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The Fire Next Time, By James Baldwin

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The novel, The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin, is a narrative composed of two essays, “My Dungeon Shook” and "Down at the Cross”. Both of these essays discuss the problems faced in America in the 1960s, surrounding the time of the Civil Rights Movement. The narrative has quite a few different themes but the themes that stuck out to me from both the reading and the lectures are the ineffectiveness of religion and “the negro problem”. These two themes, as different as they may seem, are both interconnected. “The Negro Problem” refers to the racial tension primarily between black and white Americans during this time and is a very important concept. The ineffectiveness of religion has to do with religion’s inability to deal with “the Negro Problem”. …show more content…
Both practices limit the American people, making them delusional. If Americans keep following the faith exactly as it is, they will not be able to break away from it and begin to change. In the theme of the ineffectiveness of religion, Christianity and the Nation of Islam had definitely failed to give African Americans the strength necessary to overcome the discrimination that they had been faced with every day. Baldwin addresses Christianity’s role in both the black race and American society. Baldwin was Christian himself and he questioned the hypocrisies that he felt he was guilty of. Baldwin proposed that the only way for America to reach its full potential and develop its ideals of freedom and individuality, is to abandon Christian beliefs completely.
According to Baldwin, the way to surpass “the negro problem” is for all Americans, black and white, to develop their own ways of thinking. Americans must not think through Christianity but instead through their own

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