Barack Obama and W. E. B. Du Bois

Barack Obama and W. E. B. Du Bois have a lot in common. Both had absent fathers whom they likened to dreamers; both relied on their mothers; both earned advanced degrees from Harvard University; both traveled extensively throughout the world; both ran for United States Senate (Du Bois lost his bid as a labor candidate from New York in 1950); both elicited questions of racial authenticity, of whether they could represent African Americans since they had mixed-ancestries and were highly educated; and both shared a desire to wrestle religious ideas and language away from conservatives. Perhaps, as Barack Obama and more broadly the Democratic Party attempt to engage religious issues, it will behoove them not only to look back to what Du Bois had to say about faith, but also to create a pantheon of spiritual liberals to revere as part of the quest to demonstrate historical and religious legitimacy.