Waning Light: The White Church, 19^th Century African-American Literature and the Abolitionist Debate

In the mid-nineteenth century, civil war and emancipation suddenly liberated hundreds of thousands of African Americans. As a result, a significant portion of the United States’ population sought social guidance. During a period of history in which “[t]he holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watch word beyond the old cry for freedom” (Souls, 13), the hierarchy of social institutions would forever change. The fight against oppression demanded discourse and the discussions would vary widely. By examining an archived religious tract from 1859 and explicating it alongside Frederick Douglass’ My Bondage and My Freedom and W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, we can begin to investigate the arguments concerning what Du Bois coined “the Negro problem” as it was debated in the white church. The repeated inability of the church to adequately provide the necessary leadership that the country sought emerges as a predominant theme that runs throughout not only abolitionist but also African American literature of the nineteenth century. The white church, as exemplified by Thome and portrayed by Du Bois, even if against slavery, refused to acknowledge the deeper-seeded, ideological changes necessary after emancipation in order to establish any semblance of equality in these United States of America. Unable to set the necessary precedent, which the situation demanded, the white church plays a subordinate role throughout African American literature.

In 1859, an anonymous “Christian Gentleman” placed an ad in the New York Independent newspaper, calling for a prize tract and offering an award of one hundred dollars to the person who could best articulate why the church should support emancipation. A group of five individuals awarded the money to both Reverend James A. Thome of Ohio and Reverend George W. Bassett of Washington D.C. for their respective tracts. While the whereabouts of Rev. Bassett’s tract is currently unknown, Rev. Thome’s “Prayer for the Oppressed” resides in the Library of Congress’ rare books collection. This tract, specifically selected as a representative work, portrays one of the many ways in which the white church, while at times with the best intentions, in hindsight, failed to provide adequate leadership to a wayward country burdened by the oppression of a people.

In what is certainly a somewhat self-serving plea for prayer, Thome fervently argues on behalf of the church and in defense of the abolitionist cause. Thome’s tract proposes to benefit his evangelical mission, however, that does not necessarily mare his entire message. Even Douglass, the penultimate representative man within the American Renaissance, had agendas and, thus, we should not overlook Thome’s articulate, well thought-out testimony on behalf of ending oppression: “Who are the oppressed, distinctively? The enslaved. These differ from all other victims of abused power in this essential, [sic] point, that, by the law, they are regarded not as men, but things” (Thome, 3). Thome defines oppression along the lines of black legal identity. At the heart of “Prayer for the Oppressed” lies a genuine concern for the well being of African Americans, placing Thome’s text upon the shelves of Abolitionist literature. While Du Bois portrays the white church from a different perspective, Thome’s self-service reveals the discourse in which he places his concerns: “The unconverted slaves are hopeful subjects of renewing grace compared with the same number of any class of men. No persons on earth are more susceptible to gospel influences than the negroes” (17). The subjective position from which Thome writes his religious tract, suggesting the potential conversion of African Americans, indicates the religious arena in which he speaks. “Prayer for the Oppressed”, published in 1859, portrays a particular argument on behalf of emancipation circulating throughout the discourse of white churches during this time period. By providing what the church wants to believe to be freedom from oppression by way of emancipation, Thome depicts a church interested in corralling the African American subject with an evangelical net.

In the mid-nineteenth century, a particular understanding of the effects of emancipation worked its way into American culture, including, as we see in Thome’s “Prayer”, the white churches. By clearly defining his expectations regarding the overall consequences of emancipation, the reverend from Ohio also articulates the naïve goal of his tract: “It is believed that if slavery were abolished, oppression would thereby be materially diminished throughout society. Holding this view, the people of God are earnestly combating the slave system” (3-4). Thome sees the abolition of oppression resulting solely from the end of slavery. Certainly, such a concept allies “Prayer for the Oppressed” with the mid-nineteenth century American texts fighting on behalf of a historically just cause; yet, it is the same understanding of emancipation’s overall effect that confines Thome’s tract to a specific position within the spectrum of abolitionist discourse. The primary debate in America during the mid-nineteenth century revolved around whether or not to abolish slavery. From within the anti-slavery camp, however, a disagreement arose concerning the overall effectiveness that emancipation would have on oppression. Thome adamantly believes that all other forms and agents of oppression would simply crumble with little struggle as a result of emancipation, depicting a particular perspective in that argument.

The belief that emancipation ultimately will lead to the end of all other forms of oppression plagues Thome’s tract. His anecdote towards the end of “Prayer” depicts an unstable author, unable to see the forest for the trees:

The writer of this tract, a native of the South and a member of a slaveholding family, religiously trained to regard slavery as scriptural, and expecting to be, after the manner of his father, a church member and a slaveholder for life, was hopefully numbered among the subjects of the revival of 1830 […] His eyes were then opened to the moral condition of slaves. He saw those of his own household, though his father was a ruling elder in the Presbyterian church, living without God; without religious instruction, without moral restraint; he saw the young slaves, the fruit of promiscuous concubinage, the playmate, [sic] of his childhood, and scarcely a darker hue, (though happily claiming no blood relationship, as those of some Southern families do,) growing up in ignorance and vice. Deeply moved, he cried unto the Lord that he would save their souls. He daily prayed for those miserable creatures; he nightly bathed his pillow with tears of pity and distress. But he found no relief; he saw no ray of hope. He dreamed not that slavery itself was wrong, and that its abolition was the only remedy for the ills of the oppressed. (20-21)

Thome’s prayers were misguided during the Second Great Awakening. He begged for God to put an end to what he believed to be the oppressive agent acting down upon the slaves, ignorance not slavery. In 1830, a time during which David Walker appeals to the country for nothing less than the outright end of slavery, the author of “Prayer for the Oppressed” failed to realize the greater, more extensive forces of oppression at work in this country. Unable to comprehend the root of the problem, Thome failed to see the role that the larger institution of slavery played in the lives of these “miserable creatures”. Granted, Thome was young, but a similar fallacy resurfaces nearly thirty years later in his award-winning tract.

Book ending his argument, Thome reiterates his misunderstanding of the omnipotent power acting upon the oppressed. Just as he could not grasp the larger forces at work demoralizing the African Americans he lived with as a child in his father’s home, Thome similarly fails to consider the larger components of the oppressive apparatus existing beyond the arm of slavery: “Slavery done away in righteousness, oppression in its other forms will be meliorated and will gradually disappear. The apprentice, the clerk, the sailor, the soldier, the pupil, the child, the laborer, the hired girl, the wife, will be more secure from the abuses of power, when the spirit of oppression, driven from its stronghold, is shorne of its strength” (15). As we will see depicted in Douglass and Du Bois, and as we simply know from our historical perspective of immediate emancipation and Reconstruction, the end of slavery did not necessarily meliorate nor gradually eliminate other significant forces of oppression:

Slavery was not abolished even after the Thirteenth Amendment. There were four million freedmen and most of them on the same plantation, doing the same work that they did before emancipation, except as their work had been interrupted and changed by the upheaval of war. Moreover, they were getting about the same wages and apparently were going to be subject to slave codes modified only in name. There were among them thousands of fugitives in the camps of the soldiers or on the streets of the cities, homeless, sick and impoverished. They had been freed practically with no land nor money, and, save in exceptional cases, without legal status, and without protection. (Reconstruction, 188)

The inability to consider these or any other overarching social agents further enabling the oppression of others hinders Thome’s analysis of the plight of African Americans, just as it did when he was a child in his father’s home. Thome, thus, portrays one of the potential ways in which the white church, while at times contributing in certain aspects mightily to the abolitionist cause, failed to provide American communities with the necessary leadership required after the Civil War.

In the mid-nineteenth century, American discourse could not avoid what Du Bois will later refer to as the “half-named Negro problem”. Half-named because the dilemma had as much to do with whites as it did with blacks, this crisis demanded the attention of the entire country. While Thome represents a particular perspective and offers only one of many proposed solutions to the situation, the five people who awarded him with the prize for his tract presumably concur with his argument. Therefore, it may be wise not to discredit his opinion without further exploration. In fact, this belief in emancipation as the ultimate end to oppression, despite its flaws, pervaded a significant portion of American culture just before the Civil War.

Douglass, while recounting his escape north in My Bondage and My Freedom, articulates the overwhelming sense of complete salvation felt as soon as the shackles of slavery had snapped. In a passage that seems to foreshadow Thome’s in many ways, the newly freed African American expresses the effect which liberty had upon his identity as a man:

It was a moment of joyous excitement, which no words can describe. In a letter to a friend, written soon after reaching New York, I said I felt as one might be supposed to feel, on escaping from a den of hungry lions. But, in a moment like that, sensations are too intense and too rapid for words. Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be described, but joy and gladness, like the rainbow of promise, defy alike the pen and pencil.

For ten or fifteen years I had been dragging a heavy chain, with a huge block attached to it, cumbering my every motion. I had felt myself doomed to drag this chain and this block through life. All efforts, before to separate myself from the hateful encumbrance, had only seemed to rivet me the more firmly to it. Baffled and discouraged at times, I had asked myself the question, May not this after all, be God’s work? My He not, for wise ends, have doomed me to this lot? A contest had been going on in my mind for years, between the clear consciousness of right and the plausible errors of superstition; between the wisdom of manly courage, and the foolish weakness of timidity. The contest was now ended; the chain was severed; God and right stood vindicated. I was a FREEMAN; and the voice of peace and joy thrilled my heart. (205-206)

In the opening paragraphs of his revolutionary second section, “Life as a Freeman”, the narrator momentarily attests to Thome’s argument by hailing the attainment of liberty as the euphoric end to oppression. Earlier, in his first autobiography The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, the author had articulated a similar utopian conception of the liberty to be attained in the north: “A keen observer might have detected in our repeated singing of 'O Canaan, sweet Canaan, / I am bound for the land of Canaan,' something more than a hope of reaching heaven. We meant to reach the North, and the North was our Canaan” (159-160). To many enslaved Americans, the north indeed seemed greater than heaven. Along with many other notable authors of this period, Douglass expresses a perspective upon emancipation similar to Thome. In the darkness that slavery cast upon the country, many people saw emancipation as the only guiding light.

Du Bois also incorporates the exhalation and all-influencing notion of emancipation into the first chapter of The Souls of Black Folk. Nearly fifty years after the abolition of slavery, Du Bois articulates a particular notion of emancipation that echoes Thome and Douglass:

Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites. In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand. At last it came,--suddenly, fearfully, like a dream. With one wild carnival of blood and passion came the message in his own plaintive cadence:—

“Shout, O children!

Shout, you’re free!

For God has bought your liberty!”. (12)

The belief that emancipation would result in the abolishment of oppression altogether appears in two of the most significant works in American literature, creating a theme along with Thome’s “Prayer for the Oppressed”. The discourse within the white church, which Thome represents, played a significant role in My Bondage and My Freedom and The Souls of Black Folk; however, Douglass and Du Bois ultimately do not share Thome’s opinion of the degree to which emancipation effects the oppression of African Americans.

Douglass’ text, particularly the second section of My Bondage and My Freedom, warns of the stronger forces at work besides slavery that enable the oppression of so many people. Immediately following the passage in which Douglass sounds nearly in harmony with Thome’s utopian understanding of life after slavery, the narrator conveys an unsettling realization upon the meaning of freedom: “Free and joyous, however, as I was, joy was not the only sensation I experienced. It was like the quick blaze, beautiful at first, but which subsiding, leaves the building charred and desolate. I was soon taught that I was still in an enemy’s land. A sense of loneliness and insecurity oppressed me badly” (206). Shortly after breaking free from the bounding chains of slavery, Douglass realized the more encumbering reaches of oppression’s grasp. Even though difficult if not impossible to prove, Thome, a fervent soldier in the abolitionist cause, had most likely read My Bondage and My Freedom before writing his tract; yet, written nearly five years latter, “Prayer for the Oppressed” neglects to heed Douglass’ warning. Despite Douglass’ testimony, Thome believes that with “slavery done away in righteousness, oppression in its other forms will be meliorated and will gradually disappear” (15). Thome’s work, meriting in the eyes of his contemporaries not only publication but also monetary award, chooses to recognize emancipation as an ultimate goal of rather than a stepping-stone in the battle to end oppression. Douglass purposefully includes his message, regarding the larger claws with which oppression clamps down upon American society, in order to highlight the naïve, yet popular assumption that the end of oppression may come to fruition solely as a result of emancipation.

Although Douglass does attribute this oppression of loneliness to possibly being identified as a fugitive slave, he also describes other larger forces pressing down on him like a boot-sole upon the neck. After running into a fugitive slave and first experiencing the burden which the tone of his skin creates even in the North, Douglass provides a glimpse into the struggle against oppression that lay beyond emancipation:

For a time, every door seemed closed against me. A sense of my loneliness and helplessness crept over me, and covered me with something bordering on despair. In the midst of thousands of my fellow-men, and yet a perfect stranger! In the midst of human brothers, and yet more fearful of them than of hungry wolves! I was without home, without friends, without work, without money, and without any definite knowledge of which way to go, or where to look for succor. (206-207)

The United States of America was not fit to equally incorporate an ex-slave into its society. Prejudice trailed the African American like an ideological ball and chain. When the narrator finally found work upon Mr. Rodney French’s boat, he was unable to perform his chosen duty after the entire white crew threatened to leave the ship if the dark-skinned man “struck a blow upon her” (213). In these passages, Douglass not only articulates a plea on behalf of all ex-slaves for guidance, but, he also depicts the racist beliefs that would prohibit any form of equality amongst the races even if slavery were outlawed. In 1855, Douglass raises significant concerns that must be addressed by members of both black and white races before even contemplating an end to oppression.

Looking back upon the situation about which Douglass forewarns, Du Bois similarly depicts the turbulent struggle for equality that awaited African Americans after the Civil War and emancipation. The author of Souls does not allow the end of slavery to equate into the end of oppression. Immediately following his eloquent passage regarding the significance of the abolition of slavery on the psyche of African Americans throughout the country, Du Bois, like Douglass, discusses the greater struggle that remained: “The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change [post-emancipation], the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people” (12). Unable to muster Thome’s naïve faith, Du Bois cannot consider emancipation the social elixir to America’s troubles. The disappointment to which Du Bois refers is only enhanced by the misleading belief that liberty and equality could result solely from the abolition of slavery.

Yet, Thome’s efforts in “Prayer for the Oppressed” are not necessarily wrong, just incomplete. To come anywhere near an end to the oppression of millions of people that is based strictly on the color of their skin, America most certainly had to abolish slavery. In this sense, Thome’s “Prayer” deserves a spot amongst other abolitionist literature fighting for the liberation of a people; however, the fact that the reverend from Ohio underestimates the other forces contributing to oppression cannot be overlooked. Du Bois clearly points out that the fight to end oppression does not subside inherently with the emancipation of slaves:

The bright ideals of the past,—physical freedom, political power, the training of brains and the training of hands,—all these in turn have waxed and waned, until even the last grows dim and overcast. Are they all wrong,—all false? No, not that, but each alone was over-simple and incomplete,—the dreams of a credulous race-childhood, or the fond imaginings of the other world which does not know and does not want to know our power. To be really true, all these ideals must be melted and welded into one. (Souls,15)

Accordingly, Thome’s concern for the enslaved African American is neither incorrect nor unnecessary, but it does not provide, in hindsight, the adequate leadership that the situation demanded. As Du Bois eloquently points out, there were many more factors contributing to the oppression of African Americans than just slavery, and the country had to combat all of them in order to hope for any equality among people. Even though these texts do not depict an historical account of the situation by which one can conclusively regard Reconstruction, the way in which Thome decides to construct his argument, when taken into consideration along with Douglass’ and Du Bois’ text, indicates a theme by which the white church is portrayed in nineteenth century literature.

Du Bois includes a critical portrayal of the white church later on in The Souls of Black Folk. Including anecdotal examples of the ways in which the church fails to provide the correct leadership, Du Bois depicts an institution, which once stood as a beacon for so many generations, failing to provide the correct leadership in regards to the Negro problem.

Du Bois incorporates scenes in which the white church has the opportunity to set a precedent for change but neglects to do so. In the chapter on Alexander Crummell, perhaps the only hero of Souls, Du Bois portrays a white church that fails to set a standard by which it could be revered and hailed as a true champion of civil rights. In response to a voice and vision that “called him to be a priest,—a seer to lead the uncalled out of the house of bondage” (137), Crummell turns to the white church in order to serve as the arena in which he would provide leadership; however, the church refuses to cooperate:

They were not wicked men,—the problem of life is not the problem of the wicked,—they were calm, good men, Bishops of the Apostolic Church of God, and strove toward righteousness. They said slowly, ‘It is all very natural—it is even commendable; but the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church cannot admit a Negro.’ And when that thin, half-grotesque figure still haunted their doors, they put their hands kindly, half sorrowfully, on his shoulders, and said, ‘Now,—of course, we—we know how you feel about it; but you see it is impossible—that is—well—it is premature. Sometime, we trust—sincerely trust—all such distinctions will fade away; but now the world is as it is. (137)

Even when the white church eventually offered Crummell admittance into its chambers, as it finally did in 1842, his race as an African American still led his elders to oppress him. Bishop Henry U. Onderdonk, brother of Bishop Benjamin T. Onderdonk who previously denied Crummell’s entry into the church altogether, characterizes the prejudices against which American society still had to struggle even within a church in favor of abolishing slavery: “Then [Henry U. Onderdonk] said, slowly and impressively, ‘I will receive you into this diocese on one condition: no Negro priest can sit in my church convention, and no Negro church must ask for representation there” (139). The distinctions that Bishop Benjamin T. Onderdonk speaks of had not faded away by 1842, nor would such bias be meliorated by emancipation as Thome suggests. If forced to decide between providing blacks with equal rights within the church or complying with the formation of segregated institutions, most whites chose the latter (Foner, 89). Du Bois’ depiction of the white church in The Souls of Black Folk portrays an institution that failed to adequately consider the more powerful agents oppressing African Americans in the mid-nineteenth century. The community sought guidance to the turbulent issues of the day in the white church only to find greater disappointment. The white church, while handed the opportunity, was unable to deliver the counsel so desperately needed.

As Albert J. Raboteau points out in A Fire in the Bones, when white Christians discriminated against blacks it did not discourage the African American community from religion altogether. Black Christianity continued to play a vital role in the battle for civil rights; however, Du Bois uncovers the white church’s inability to provide adequate leadership, which results in the widening segregation of the races. Alexander Crummell refused to enter Bishop Onderdonk’s diocese under such conditions as were laid out. Instead, “He bent to all the gibes and prejudices, to all hatred and discrimination, with that rare courtesy which is the armor of pure souls. He fought among his own, the low, the grasping, and the wicked, with that unbending righteousness which is the sword of the just. He never faltered, he seldom complained; he simply worked, inspiring the young, rebuking the old, helping the weak, guiding the strong” (141). In the mid-nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of emancipated people, suddenly hurled into capitalistic competition and all the while handicapped by inexperience, sought guidance. When the white church failed to provide the country with adequate leadership on the issue, efforts had to turn elsewhere, often segregating the American public: “In the aftermath of emancipation, the wholesale withdrawal of blacks from the biracial congregations redrew the religious map of the South. Two causes combined to produce the independent black church: the refusal of whites to offer blacks an equal place within their congregation and the black quest for self-determination” (Foner, 89).

Had Thome, in “Prayer for the Oppressed”, been better able to blend the multiple ideals necessary to abolish oppression or had the Onderdonks, in The Souls of Black Folk, been better able to establish a precedent in regards to the inclusion of blacks in their diocese, perhaps the white church could have served as a greater guiding light to the millions of people in need during the dawn of emancipation. Instead, as exemplified by Thome and portrayed by Du Bois, the white church failed to live up to such a role. Those converts of whom Thome speaks, so readily ripe for the taking to join the evangelical Church, did not find the leadership they sought after in the white church. Accordingly, the white church’s inability to recognize the greater ideological barriers that reinforced the oppression of a people runs throughout African American literature, leaving the country searching elsewhere for guidance. By investigating the portrayal of the white church in Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, a theme develops in which it fails to provide the adequate guidance to a culture confounded with the half-named Negro problem. Furthermore, an award-winning tract by Thome, published two years before the Civil War and four years after My Bondage and My Freedom, articulates a particularly popular, though incomplete, argument circulating within abolitionist discourse of that time. When taken into consideration with one another, these three texts share a common theme in which the portrayed white church does not exhibit the proper leadership that Du Bois considers indispensable in the battle to end oppression.

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