Langston's Salvation

This is a careful, subtle, and insightful study of the religious relationships of Langston Hughes, one of the most important African American literary figures of the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. Wallace D. Best closely interrogates the usual depiction of Hughes as an atheist or as antireligious and finds such portrayals gravely wanting. A shift in religious attitudes among the African American cultural elite in the early twentieth century did, indeed, occur, with social gospel attitudes, new religious movements, agnosticism, and atheism all becoming increasingly acceptable. Hughes was affected by these shifts and influenced them also. He was a severe critic of organized religion after a failed conversion experience in his hometown of Lawrence, Kansas, when he was twelve years old. Hughes's religious oeuvre includes poems and religious dramas. Many of his religious poems were omitted from his collected works—something Best attributes to hard editorial decisions made necessary by the enormous quantity of Hughes's work. Best devotes an entire chapter to Hughes's most controversial poem, “Goodbye Christ,” written in 1932 during a journey in Russia, immediately after traveling in Alabama during the height of the controversy over the Scottsboro boys' case. Hughes wrote

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