By James A. Haught In 1988, fundamentalist Christians in several nations vented rage and violence because a movie, “The Last Temptation of Christ,” portrayed Jesus as a wavering human, lusting for the prostitute Mary Magdalene. A Parisian theater showing the film was firebombed, sending 13 people to hospitals. Another at Besancon, France, suffered a similar…
Category: 20th Century Authors, Poets, Playwrights and Philosophers
James Baldwin: America’s Greatest Black Writer Was Once a Preacher Who Renounced Religion as a Sham
By James A. Haught James Baldwin, arguably America’s greatest black writer, was a popular Pentecostal preacher in Harlem at age 14 — but at 17 he renounced religion as a sham. Years later, he described his boyhood transformation in an essay titled “Down at the Cross,” first published in The New Yorker, then reprinted in…
