Identity In The Fire Next Time By James Baldwin

In The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin wants to find out if shaping or defending our identity is more real to us than achieving our humanity. He wants to know because all his life he has been troubled by religion and movements that made him question something. That something was, is it important to shape an identity and defend it or to achieve humanity? Baldwin went around about his life and each time he'd pick up a few things here and there that told him a little bit more. A little bit more for his question he's so wrapped up in whether he knew it or not. Baldwin has found out that Christianity, the Nation of Islam, and the nation we live in have shown what they think is important. They've shown it by how they treat people around them, what

James Baldwin explains his opinion on what’s important but each is different. They are different because he talks about three things which are Christianity, the Nation of Islam, and the nation we live in.

James Baldwin seems to have a sense of disgust when it comes to talking about Christianity. Through what he says it sounds as if he hates it and repulsed by it. Though in reality he is just being brutally honest about everything he says about it. Baldwin puts it in a blunt manner, “Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty--necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels,”. What he means by this is that the Christian faith has acted out in cruelty and without mercy. They did this just to keep a sense of superiority over everyone they deemed inferior. It crushed those who didn’t believed in the same beliefs they believed in. There is more to analyze on what Baldwin has said about the religion to come to a conclusion on the

He gives it a more favorable look on it. It may even seem like he’s praising it a lot because of what he says about the Nation of Islam. “And now, suddenly, people who have never before been able to hear this message hear it, and believe it, and are changed. Elijah Muhammad has been able to do what generations of welfare workers and committees and resolutions and reports and housing projects and playgrounds have failed to do: to heal and redeem drunkards and junkies, to convert people who have come out of prison and to keep them out, to make men chaste and women virtuous, and to invest both the male and the female with a pride and a serenity that hang about them like an unfailing light. He has done all these things, which our Christian church has spectacularly failed to do.” Right here James Baldwin is giving some praise to the Nation of Islam and what they do for people. The Nation of Islam do so much for the people that others would easily abandon and leave them to rot on the streets. They help those who appear beyond repair and redemption. By doing so the Nation of Islam gets a good name from those who were helped by the religion. A lot more people began to listen to the message of the Nation of Islam because they were in times of trouble and injustice. Once they began to listen to their message they were hooked because it gave them a sense of actual hope and it agreed that the white man was