanding of religion in the modern understanding of the Negro Problem as witnessed in Black Preaching. Next, an examination of the historical and social context of Du Bois' understanding of Pan-Africanism has worked to shape the Black Political Pulpit. Finally, it will explore the differences between the “Du Bois understanding” of Christianity and Pan-Africanism. This work will examine the effects of the Negro Problem on Black Preaching and young African American political activists, with a definition and examination of Black Social Justice Theory. Introduction Black men, through their history in this Nation, have had to live within tension; a constant tug-of-war between what it means to be a Black man and what it means to be an American. This is what W.E.B. Du Bois called “double consciousness.” Du Bois, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” in Souls of Black Folk (New York: Dover Publication, 1994), 2 Yet this tension is not only felt by everyday black men but by the Black preacher and pastor as well. This ever-present companion also contributes to what was identified by Du Bois as the “Negro Problem” It was on display during the 2008 presidential election, and it brought into the Evangelical landscape this tension in an unprecedented manner. The controversial topic of Black Theology so long only heard in some mainline Black churches The use of the term “black church” is used throughout this work refers to church solely within historically black denominations, specifically black Baptist, Pentecostal, and Methodist that were all founded by African Americans. was now on the surface, and the nation as a whole came face-to-face with this tension in the fiery preaching of Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright. What followed was an intense, strong and passionate debate over the sound-bits of a preacher unknown to many evangelicals. Dr. Wright, then Senior Pastor of the 3,000 member, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, was also the pastor of then Presidential candidate Barack Obama. Due to questions that had arisen during the campaign, ABC News began to review the sermons of Wright; two which gained the most scrutiny and were placed under further examination, by the media were titled “The Day of Jerusalem’s Fall”(preached shortly after the September 11 attacks) and the other titled “Confusing God and Government” (preached April 13, 2003) would later become known as “God Damn America.” What made this a national controversy was that in March 2008 Fox News placed the two sermons on a continual loop. This was the first time since the 60’s that mainstream Americans found themselves interacting with Black Theology or was it something more? Oh yes it was something more. What many political pundits and religious commentators misunderstood from the start was that Wright was not just employing “Liberation Theology”, but he was skillfully using an older form of Black Theology known as “Pan-African Theology”. The goal of this paper is to examine in brief detail, the history and roots of Pan-Africanism as espoused by W.E.B. Du Bois and later by others, as well as both of Du Bois’ concepts of double-consciousness and the Negro Problem and trace their growth into a theological expression of Black Theology Throughout the course of this essay the writer will use Black Theology and Pan-African Theology synonymously, with the understanding that the expression of the two systems share commonality within the U.S. but that Pan-Africanism as a theological system on the continent of Africa is undergoing a reshaping to fit the theological need of the people there. as it relates to Wright’s sermon. This notwithstanding leaves us asking what is the overall goal of the Black Political sermon? The goal of the Black political pulpit and this type of preaching in general is threefold. The goal is: Black political preaching at its core is confronting: That means it seeks to confront injustice and social issues of importance for black people. Black political preaching is corrective: Black political preaching seeks to correct the social ills that plague not only the black community, but also the broader community as a whole. Black political preaching is also a source of comfort to both those within and out of the body of Christ. This is not to say that black preaching has been shaped by the love of the Gospel but that it was not entirely eschatological in nature due in part the black preacher being more concerned with the ethical workings of the Gospel verses the eschatological view. A Brief History of Pan-Africanism Pan-Africanism as a belief system represents the vast complexities of black political and intellectual thought. Today many are asking; what constitutes Pan-Africanism? The answer to this question is, that the movement changes according to its focus, in the early stages of Pan-Africanism the focus was political, it's goals were threefold: to end colonization on the African continent, to end the Apartheid in South Africa, as well was the eradication of Jim Crow Segregation in the United States. Pan-Africanism reflects a range of views, at its core level; it is a belief that people of African Descent both on the continent of Africa and in the Diaspora, must strive for unity and a common good. Because of this belief, many have interpret the founding of the first black churches in the US in the 1780’s as the early stages of Pan-Africanism. While others contend this was not the case! When Pan-Africanism is view as a Theology it seeks to find theological meaning in ancestral connections and African Folk religions that inform its hermeneutics and shape its Systematic Theology. This impulse toward an African identity was realized with the rise of a Pan-African worldview that took the form of Ethiopianism. Ethiopianism is a religious movement among sub-Saharan Africans that embodied the earliest stirrings toward religious and political freedom in the modern colonial period. The movement was initiated in the 1880s when South African mission workers began forming independent all-African churches, such as the Tembu tribal church (1884) and the Church of Africa (1889). HYPERLINK "https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ethiopianism" https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ethiopianism (accessed June 26,2016). This grew out of a reading of Psalm 68:31. Envoys will come out of Egypt; Ethiopia will quickly stretch out her hands to God. All Scripture quotation are taken from the NASBU! The verse served as the buttress against the racist theology that declared black people were descendants of Ham. For those who adhere to Pan-Africanism, Ethiopianism thus emerged as a psychological buffer to the racist theology of its day! Pan-African Conferences At the time that Ethiopianism took root in South Africa; African-Americans began to convene Conferences on Pan-Africanism, the first of which was held in Chicago on August 14, 1893. It lasted one week and among those in attendance were Bishop Henry McNeal Turner from the AME church and abolitionist Alexander Crummell, pastor of an Episcopal church, Crummell also was the pastor and mentor of W.E.B. Du Bois. Topics discussed comprised of “The African in America”, “Liberia as a Factor in the Progress of the Negro Race”, and “What Do American Negroes Owe to Their Kin Beyond the Sea.” A few years later, a man by the name of H. Sylvester Williams began thinking about a political movement organized around a series of conferences that would draw representatives of African descent from around the world. In 1897, Williams established the African Association (AA) to foster a sense of unity and camaraderie among people of African descent as well as to promote and protect the interests of all people claiming African descent. Though Du Bois is often considered to be the father of Pan-Africanism by many of its followers, Williams first used the term Pan- Africanism in a letter to a London African Associate in 1899. Thus the first Pan-African Conference was held in London’s Westminster Town Hall, July 23-25 1900, organized by H. Sylvester Williams, a West Indian lawyer. He had two aims for this conference. The first was to bring people of African descent throughout the world into closer touch with one another. The second was to establish friendlier relations between Caucasians and people of African descent. W. E. B. Du Bois was a participant at the conference, and by the start of the first day July 23, 1900, Du Bois added as his own aim, that of self-government for African people everywhere. Nineteen years later Dubois convened the First Pan-African Congress also in Paris 1919. Rayford W. Logan, “The Historical Aspects of Pan-Africanism: A Personal Chronicle” p.92 Once Du Bois returned from Europe, he worked harder than ever to gain equal rights for African Americans. This was in part due to the many African American soldiers returning home from the Great War (World War I) he found that they were being treated no better than before the war. Black soldiers returning from overseas felt a new sense of power and worth, and were representative of an emerging attitude referred to as the New Negro. David Levering Lewis, “W.E.B. DuBois: The Fight for Equality and The American Century, 191-1963” (New York; Henry Holt & Company), 3. In an editorial “Returning Soldiers” he wrote: “But, by the God of Heaven, we are cowards and jackasses if, now that the war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land.” Du Bois quoted in Williams, Chad (2010), Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era, UNC Press Books, p. 207. This was in response to what became known as Red Summer. In the Summer of 1919 a series of race riots broke out across the U.S. The most horrendous of these attacks was a vicious attack on blacks in Elaine, Arkansas, in which nearly 200 blacks were murdered. In response to what has become known as “Red Summer” Dubois penned “Dark Water: Voices from Within the Veil (write more on this work) The 2nd Pan-African Conference was held in 1921, it met in London, Brussels and Paris, the capitals of the three leading colonial powers, in August and September. Most of the participants were from non-African countries, and many of them were from the United States. One Hundred and ten delegates present included about 40 representatives of British, French, and Portuguese African colonies. ibid…95 The 3rd Pan-African Congress met in London and Lisbon in November and December 1923. This time the gathering was smaller than the previous years. It was, however, attended by delegates from British West Africa and other colonial areas. ibid…96 The 4th Pan-African congress was held in New York in 1927, The 5th Congress (1945, Manchester, England) elected Du Bois as chairman, but the power was clearly in the hands of younger activists, such as George Padmore and Kwame Nkrumah, who later became significant in the independence movements of their respective countries. Du Bois' final Pan-African gesture was to take up citizenship in Ghana in 1961 at the request of President Kwame Nkrumah and to begin work as director of the Encyclopedia Africana. Du Bois’ Double Consciousness Theory Du Bois introduce this concept of “Double Consciousness” into his social philosophy in a magazine article in 1897 “The Conservation of Races,” and then again in his 1903 Souls of Black Folk. Yet its source has been traced back to German Idealist Philosophical tradition. Ernest Allen, Jr. On the Reading of Riddles: Rethinking Du Boisian “Double Consciousness” in Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy, ed. Lewis R. Gordon (New York and London: Routledge, 1996) 55. Ernest states that: “The first Citing of this phenomenology of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Johann Gottfried Herdre’s philosophy of history, having to do with the supposed impossibility of two or more ideals to coexist beneath the sway of a single governing apparatus.” For Du Bois double-consciousness in an important factor for understanding racial social constructs. By referring double-consciousness Du Bois invoked a term already in use in a number of literary, philosophical and scientific discussion, to meanings twoness. Therefore when discussing “Double Consciousness” Du Bois himself has never fully nuanced “double-consciousness,” as to what it exactly he means as well as the conjoining of the ideals first in writings on the subject, nor did he define it in his 1897 article “Conservation of Races” yet he does make use of it in both the “Negro Strivings” and “Negro Ideals”. Then after just these two uses in his published writing, he dropped the term entirely. Over time other would extend the ideal of double-consciousness. One such person was Cornel West in his first book, he writes: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), W. E. B. Du Bois eloquently described a double consciousness in black Americans, the dialectic of black self-recognition oscillated between being in America but not of it, from being black natives to black aliens. Yet Du Bois overlooked the broader dialectic of being American yet feeling European, of being provincial but yearning for British cosmopolitanism, of being at once incompletely civilized and materially prosperous, a genteel Brahmin amid uncouth conditions. Black Americans labored rather under the burden of a triple crisis of self-consciousness. Their cultural predicament was comprised of African appearance and unconscious cultural mores, involuntary displacement to America without American status, and American alienation from the European ethos complicated through domination by incompletely European Americans. Cornel West, “Prophecy Deliverance” (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press,) 30-31, West further complicates the understanding of Double-Consciousness when he goes one to write of elements of African-American cultural tension due to America’s dominant Protestant European population whose own self-identity suffered from an “anxiety-ridden provinciality. 31. Because of Du Bois’ absence of a clearly defined view, readers of Du Bois, as noted above are able to interpret double consciousness to their own understanding. Thus, his failure to do so, has opened up his thinking by numerous readers to erroneously equate his unarticulated, national-racial ideals in “Conservation of the Races” with notions of “cultural conflict.” Ernest Allen, Jr. On the Reading of Riddles: Rethinking Du Boisian “Double Consciousness” in Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy, ed. Lewis R. Gordon (New York and London: Routledge, 1996) 55. But there is a genius to Du Bois’ lack of clarity in that it allows each successive generation of African-Americans to define double-consciousness on terms that are theirs. Because, as Du Bois noted in 1903 as it is today, we live in a racialized society. Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America,A racialized society is a society wherein race matters profoundly for differences in life experiences, life opportunities, and social relationships. The question that needs to be addressed is “what is the impact on the black preacher, and Wright’s sermon in particular?” One simply has to look at the outline of Wright’s 2003 sermon and its sermon proposition to comprehend this link between the black preacher who seeks to undo his “double consciousness” by becoming Socially Consciousness. Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2003) 275. The first time the phase “Black Consciousness” is used it is by Martin Luther King Jr. in a conversation with Stokely Carmichael and other advocates of the phase “Black Power” in an effort to convince them to drop the use of the phase in lieu of the term “black consciousness.” Which is exactly what Wright is doing by the thesis of his sermon. The socially conscious pastor may or may not be aware that “black consciousness is shorthand for “Black Power.” In fact Wright does not need to use this term directly. By wearing Kintay Cloth fabric on his preaching robe he is identifying with the ideal of Black Consciousness. This is due in part to the lack of awareness of the history of the term. Dr. Martin Luther King coined the term, in the spring of 1966 when young Stokely Carmichael began to express “Black Power” ideals opposite of Dr. King and the non-violence of the Civil Rights movement. Carmichael believed that Black power was the only appropriate response to white racism. What concerned Dr. King about Stokely Carmichael, who was the new (SNCC) Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s chairman, was when he began shouting “Black Power” while giving a speech from the tailgate of a truck in 1966 in Greenwood, Mississippi. Because of the under current of social tensions it lead to the loss of uniformity within the structure of the civil rights movement, today, as then, the term “Black Power” is an emotionally charged termed. For Dr. King the term was irrevocably linked to the notion of black supremacy. Martin Luther King Jr. Speech at WMU December 18, 1963 in this speech he stated: “This is why I have said all over this nation that we must never substitute a doctrine of black supremacy for white supremacy. For the doctrine of black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy. God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men but God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race, the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers.” HYPERLINK "http://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/MLK.pdf" http://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/MLK.pdf (accessed July 31, 2016) As stated above the core of double-consciousness is the overcoming tension, of being black and American. This tension also manifested itself in another of Du Bois’ concepts. This is known as the Negro Problem. This problem is at the heart of Wright’s preaching and his sermon outline appears as such: Title: Confusing God and Government I. Governments lie. II. Governments change III. Governments fail (The Romans Government failed) Du Bois and the Negro Problem Much like his concept of Double-Consciousness, Du Bois first makes use of the term the “Negro Problem” in an article titled “The Study of the Negro Problem” in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 1898. Du Bois recognized that African-Americans were no longer slaves, and were not considered equal by the vast majority of White-Americans. Thus Du Bois in consciousness of living in a racialized society was in fact a failure of that society; he intimated that: “A social problem is the failure of an organized social group to realize its group ideals, through the inability to adapt a certain desired line of action to given conditions of life.” W.E.B. Du Bois, The Study of the Negro Problem, HYPERLINK "http://www.webdubois.org/dbStudyofnprob.html" http://www.webdubois.org/dbStudyofnprob.html (accessed July 28, 2016). Later in 1903 in Souls of Black Folk, he leads into the Problem of the Negro by posing a few rhetorical questions, such as “How does it feel to be a problem?” Du Bois, Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” in Souls of Black Folk, (New York: Dover Publication, 1994), 1. In a subsequent chapter of the book he asked, “What shall be done with the Negro? Ibid…9 Thus the “Negro Problem” has become for many African-Americans in Swahili “njia ya mijini ya maisha” Also in German, die städtische Lebensweise meaning “the urban way of life” of a people. Because of this in 1966 a meeting was held, The National Committee of Black Churchmen (NCNC) to address this “problem”. From this meeting there emerged a set of theological ideas that began to reinterpret Jesus’ teaching on the issues important to black people. In this new theological construct, was a mixture of Pan-Africanism and Black Power, aptly called Black Theology. Black Theology or Black Liberation Theology is a theological system, found in some black churches. The system seeks to contextualize Christianity in an effort to assist African-Americans in the overcoming of generations of oppression. In fact it was the racial, social, and spiritual conflicts of the civil rights era that lead to the forming of black theology. It, like most movements occurred both inside and outside of the black church in the sphere of Black intellectualism. In the days before the civil rights movement the Black Church, had a clarion call and mission that was two-fold: it served as a beacon of hope for the lost-soul seeking grace and mercy only found in salvation through Jesus Christ, but it also functioned as an oasis for all issues affecting the black community. Because of this tension a meeting was held in July that year. There were 51 concerned black clergy calling themselves the National Committee of Negro Churchman (NCNC for short) led to this new approach of understanding the Bible. From this meeting emerged the writings of James Cone. According to Cone, “if God is not just, if God does not desire justice, then God needs to be done away with. Liberation from a false god who privileges whites, and the realization of an alternative and true God who desires the empowerment of the oppressed through self-definition, self-affirmation, and self-determination is the core of Black liberation theology” James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1970), 56-57 From as early as 1774, the black church served as a voice, crying out against slavery and injustice. As blacks gained their freedom, the church operated as a twenty-four hour, full-service institution, affecting change spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, and socially within the community, yet with lingering issues of injustices. This has long been a quest for the African American community in the New World. With that came the development of the black church, this development is embodied in American Christianity, and the term, The Black Church presents many details of racial and religious lifestyles unique to Black history. In essence, the term The Black Church is a misnomer. It implies that all Black churches share the same aspirations and strategies for creating cohesive African-American communities, which they do not. The Black Church, like black people are not monolithic in their theology. Yet with the rise of the Black Church came the shared cry for freedom for the injustice of slavery. The Black Church long thought of as the consciousness of the Nation has a rich history of preaching on issues of social justice. The wider evangelical community has at times questioned this consciousness. They have asked, “What is Social Justice?” In a sense, all issues are social issues because all humans are members of communities. In this social issues can range from one on one friendship to marriage. With this understanding the question of social justice demands an answer. For the purpose of this paper Social Justice can be defined as “equality or equal opportunity in society”. This definition is in effect a short form of the more expanded concept of social justice as seen in the writings of Spinoza, Aquinas, and Thomas Paine. For example, the ideas of justice have been theorized and discussed in areas such as law, philosophy, and theology. The term was coined by Jesuit Priest Luigi Taparelli co-founder of Civiltà Cattolica translated (Wake up world) writing in 1825 he was persuaded in his thinking that the writings of Aquinas needed to be revived and used the phrase for the first time. Alan Gewirth, “Social Justice,” in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy 2ed., ed Robert Audi (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 855. Social Justice in this understanding can best be comprehended in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society as explained by John Rawls in his work “A Theory of Justice,” where he puts forth a series of Principles of Justice. “The first: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice revised ed, (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press, 1971), 53. For Rawls justice as fairness “takes the primary subject of political justice to be the basic structure of society, which he includes in his second principle: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that (1) they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society, consistent with the just savings principle (the difference principle). (2) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. Ibid.,92 In short, Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness suggests that compatible structural schemes are needed to fulfill the necessary conditions for a unified system of cooperation. Yet the term social justice seems too ambiguous for many in the field of theology and has provoked various debates in the field. It is not my aim in this work to try and unravel such an immense body of work; rather, it is the goal of this paper to present how social justice ideas have been broadly conceptualized/theorized in the halls of the black academy and how they fair in the local black church. Summary and Analysis of Jeremiah A. Wright’s Confusing God and Government As mentioned above, the Black Church The use of the term “black church” will be use throughout this work refers to church solely within historically black denominations, specifically black Baptist, Pentecostal, and Methodist that were all founded by African Americans. was forged in the crucible of a racialized sociocultural context. In this section our aim is to clarify the role that Pan-African Theology plays in the Black Political pulpit. In this context the Black Pastor becomes its drum major. The Black Pastor is to speak truth to power; by providing correction to the community as well as confrontation of evil in the guise of racial discrimination. Based on this, Wright believes that his sermon is both unashamedly black, and unapologetically Christian. As an African-American Evangelical, I don’t agree with many of the political and theological views of Pastor Wright, that is because, I fine many of his view unchristian, that notwithstanding I understand the heart of this sermon, when he has the congregation to look over some of the historical claims in his message he uses event like the Tuskegee Experiment that was conducted from 1932 until 1972. It is this crucible of double-consciousness and the Negro problem that causes this type of expression of faith to grow within the black community, Black churches today must seek to maintain an emphasis that is true to the Christian faith and fight against racial and social injustice. In light of this, one sermon shows the concern of people that have been historically dehumanized, as well as disenfranchised. Because of this, the relationship between the black church and the government of the United States is a perplexing and complicated one. Wright introduces his sermon by walking the congregation through the narrative of the raising of Lazarus. Theoretically Wright is operating form the premises that the U.S. government is an occupying force, in the Jeremiah A. Wright, “Confusing God and Government,” Sermon Preached Palm Sunday April 13, 2003, https://vimeo.com/42601818 (accessed June 4,2016) same vain as the Roman army in the day of Jesus. In fact Wright makes the case when he said: Occupying somebody else’s country doesn’t make for peace. Killing those that fought to protect their own homes does not make for peace. Press conferences claiming victory do not make for peace. Regime-change, substituting one tyrant for another tyrant with the biggest tyrant pulling the puppet strings of all the tyrants, that does not make for peace! Colonizing a country does not make for peace! If you don’t believe me, look at Haiti, look at Puerto Rico, look at Angola, look at Zimbabwe, look at Kenya, look at Astra Boys in South Africa. Colonization does not make for peace. Occupation does not make for peace, and subjugation only makes for temporary silence. It does not make for peace. Ibid Note the use of a key Pan-African language in Wright’s sermon, he make use of terms such as “colonizing and colonization” in the above quote. His sermon is a critique on the government of then President George W. Bush and the U.S. government as a whole. He is confronting both the injustices that he perceives that are inherent form the U.S. Government. His Sermon Proposition: “y’all looking to the government for only what God can give. A lot of people confuse God with their government.” Ibid The point here that should be clearly understood is that for many, In 1993 Jeremiah Wright was number 2 on the Ebony Magazine’s 15 Greatest Black Preachers list. Ebony November 1993, 156. the preaching of Jeremiah Wright serves as a central reasoning for the freedom from oppression. The Pan-African tradition of Black Preaching in not the only expression of Christianity, also we evangelicals must understand that while being conservative and voting conservative does not often go hand-in hand with the message of the gospel. Conclusion In summary this sermon is a small example of the complexity and the diversity of black political preaching. While in 2008 Jeremiah Wright’s sermon was used to create a firestorm for a Presidential candidate, it is an example of black preaching that seeks to speak truth to power in a tradition of practices that at its core seeks to confronts injustice, seeks to be the corrective of social ills of both the black community and the nation, and lastly seeks comfort the body of Christ. This is heart of black preaching!  PAGE 14 PAGE 1