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1 results

  • Chapter 14 - Wright and Religion

  • from Part II - Social and Cultural Contexts
  • Edited by Michael Nowlin, University of Victoria, British Columbia
  • Book:
    Richard Wright in Context
    Published online:
    08 July 2021
    Print publication:
    22 July 2021, pp 150-160

  • Summary

    Most scholarship on Richard Wright places him as one of the key representatives of atheism and secularism in the history of 20th century African American letters. This representation consequently reduces and overlooks much of the nuances Wright’s thoughts on religion. This chapter highlights that Wright recognized two contrasting thoughts that serve as the foundation of his thinking about religion: the significance of religion for poor Black adherents and the insufficiency of any religion for Black devotees in the context of a white supremacist world. Since this complication reappears throughout his oeuvre, this chapter seeks to provide a general portrait of Wright’s overlooked thoughts on religion—while also limiting my judgments of those thoughts—in order to contextualize how his work fits in mid-twentieth-century Black religious discourse.