Synopses & Reviews
James Baldwin's Understanding of God focuses on Baldwin's experiences as a gifted black writer who fought valiantly against racism and wrote openly about homosexual relationships. Baldwin's God is a "mysteriously impersonal" force he calls love, 'something . . . like a fire, like the wind, something which can change you.' For Baldwin, "To be with God is really to be involved with some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you."
Young covers James Baldwin's life from his mid-teens to his death through accounts and analyses of his essays and novels. Sometimes his "theology" - what he has to say about his "God" - comes straight from his text; other times Young deduces it from his nonfiction prose and the implications of his novels and their protagonists. Young places those works in the context of several historic events that were taking place in the United States at that time.
Synopsis
This book focuses on Baldwin's experiences as a gifted black writer who fought valiantly against racism and wrote openly about homosexual relationships. Baldwin's God is a 'mysteriously impersonal' force he calls love- 'something . . . like a fire, like the wind, something which can change you.'
About the Author
Josiah Ulysses Young III is Professor of Systematic Theology at Wesley Theological Seminary, USA. He is a graduate of Morehouse College, USA, and Union Theological Seminary, USA.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Credo
3. Born in a Christian Culture
4. 'In Search of a Majority'
5. Scarred by the Rock
6. Opening the Unusual Door
7. Coming out the Wilderness
8. Weighing Your Gods and You
9. Declining to 'Imitate the Son of the Morning'
10. That Train's Long Gone
11. The Black Issue of the Holy Ghost
12. Ain't Nothing but Us Up the Road
13. A Miracle of Coherence and Release
14. Postscript