Abstract
Given that religion, specifically Christianity, plays such an important role in the creation, definition, and maturation of both Hurston ' s and Gaines’s characters, I believe it is imperative to evaluate the role that this religion plays in the lives of the black characters in two seminal texts by these two authors. Clearly religious concerns are at work throughout both texts, so too, then, is the issue of race in that the black characters, via their enslaved ancestors, inherited Christianity as they knew it from white slaveholders. Thus, the study of Christianity in the lives of black Southern characters necessarily must also address racism. This analysis, then, speaks to the role that white Christian ideology plays in the shaping of black Southern characters, in terms of both identity and religion.