Free Essays on The Fire Next Time

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin is not a â€Å"story† in the conventional way we are used to a story with a main character, a plot and so forth. This book is more of a diary entry of Baldwin’s experiences with certain topics, mainly racism and religion. Baldwin examines his relationship with the church in his youth, the events surrounding him that lead him to that relationship. During his meeting with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, he compares the feelings of his past relationship with God, to the Nation of Islam. Baldwin, like myself and many other Americans, was pushed into church as a child. Not attending for the enlightenment that God is supposed to bring us, nor the divine revelation that we experience when we are â€Å"saved†, he attended church because it was the right thing to do. â€Å"I supposed that God and safety were synonymous† (Baldwin 16). He walked the streets of my current neighborhood, and saw the things that I witnessed as a child attending school in lower Manhattan. Hookers, pimps, gamblers, addicts, and an assortment of other things made a â€Å"bad† neighborhood. Witnessing this, he felt that the only safe place from this was church. He was eventually â€Å"saved†. He explains in the book that the church was a racket, and that â€Å"It was good luck that I found my self in the church racket instead of some other, and surrendered to a spiritual seduction long before I came to any carnal knowledge† (Baldwin 28). His knowledge of the struc ture of the church, not to be mistaken with religion, founded the idea of the church being a racket. â€Å"I knew how to work on a congregation until the last dime was surrendered-it was not very hard to do-and I knew where the money for â€Å"the lord’s work† went (Baldwin 38). He stated that â€Å"being in the pulpit was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion was worked† (Baldwin 37). That is the primary reason that I do not attend church, no... Free Essays on The Fire Next Time Free Essays on The Fire Next Time â€Å"White people [†¦] have to accept and love themselves [†¦] which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never.† James Baldwin, author of The Fire Next Time, said this in reference to his thoughts on whites and blacks seeing each other as equals (12). He states that when whites learn to love and accept themselves, the â€Å"Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed† (12). To understand why he believes this, one must first know other concepts and beliefs of Baldwin. First off, Baldwin says that there was no such thing as a â€Å"Negro† before the whites invented it. Second, he thinks that whites do not love and respect themselves, therefore they cannot love or respect others. Also, Baldwin says that whites and blacks cannot be equals until they come to each other as lovers. Once these ideas of Baldwin, and of many other blacks in the early 1960’s, are understood, then one is capable of knowing why Baldwin sa ys this about the â€Å"Negro† problem. The first thing to look at is the fact that Baldwin says whites invented the â€Å"Negro†. This statement is often argued by saying that there were black slaves in Africa, and other parts of the globe, many years before there were slaves in the United States. However, the difference is that the majority of the slaves in Africa were black, because that was the color majority in Africa. There were white slaves and free blacks in Africa. There, and in other places, one was a slave not due to the color of their skin, but because their tribe was captured or because they were sold into slavery. In the United States, all the slaves were black, because they were mostly all brought over from Africa. However, as time went on, Americans ignored the fact that the color of the skin of their slaves was due to where their slaves originally came from. The mistake made by Americans was that they made the skin color black synonymous with the word slave. Americans n... Free Essays on The Fire Next Time The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin is not a â€Å"story† in the conventional way we are used to a story with a main character, a plot and so forth. This book is more of a diary entry of Baldwin’s experiences with certain topics, mainly racism and religion. Baldwin examines his relationship with the church in his youth, the events surrounding him that lead him to that relationship. During his meeting with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, he compares the feelings of his past relationship with God, to the Nation of Islam. Baldwin, like myself and many other Americans, was pushed into church as a child. Not attending for the enlightenment that God is supposed to bring us, nor the divine revelation that we experience when we are â€Å"saved†, he attended church because it was the right thing to do. â€Å"I supposed that God and safety were synonymous† (Baldwin 16). He walked the streets of my current neighborhood, and saw the things that I witnessed as a child attending school in lower Manhattan. Hookers, pimps, gamblers, addicts, and an assortment of other things made a â€Å"bad† neighborhood. Witnessing this, he felt that the only safe place from this was church. He was eventually â€Å"saved†. He explains in the book that the church was a racket, and that â€Å"It was good luck that I found my self in the church racket instead of some other, and surrendered to a spiritual seduction long before I came to any carnal knowledge† (Baldwin 28). His knowledge of the struc ture of the church, not to be mistaken with religion, founded the idea of the church being a racket. â€Å"I knew how to work on a congregation until the last dime was surrendered-it was not very hard to do-and I knew where the money for â€Å"the lord’s work† went (Baldwin 38). He stated that â€Å"being in the pulpit was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion was worked† (Baldwin 37). That is the primary reason that I do not attend church, no...