Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin

Nazareth, Peter; Campbell, James

doi:10.2307/40148471

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“…He became “an internationally recognized writer” (Leeming 1995, 214). In 1963, Baldwin traveled throughout the deep south delivering lectures at churches for the Congress of Racial Equity (CORE), legitimizing the claim that Baldwin transformed from a writer concerned with the personal effects of racism and black Christianity and the negative consequences of refusing love, into a “spokesman”—a term he hated, preferring instead “witness” or “Civil Rights writer.” James Campbell highlights a difference in James Baldwin's writing between the years 1949–1957 and his writings in 1961 up to his death in 1987 (Campbell 2008, 144). Baldwin's keen insight and eloquence on religion and justice and the cost of combatting white Christian supremacy was one of the reasons Kilgore requested his presence on the program with Niebuhr.…”

Section: The Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Clawing Through Bits of Glass and Bricks: James Baldwin and Reinhold Niebuhr on the Birmingham Church Bombing

Calloway¹

2023

Journal of Religious Ethics

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This article analyzes the unpublished dialogue between James Baldwin and Reinhold Niebuhr where they discussed the role of the Christian church in the wake of six child murders in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. On that catastrophic day—one that is impossible to forget—the Ku Klux Klan bombed The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, and two black boys were subsequently shot and killed. In the wake of that violence, this article will show that for Baldwin, the dynamite that exploded the face of the “alabaster Christ” from the stained‐glass window presents an opportunity for not only a new depiction of Jesus in terms of presentation—but more significantly—a brand‐new Christology rooted in black liberation. Such a reading provides us with an unusual constructive theological position offered by Baldwin, especially once it is read alongside a public essay written by the Association of Artists for Freedom advocating for Black Christmas.

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Section: The Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Clawing Through Bits of Glass and Bricks: James Baldwin and Reinhold Niebuhr on the Birmingham Church Bombing

Calloway¹

2023

Journal of Religious Ethics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

Clawing Through Bits of Glass and Bricks: James Baldwin and Reinhold Niebuhr on the Birmingham Church Bombing

Clawing Through Bits of Glass and Bricks: James Baldwin and Reinhold Niebuhr on the Birmingham Church Bombing

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