James Baldwin is a disarming man, against whom it is necessary to arm ourselves. Which, oddly enough, may be what he is trying to tell us.

[In The Fire Next Time he] has written an indictment of Western civilization—more precisely, of that civilization's religion, of "the white God"—that is carefully and consciously "outrageous." He edges toward us—in every sentence—his credentials as the most sensitive and discriminating articulator of Negro suffering; while, fully aware of the incongruity, he constructs an intricate sympathy for the crudest kind of Negro racism, that of Elijah Muhammad and his Black Muslims. There is virtuosity, even a dark gaiety in his anger: he does not try to hide the logical weaknesses in his argument, considered solely as an argument. He candidly bases his view of religion on his special experience of "the church racket": at the age of fourteen, he became a boy preacher in order to break the hold over him of his father, an hysterical minister who, after torturing his children with hatred and piety, starved himself to death….

Up against an audience that has its Freud by heart, an indictment of religion based on this experience is almost bound to misfire; to be read as the private fight of an Oedipus, not as part of the public struggle of a race for recognition. Baldwin knows this; knows, nonetheless, that he can give the game away and still win it. (p. 408)

The modulations that carry us from the opening pages—so aware of human evil and contradiction—to the homiletic conclusion (simply love, children, surrender yourselves to love "as a state of being, or a state of grace") are almost imperceptible. It is a tour de force. Yet, despite the manifesto prose about "changing the world," the contrived effects, the unexpected stridency, it is intensely moving; it has, in fact, had a seismic effect whose tremors are not even beginning to subside. (p. 409)

Ida becomes the "voice of the Negro" in this tale—not pathetic, irritating, a lingering mystery, but aggressive and bound to win.

In some as yet unconfessed way, Baldwin seems to be launched on the self-lacerating task that Ida set herself—to see if, in the amorphous tolerance surrounding the "accepted" Negro, some fire of human dignity and spontaneity can still be kindled….

But, though he hit us as hard as he could, though he took the most sacred things as his target …, though he was as outrageous as he could be …, he has been met with a vast tolerance and sympathy, a vague clucking of tongues over the plight of Harlem Negroes…. It must be very frustrating….

He does not attack us for not living up to our ideals, for lapsing, for sinning, for being bad Christians. He says we do not have any ideals: we do not believe in any of the things our religion, our civilization, our country stand for. It is all an elaborate lie, a lie whose sole and original function is to fortify privilege. And he proves this by attacking all our so-called beliefs, then standing back and observing that no one defends them. (p. 410)