4/2/19 James Baldwin, "The Fire Next Time"

In James Baldwin’s, The Fire Next Time, he writes about his time growing up in a society that deemed his existence, based on his complexion, to be one of a plague. Baldwin recalls his time as an adolescent and his struggle with faith as he searched for his supposed “gimmick” to survive in the ghettos that black people were forced into economically. Baldwin vulnerably discusses how he turned to Christianity to cover up the things about himself he was not yet ready to confront. He turned to Christianity because he knew there would not be a life for him as a dropout working in a factory until he dies or on the streets where each day could end up being his last. So he turned to the Church. But even once there Baldwin began to see that not even faith could help him because religion in and of itself was a gimmick. Nevertheless he continued to move forward in leadership in his church community. Baldwin was a youth pastor and lead sermon once a week and he would also teach Sunday school. On page 39 Baldwin writes, “... as I taught Sunday school, I felt that I was committing a crime in talking about the gentle Jesus, in telling them to reconcile themselves to their misery on earth in order to gain the crown of eternal life. Were only Negroes to gain this crown? Was Heaven, then, to be merely another ghetto?” Baldwin here is showing the deconstruction of his faith as he himself begins to question the teachings that he had been following and now, at that moment, putting on to these impressionable young children. He further goes on to say, “Perhaps I might have been able to reconcile myself even to this if I had been able to believe that there was any loving-kindness to be found in the haven I represented. But I had been in the pulpit for too long and I had seen too many monstrous things.” In some ways I can relate to Baldwin’s struggle with religion but in others I cannot. When I try to pin those experiences to the environment and time period in which he grew up I can understand the sheltering he once had under religion. But I can also grasp the imprisonment that became that once known safe and secure shelter.

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