The Prolonged Religious Crisis

Abstract

In The Fire Next Time James Baldwin recounts at the age of 14 undergoing a “prolonged religious crisis.”¹ The onset of the crisis is shaped by Baldwin’s awareness of “God, His saints and angels, and His blazing Hell” and a fear of the evil, within and without of himself.² The “evil” is the soulful awareness of sexuality that makes him and the other girls and boys “… unutterably different and fantastically present.”³ The awareness of his newfound fantastic inward sexual awareness and outward fantasized and fetishized body presence created fear in Baldwin. The fear for Baldwin is not the sexual presence itself or its power, but the unquestionable desire to be wanted by someone and the social and religious accountability that comes along with it.⁴ Desire for Baldwin rests uncomfortably at the crossroad of the church and street: one a (religious) call of “spiritual seduction” and the other a call to “carnal knowledge.”⁵