Donald Gene Mathews

RALEIGH - Donald Gene Mathews, age 92, of Raleigh, North Carolina passed away peacefully at home on Tuesday, April 30, 2024.

Donald was born April 15, 1932, in Caldwell, Idaho. His parents, Leo Chester Mathews and Ruth Claire Baker, were both schoolteachers, who also supplemented their income by farming and ranching. They settled in Nampa, Idaho, where they reared Donald and his sister, Alice. While the family was of only modest means, they bequeathed to Donald traits of more lasting value than monetary wealth. Having experienced racially motivated violence in their family history, as well as the racist assumptions prevalent all around them, they taught their children to be fair and charitable to all human beings. Donald later recalled his parents’ insistence, during the early days of WWII with its widespread suspicion and mistreatment of Japanese Americans, that their son befriend local Japanese children despite how others might behave. Such influences blessed Donald with a sensitivity to marginalized people, a deep commitment to justice and a penchant for questioning the status quo. These traits would animate his professional life and shape his personal character.

Following in his parents’ footsteps, Donald enrolled at the College of Idaho in 1950. He supported his education by working on the railroad and at a local ice factory, and by teaching music lessons. His favorite classes were history and religion courses, and he excelled at intercollegiate debate, reaching the finals in 1953. During his college years he began gravitating toward ministry as a possible career. Probably influenced by his father’s Methodist faith and by his high-school Methodist minister, Donald became a local, lay Methodist preacher with a congregation in Kuna, Idaho for 2 years while going through college. To proceed beyond merely the lay level of ministry, however, he needed seminary instruction. This meant going to Yale Divinity School. It also meant going East. Yale was in Connecticut, and up to this point in his life he had never been east of Michigan; he and his provincial Idahoans thought of places like Michigan and Nebraska as “the East.” Well, it was in the East that he reached full credentials for ministry, earning both his bachelor’s degree of Sacred Theology and his ordination into Methodist ministry in 1957.

By this time, Donald Mathews was becoming very interested in the relationship between his Christian faith and history, particularly the ways American Christians had responded to questions like slavery and abolitionism. So, he left Yale for Duke University, where he would pursue a doctorate in the field that would become his primary area of professional interest: the history of American Christianity in its multi-faceted relationship with social, cultural, and institutional constructs like slavery and racism. While his field of study was technically changing—from divinity to history—he continued to view his work as part of a ministry.

Receiving his PhD in 1962, Dr. Mathews began his highly decorated academic career. He would hold multiple teaching posts—including for a year at Duke, six years at Princeton University, and thirty-six years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His numerous Awards included fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1979-80), a Fulbright Lectureship at the University of Helsinki (1981-82), the Roland Bainton Lectureship at Yale University (1991), and many others.

The list of his published works is also impressive. In addition to many refereed journal articles and chapters in books, he has edited a collection of essays on abolitionism and co-edited another on southern religious history. He co-authored Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA: A State and the Nation, which won the 1990 Victoria Schuck Award for “Best Book on Women and Politics.” His other books include the classic Religion in the Old South, which established Dr. Mathews as one of the preeminent historians of southern religious history. His final book, an incisive treatment of lynching and its relationship to southern white religion, was published in 2017 when Donald was in his mid-80s.

Donald Mathews saw his work as a historian as a kind of calling, a continuation of his ministry—a ministry to investigate truth, in all its multifaceted dimensions, with both sensitivity and skepticism. This meant investigating “Christianity,” the faith that was his own, not as an abstraction or an idol, but to examine, in his own phrasing, “the Word in historical experience.” Professionally, this sacred quest for truth required of him both humility and charity. And these traits characterized the practice of his craft in admirable amounts, as all his many colleagues and students can attest. As a human being, these same traits—honesty, humility, and charity—characterized Donald Mathews perhaps to an even greater degree.

Dr. Mathews is preceded in death by his beloved wife, Elizabeth Farrior Buford; his parents, Leo Chester Mathews and Ruth Claire Baker; and his sister, Alice E. Mathews. He will be missed by his sister-in-law, Marjorie Buford Wilkie and her husband, Claude Franklin Wilkie; nephew, Bryan Maxwell Wilkie and wife, Sonya Davis Wilkie; niece, Janice Lynn Wilkie Dance and husband, Michael James Dance; great-nephews, David Michael Dance and Connor Maxwell Wilkie; great-nieces, Abigail Elizabeth Dance and Adrienne Ruth Wilkie. He is also survived by numerous extended family and friends.

A graveside service will be held at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, May 11, 2024, at Historic Oakwood Cemetery. The cemetery is located at 701 Oakwood Avenue, Raleigh, North Carolina 27601.

In lieu of flowers, and in the spirit of how charitable Donald was, please consider donating to the charity of your choice.

Funeral arrangements are by Bryan-Lee Funeral Home of Raleigh. Online condolences may be made at www.bryan-leefuneralhome.com