Analysis Of The Fire Next Time By James Baldwin

In James Baldwin’s collection of essays in The Fire Next Time he expresses a call to action for Americans to abandon the belief that whites and blacks are separate and to unite together as a whole country. In the essays, he identifies religion as the source for this disillusioned belief that whites are inherently better than African Americans merely because of their skin color. In participating in the Christian religion, he learns that the overall teachings to love one another are not practiced in whites’ treatment of blacks and vice versa. Baldwin’s essays provide a compelling argument that religion in America allows people to live in a hypocritical false reality and hinders humanity from moving forward against racism. Baldwin identifies …show more content…
In order to lead a moral life that will earn them the key to heaven, blacks subject themselves to the unfair treatment of segregation among the races. When teaching in his Congregation, he had “to take all the strength [he] had not to stammer, not to curse, not to tell them to throw away their Bibles and get off their knees and go home and organize, for example, a rent strike. When [he] watched all the children, their copper, brown, and beige faces staring up at me as [he] taught Sunday school, [he] felt that [he] 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?” The religion acted as a suppressor for the blacks to stand up for themselves and demand equal treatment. It caused them to question their self worth and limited their power. This provides a huge contrast for the Christian effect on whites. While whites take the religion and use it as a means of power for their belief that they are superior, blacks are humbled by the religion and deprived of the power. Baldwin remarks on not only the hypocrisy of the