The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (Review)
James Baldwin has long been on my list of authors whose books I knew I should read but hadn’t. 2020 seemed like a fitting year to rectify the void in my education. Baldwin wrote The Fire Next Time in the heart of the Civil Rights Movement (1963), and his experience seems just as relevant today. In addition to insightful content, Baldwin’s language is poetry. The imagery is rich and packed with ideas to consider; it is mournful yet strong. While there are points in the book I disagree with—specifically some of his takeaways on religion—they in no way undercut the value of the book, which I recommend.
The Fire Next Time is actually two essays: “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation” and “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region of My Mind.” As I started the book, I mistakenly thought the first essay was a forward written by Baldwin’s uncle, as opposed to Baldwin himself. It is short but lovely. The second essay, “Down at the Cross,” looks at the negative effect of Christianity on the black community. Both provide plenty of content to consider as part of a short and meaningful book. The following are some of my thoughts and some of Baldwin’s excerpts from the book.
In “Letter to My Nephew,” Baldwin wrote, “there is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their important assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean this very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love.” This idea is one I have thought about quite a bit over the past year. It is easy to be part of the majority culture and desire for others to conform to it. Yet so often, these desires are mere preferences, and it is always essential for well-functioning individuals and a well-functioning society to extend grace to others in relation to preferences. To expect a minority group to “try to become like white people” is a poorly founded idea.
Baldwin observed that there could be no respect for the society and rules that white people imposed because there seemingly was no virtue for the black community. Any virtues that were “preached but not practiced by the white world were merely another means of holding Negroes in subjection.” This connects with what Frederick Douglass observed a hundred years earlier when he saw religious slaveholders use religion as a cover and justification for all sorts of evils.
As Baldwin finished his time in the pulpit—while still very young—he concluded, “I had been in the pulpit too long and I had seen too many monstrous things...I really mean that there was no love in the church. It was a mask for hatred and self-hatred and despair. The transfiguring power of the Holy Ghost ended when the service ended, and salvation stopped at the church door. When we were told to love everybody, I had thought that that meant everybody. But no. It applied only to those who believed as we did, and it did not apply to white people at all.”
As I read this portion of the book, I kept thinking about how much time Jesus spent criticizing the religious leaders of His day for their hypocrisy. When He said in Matthew 7 that the path to life is a narrow one that few find, and then later: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” The longer I have served in the church, the more I have seen people wounded deeply by past church experiences. In some ways, this lends support for Baldwin’s argument that religion has a negative effect. Yet there are plenty of people in all demographics that would attest to the positive effects. I deeply appreciate how Baldwin recounted his experiences, but it strikes me as an incomplete analysis on religion’s benefits and ills.
Baldwin later wrote, “It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.” Contrast this message with Bonhoeffer’s Ethics. Bonhoeffer saw freedom as only possible through Christ and in the church; Baldwin saw only bondage.
Baldwin’s meal with Elijah Muhammad was interesting, particularly given Baldwin’s thoughts on white people. Muhammad thought the era of white people was over, and that no peace could exist between the two groups. Baldwin concluded, however:
“I looked around the table. I certainly had no evidence to give them that would outweigh Elijah‘s authority or the evidence of their own lives or the reality of the streets outside. Yes, I knew two or three people, white, whom I trust with my life, and I know a few others, white, who were struggling as hard as they knew how, and with great effort and sweat and risk, to make the world more human. But how could I say this? One cannot argue with anyone’s experience or decision or belief. All my evidence would be thrown out of court as irrelevant to the main body of the case, for I could cite only exceptions...Everything else, stretching back throughout recorded time, was merely a history of those exceptions who had tried to change the world and failed.“
Baldwin’s comment that you cannot argue with a person’s “experience or decision or belief” is correct as it relates to experience. But people can change their decisions and beliefs. It is not something that happens quickly or easily—nor should it. But there are points worth discussing with people you know and with whom you have built trust. To speak with love and care in such matters is critical if this country is going to overcome disagreements and dissension. There much be a return to discussing matters of heft with civility. To let matters slide with the conclusion that “beliefs don’t change” harms everyone.In the midst of racial and political dissension, the following observation by Baldwin is important: “People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior...People are perpetually attempting to find their feet on the shifting sands of status.”
Earlier this summer, I saw a New Yorker cartoon with two women making signs for Black Lives Matter while a cell phone was ringing. The caption read, “Just ignore it—my white friends keep checking in on me because they think racism is new.” While I don’t feel quite that obtuse, the extent of pain, heartache, and frustration of the Black population has been overwhelming. As such, I’ve found it helpful to read and think about how we reached this point, and James Baldwin is a good resource to pursue that objective.
While reading, The Fire Next Time, I also watched the film, I Am Not Your Negro, which is based on Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript, Remember this House. The reason the manuscript remained unfinished is that Baldwin remained devastated by the loss of his friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. I Am Not Your Negro used the text in the most compelling manner, and it included this quote:
The industry [media, commercials, and entertainment] is compelled, given the way it is built, to present to the American people a self-perpetuating fantasy of American life. Their concept of entertainment is difficult to distinguish from the use of narcotics. To watch the TV screen for any length of time is to learn some really frightening things about the American sense of reality. We are cruelly trapped between what we would like to be and what we actually are.
2020 has further revealed the disconnect between the concepts of what we want to be and what we are. For even if one is satisfied with who he is versus who he wants to be, it should be jarring and eye-opening to see so many people for whom the disconnect is unsatisfying. To see the expanse and depth of hurt due to race or other immutable traits is a sad reality, indeed. The Fire Next Time provides another opportunity for insight into what many faced during his life and sadly, what many continue facing today.
