Kingsblood Royal by Sinclair Lewis

The sermon of Dr. Brewster was long and stately. Under divine law and divine love, he lectured, there can be no corruption save by the will of the corrupted.

It did not mean very much to a young man who wanted to know what was the right course for a person whom God had made white but whom the legislative enactments of many God-fearing States of the Union had made black. It was such a sermon as might have been preached in any Rockefeller-Gothic church on Fifth Avenue, Michigan Avenue, or Hollywood Boulevard. In Neil's waxing desire to know how real was reality, it was too collegiate and cultured and generally white. He could have done with more tom-toms and jungle-dancing, more samples of what his darker ancestors might have been, and through the whole sermon, the congregation showed unction with not more than two or three dehydrated Hallelujahs and one "Praise God, ain't it de trufe!"