structural:reformatting, structural:expansion, stylistic:style_transfer, information:classification
Religion

Although Du Bois attended a New England Congregational church as a child, he abandoned organized religion while at Fisk College. As an adult, Du Bois described himself as agnostic or a freethinker, but at least one biographer concluded that Du Bois was virtually an atheist. However, another analyst of Du Bois's writings concluded that he had a religious voice, albeit radically different from other African-American religious voices of his era. Du Bois was credited with inaugurating a 20th-century spirituality to which Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, and James Baldwin also belong.

When asked to lead public prayers, Du Bois would refuse. In his autobiography, Du Bois wrote:

When I became head of a department at Atlanta, the engagement was held up because again I balked at leading in prayer... I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed.... I think the greatest gift of the Soviet Union to modern civilization was the dethronement of the clergy and the refusal to let religion be taught in the public schools.

Du Bois accused American churches of being the most discriminatory of all institutions. He also provocatively linked African American Christianity to indigenous African religions. He did occasionally acknowledge the beneficial role that religion played in African American life – as the "basic rock" which served as an anchor for African American communities – but in general disparaged African American churches and clergy because he felt they did not support the goals of racial equality and hindered activists' efforts.

Although Du Bois was not personally religious, he infused his writings with religious symbology. Many contemporaries viewed him as a prophet. His 1904 prose poem, "Credo", was written in the style of a religious creed and widely read by the African-American community. Moreover, Du Bois, both in his own fiction and in stories published in The Crisis, often drew analogies between the lynchings of African Americans and the crucifixion of Jesus. Between 1920 and 1940, Du Bois shifted from overt black messiah symbolism to more subtle messianic language.