Religion Theme Analysis

Religion in The Color of Water provides the protagonists with a framework within which they are able to develop individual identities and organize their morals and values. Regardless of denomination, whether it is Orthodox Judaism or Lutheranism, religion informs the behaviors of its devotees, and by extension how they view themselves. This is clearest in Ruth’s conversation from Judaism to Christianity, a change with represents not just a crisis of faith, but a complete reinvention of herself. Finding religion is frequently a metaphor for discovering a deeper personal truth; as James becomes more religious in his adulthood, he is suddenly granted insights into his mother’s faith and her motivations. Similarly, James’s investigations into Judaism allow him to understand his mother’s past, and, by extension, his own family history.

Religion is deeply personal, and not every character experiences it in the same way. For Ruth, Judaism was oppressive and loveless, whereas Christianity gave her access to community, freedom, and divine love for the first time. Her Christian faith provided her with a support system, both holy and earthly, that helped her through her darkest times. Ruth associates Judaism with her unhappy upbringing, and the discrimination she faced as a child in her small Southern town. For James, however, Judaism is a way for him to connect with his mother, and with the half of his family he never knew he had.

Ruth found Judaism to have “too many rules to follow, too many forbiddens and ‘you can’ts’ and ‘you mustn’ts,’” without enough love. Although this is not the universal Jewish experience, Ruth’s specific family and circumstances made Judaism unappealing for her. As an adult, James learns that because his mother was Jewish, he is technically Jewish too. Researching for his book, he feels a kinship with many of the Jewish people he encounters in Suffolk. Unlike many white people he’s encountered in his life, James finds Jewish people “truly warm and welcoming” and appreciates that they treat him like a part of their community. For the first time in his life, James feels an affinity with nonrelatives who are technically white, and he appreciates how the Southern Jews of Suffolk “seemed to believe that its covenants went beyond the color of one’s skin.”

Ruth’s conversion to Christianity coincides with her reinvention of herself from Rachel Shilsky to Ruth McBride. She is reborn through Christianity, and finds that this religion provides her with everything she’s always wanted: love and community, a sense of belonging, and a reason to live. Ruth’s Christian principles keep her moving forwards, even in the face of tragedy. As a child James doesn’t understand his mother’s faith, but knows secondhand that the Church and God make her happy, in a way nothing else in her life seems to. Church, and specifically the New Brown Memorial Baptist Church, which Ruth and Andrew Dennis McBride founded, keeps Ruth from falling apart and binds her family together through a shared religious community. Ruth continues to visit the church even when she no longer lives in the neighborhood, and it represents a constant in her life and family—a church founded by herself and her husband, in which her son eventually marries his wife. The New Brown Memorial Church then also allows James and his siblings to connect to each other, to God, to their mother, and to their deceased father.

Religion also functions as a framework through which James and his siblings can navigate their racial identities. The book’s title references a central thematic question of the work: what color are the McBride-Jordan children, what color is a spirit, and what color is God? Ruth explains that a spirit has no color, and God has no color. Instead, they are “the color of water,” which is colorless. James, confused about race in general and specifically where he falls on the spectrum, asks his mother if God is black or white, and “Does he like black or white people better?” His mother explains that God is colorless, and loves people of all colors equally. Later, their local preacher Rev. Owens tries to tell James and his siblings that that “Jesus is all colors,” which confuses James’s little brother, who has noticed that Jesus is always painted as white. As children, James and his siblings believe that if Jesus is truly all colors, he should be painted that way. Jesus’s whiteness is alienating for mixed-race children, who are in desperate need of idols who either transcend or blur racial boundaries, instead of reinforcing the hierarchy they already see enacted in the wider world, where white people are the most respected and most powerful. While as children religion is not useful for James and his siblings, the reader can see how Ruth is able to transcend questions of her own racial identity by committing herself to a community united by faith as opposed to skin color.

Religion can offer both comfort and anguish. It isn’t an absolute good in any character’s life, but instead a way for them to navigate the world. For Ruth and James (in his adulthood), their Christian faith is a guiding light in their lives. It also serves as a way for them to relate to each other, their community, and the late Andrew McBride. Religious communities allow disparate people to come together, as Ruth discovers after her conversion, and as James discovers when he investigates Ruth’s Jewish past. Crucially, religion also provides a framework for the characters to understand complex issues, and as James and his siblings try to understand where they fit in the world, they use the language of God and Jesus to determine what “color” they are.