Review: "Frederick Douglass: America's Prophet"

The following is what I thought to be an innocuous enough book review written for publication in an internationally renowned Christian magazine. It has not been published, and as I found out upon request some time after submission - will not be. If I was in any doubt, the reasons given made clear why it is sadly as important now as ever that books like this are written, read, and reviewed with an aim to further building their readership. This commendation will not reach as wide an audience as I had hoped, and there's more that I would like to say than I was given in my 250 word allowance, but if one person reads this review, then reads the book, and is in some way helped it will be worth it. 

Frederick Douglass: America’s Prophet 

D. H. Dilbeck

University of North Carolina Press, 2018

hbk., 191 pp, $20.30/£20.27

ISBN 978-1469636184

In The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin wrote about abandoning Christianity because of racial hypocrisy, suggesting that America do likewise. A century before, former slave and abolitionist orator Frederick Douglass thought differently: the ‘Christianity of Christ’ was not responsible for America’s race problem, rather professing Christ-followers’ failure to actually follow Christ. In Frederick Douglass: America’s Prophet, D. H. Dilbeck has provided a concise spiritual biography of this greatest of Americans, not so much detailing Douglass’s life as demonstrating the prophetic faith and nonconformist fervour at the heart of his life.

Douglass is excellent: thoroughly researched, artfully written, well-paced, challenging, and moving. Dilbeck ably charts Douglass’s discovery of the Bible, Christ, his own human, spiritual, and political identity, and his development of a carefully nuanced theodicy. Douglass cherished the Bible - discerning that its spirit is liberty not slavery - and it was the guiding authority in his exhortations; readers will be refreshed by reminders of Scripture’s power and abiding relevance for public discourse.

Douglass’s relationship with the institutional church eventually frayed, though he never fully disengaged from local churches. He was convinced that churchgoers around him were more defined by America’s enslaving culture of death, than by Christ and his liberating life. Douglass nevertheless still believed that by prophetically taking honesty to hypocrisy, preaching the Bible and patiently working for legislation, slavery, segregation, and racial prejudice would be overcome someday. If we care to learn from history, we will find a relevant warning and timely word in Douglass.