The transfiguring power of the Holy Ghost ended when the service ended, and salvation stopped at the church door. It was a mask for hatred and self-hatred and despair. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin Buy Study Guide The Fire Next Time Summary Baldwin’s text is split into two essays, both written in the form of a letter. I really mean that there was no love in the church. I don’t refer merely to the glaring fact that the minister eventually acquires houses and Cadillacs while the faithful continue to scrub floors and drop their dimes and quarters and dollars into the plate. But I had been in the pulpit too long and I had seen too many monstrous things. Were only Negroes to gain this crown? Was Heaven, then, to be merely another ghetto? 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. ou must put yourself in the skin of a black man.' writes James Baldwin as he seeks to translate what it means to be a Negro in white America so that a. “When I watched all the children, their copper, brown, and beige faces staring up at me 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.
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