Religion and Hypocrisy Theme Analysis

Throughout Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody’s interactions with the church mirror her evolving conception of religion. As Anne grows up and witnesses more acts of racial injustice, she begins to question whether God is just and to what degree religion can alleviate or eliminate suffering. Her struggles with God show that while religion is a comfort to many people, it also can also prevent them from fully understanding the suffering of the world. When Anne is a young adult working in the civil rights movement, she is skeptical of the ministers who are involved. She considers most of them, like many other Black people Anne meets in positions of power, “Toms” (a black person who is overly subservient to white people) because many of them do not let Anne and her fellow activists sit in their churches and, when the movement gets hard, many of them go on mission trips to Africa. As she gets older and faces more injustice in the world, she questions God’s existence and begins to hate God if God does exist. After the church is bombed in Alabama, Anne is overwhelmed by the seemingly endless suffering that Black people continue to endure, seemingly without the help of God. In response, she decides to “be [her] own God” and live by her own rules. Rather than holding out hope for God to make life for Black people in the United States better, she will rely on only herself and her work, making as large of an impact as she can.  However, she also empathizes with the older generation of Black people who believe that God will bring them to a better place than their life on Earth after death. She understands that, for them, God is the only hope that they believe they can have towards a better life. Though she does not value religion in her own life, she understands the depths of suffering that the Black community has experienced in the United States and sees the relief that religion can offer for others, especially those of the older generation.  Moody’s evolving relationship with God and her understanding that religion can relieve suffering for others shows how religion functions best as a personal relationship with God, rather than as an imperative to act or believe a certain way.