W. E. B. Du Bois: The spirituality of a weary traveler

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was a pioneer sociologist, a prolific journalist, and a human rights activist of worldwide fame. His biographers have sharply disagreed about how to explain his many shifts in socio-political policy. At various times, he was a Republican, Democrat, Socialist, black nationalist, and Communist. On the surface, little or nothing seemed constant in his life. After closer examination, however, he demonstrated a religious orientation with life-long convictions that shaped his changes.; Du Bois' religiosity had three levels: peripheral, intermediate, and foundational. First, on the periphery of his spirituality, he endorsed various theological concepts plus diverse social institutions. For example, he started out a believer in the traditional Protestant doctrines of a Congregational church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts but in the end considered God completely immanent and had no affiliation with a religious organization. Beyond the surface level of his spirituality, he upheld an intermediate dimension of faith with convictions that formed a creed to distinguish long-term beliefs from those more temporary. In youth, Christian tenets combined with a universalistic philosophy to form his creed. At middle age, Du Bois embraced a more orthodox Christianity, centered on belief in Jesus as a divine savior figure. Then from about age fifty on, he became a full-fledged naturalist, inspired by faith in a universal divinity that was only an internal power. Thirdly, he preserved a foundational spirituality, marked by convictions that were permanent. He never lost faith in some form of divinity, while he stayed committed to a sort of millenarianism, an expectation of miraculous changes in society. Moreover, he remained devoted to absolute ethical values of justice, peace, and equality.; Because his outlook often shifted, Du Bois found reason to identify with “the weary traveler,” described in an African-American hymn. Like the authors of the hymn, he considered life a never-ending journey to a perfect existence, an undertaking that sanctified intellectual movement. His institutional and theological allegiances changed like the environment around a perpetual traveler, but the quest for absolute truth stayed holy. Commitments to institutions, socio-political ideologies, and concrete theological principles were instrumental for him to the higher goals defined by his trust in a mysterious yet recognizable divinity.