as morality and ethics. To explain his theology, one does not have to believe that his writings are in contradiction to self-assertions. I believe the zealotry with which he approaches morality and ethics, his seemingly unwavering belief in heaven and hell, his unabashed reverence to God and his adherence and respect for Virtue is very much "religious." If religious is being defined as any sort acknowledgement to an ultimate reality or being faithful to a set of beliefs because those beliefs are related to that ultimate reality, then DuBois is obviously religious. That "ultimate reality" DuBois believed in was a combination of what he hoped would be the fate of dark peoples everywhere (specifically African Americans) and what he feared would be their collec!
             tive fate if blacks were left leaderless, uneducated and indolent. DuBois had a religious doctrine; it was a belief in blackness.
             It was not as if DuBois viewed being black as analogously with practicing a religion. One need not embrace that interpretation to accept the argument of this essay, although it is quite possible he did. I will and can prove, that the way in which he tropes many dogmatic ideals in his fictions, and alludes to them in poem, prose and speech, illustrates that on some level, these are his foundation of a social construct of blackness. His moral fervor, I want to prove, is easily indicative of a man, not troubled by contradicting internal philosophies, but one who conceived an external struggle in terms of that great historical internal struggle of the sinful man and his religious virtue.
             Although, DuBois seems thoroughly ambiguous about whether are not there is a higher deity to be feared and very ambivalent about one that exist to be worshipped, he does not abandon such themes in his fiction. Most westerners and readers of western literature are very familiar with the Judeo-Christian concepts of heaven and hell. These concepts, t...