The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel

by Gary J. Dorrien

Winner of the 2017 Grawemeyer Award, this groundbreaking work examines the early history of the Black social gospel tradition and its close relationship to W. E. B. Du Bois

“Magnificent . . . The New Abolition brings to life those reformers whose work commenced after American slavery officially ended and the enterprise of re-creating slavery in new form was beginning.”—Jonathan Tran, Christian Century

The Black social gospel emerged from the trauma of Reconstruction to ask what a “new abolition” would require in American society. It became an important tradition of religious thought and resistance, helping to create an alternative public sphere of excluded voices and providing the intellectual underpinnings of the civil rights movement. This tradition has been seriously overlooked, despite its immense legacy.
 
In this groundbreaking work, Gary Dorrien describes the early history of the Black social gospel from its nineteenth-century founding to its close association in the twentieth century with W. E. B. Du Bois. He offers a new perspective on modern Christianity and the civil rights era by delineating the tradition of social justice theology and activism that led to Martin Luther King Jr.

Genres: History, Education, Biography, Theology, Christianity, Nonfiction, American History

672 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2015

About the author

Gary John Dorrien is an American social ethicist and theologian. He is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and Professor of Religion at Columbia University, both in New York City, and the author of 18 books on ethics, social theory, philosophy, theology, politics, and intellectual history.

Prior to joining the faculty at Union and Columbia in 2005, Dorrien taught at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, where he served as Parfet Distinguished Professor and as Dean of Stetson Chapel.

An Episcopal priest, he has taught as the Paul E. Raither Distinguished Scholar at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and as Horace De Y. Lentz Visiting Professor at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Philip Barbier · Rating 4 out of 5]

While there has been scholarly work in the past on the Black Social Gospel this volume is the first real comprehensive overview on the subject. As such, this is a dense book full of great information that is, at times, difficult to read.

That said, if you are interested in the people involved in the leadership of the Black church movement in the post-civil war era, this is a fantastically informative book.

[E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

After emancipation leaders in the Black church had to cope with new realities--segregation and lynching. This is the story of the generation that developed the Black Social Gospel and laid the groundwork for the liberation efforts of the Civil Rights generation of the middle twentieth century. Besides DuBois, many of the people covered in this volume are mostly unknown. And the stories of political struggles and personal relationships equal the stories of the early centuries of Christianity as the difficult but good work is done to create a theology relevant to the people.

The Black church may have saved Christianity by focusing our attention on the liberation of Jesus and expunging our modern theology of its inherent white supremacy. This is part of the story of how that happened.

I have only two complaints with the book. I did not like the organization. Chapters might cover 100 pages with chapter sections running to 30 pages. Better to break into more chapters. And the book was neither a linear chronology nor a series of foci on major figures but a strange blending of the two which was at times confusing to me.

The very final section includes a very good theological analysis of the cross in this tradition (borrowing heavily from James Cone). I wish the author had included more theological reflection like this throughout the volume.

Overall, a magisterial work and well worth the months of effort I put into it.