LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Fire Next Time, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Fire Next Time was published in 1963, 100 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. The early sixties were a time of heated debate regarding racial segregation, and much of that debate was inflected by religion. Many Christian groups—such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to name just one—were foundational to the Civil Rights Movement, basing their calls for equality within the framework of Christianity’s celebration of love and kindness. On the other hand, though, with its long history of conquest and enslavement, Christian ideology was also used by white people to reinforce racist agendas. Although much of Baldwin ’s thinking is influenced by the Christian virtues he grew up with, The Fire Next Time largely focuses on the religion’s divisive qualities. His critique of the church is rooted in his disapproval of the black-and-white, us-versus-them mentality that it so often (though not always) advances, a disapproval that he does not singularly reserve for Christianity. Another group he critically examines is the Nation of Islam, a religious and cultural organization that used Islamic beliefs to argue that the time for white rule was soon coming to an end and that, according to Allah, black people would imminently rise to power. Addressing both the racist history of the Christian church and what he views as the equally unproductive aspirations of the Nation of Islam, Baldwin dissects the way religion has for centuries been wielded as an instrument of inequality and oppression.
In “Down At The Cross,” Baldwin discusses the rise of the white Christian to power. He points out that “Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty—necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.” This is a reference to early Christian missionaries, whose job was to spread the religion in foreign lands, an endeavor that Baldwin points out conveniently became a “justification for the planting of the flag.” In other words, as whites took it upon themselves to supposedly theologically liberate black countries, Christianity became an excuse for domination, control, and conquest. Given this fraught history, Baldwin is skeptical of Christianity’s ability to unite blacks and whites, identifying it as a poor model for equality. He posits that, in order to lead a sound moral life, one must “first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we god rid of Him.”
Baldwin also turns a critical eye on the Nation of Islam, which he considers to be nearly a mirror image of the white Christian subordination of African-Americans. Whereas many white Christians believe that blacks are descended from Ham (a cursed biblical character whose ancestors are destined to be slaves), the Nation of Islam believes that the devil invented white people, whom Allah allowed to rule the earth for only for “a certain number of years.” About this theory, Baldwin points out that “the dream, the sentiment is old; only the color is new.” He remains as unconvinced by the Nation of Islam as he was by Christianity, though he patiently concedes that there is no reason to expect African-Americans to rise above this sort of black-and-white thinking any more than Caucasians.
Nonetheless, Baldwin makes it clear that, in order to escape the simplistic thinking that religion encourages, one must understand and accept the complex history of black oppression. African-Americans have been shaped by the oppressive ideologies and actions of white Christians, and though the Nation of Islam strives to step outside of this framework by living separately from white people, Baldwin argues that African-Americans cannot resort to escapism; instead, they must contend with the fact that they have been shaped by the society in which they live and strive to improve that reality, rather than flee it. Only then, he argues, will black people be capable of changing the racial situation in “concrete terms,” though Baldwin does not offer specific examples of what these concrete terms might be. Instead, Baldwin is chiefly interested in discussing the intellectual circumstances that might bring about change—circumstances that require this acceptance of history; “To accept one’s past—one’s history—is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it.” Thus, Baldwin asks black Americans to immerse themselves in their painful past in order to deploy it in the present.
The Fire Next Time takes cues from a slave spiritual called “Mary Don’t You Weep,” borrowing its epigraph and title from the song’s lyrics, “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, / No more water, the fire next time!” This line references two biblical stories, one in which God promises Noah that He will never again punish the earth by unleashing floods, and another in which Peter points out that, though God has promised not to destroy the world using water, there has been no such promise regarding fire. Thus, Baldwin turns to both history and theology to make his point that, if blacks and whites fail to acknowledge their history and band together to “end the racial nightmare,” this Biblical prophecy might be fulfilled. Although this may sound like a warning or even a threat, it is more accurately a sincere expression of Baldwin’s deep concern about the turmoil America faced in 1963; a turmoil we are most unfortunately still struggling with today. And though Baldwin’s very hope for America—a hope that exalts love, kindness, and unity—is itself shaped by a deeply Christian impulse, he makes it clear that the institution itself has gone off the rails with its “sanctification of power” and that, as such, Christianity has lost sight of its own defining virtues.
