Deep Calls unto Deep: African American Christian Consciousness Pt. 1

Abstract

In an attempt to articulate what I consider to be the salient features of African American Christian consciousness I will make extensive use of The Souls of Black Folk and “The Religion of the American Negro,” both authored by Du Bois, and will also draw upon Friedrich Nietzsche’s vision of the tragic, first articulated in his classic study The Birth of Tragedy, then further developed and fleshed out during the course of his lifetime.¹ It is my opinion that Du Bois’s Souls is to date the classic work on identifying the distinctive elements and spirit of the African American religious (Christian) experience. Unlike many of his successors, Du Bois did not conflate the normative task of the theologian and the descriptive moment of analysis. He had no theological ax to grind and no latent or manifest theological agenda, just a profound appreciation of the depth and power of the experience itself.