James Baldwin's Religious Thought And His Creative Research

James Baldwin(1924-1987)is an important writer as well-known as Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison in the history of African American literature.Compared with the overwhelming Baldwinian study,the related research in China is at most at the beginning stage in terms of both width and depth.Generally speaking,the research at home and abroad mainly focuses on case studies while neglecting the overall consideration,far from being systematic and exhaustive.Applying such methods as Existentialism,Psychoanalysis,Situation Ethnics,Feminism,Myth and Archetypal Criticism and Thematology,this dissertation takes into account Baldwin’s essays,novels and short stories,plays and poems in order to show from different perspectives that his religious ideas are in essence a liberation theology on the one hand,and the influence of religion on his literary creation on the other.First,Baldwin’s religious ideas are multi-dimensional,bearing such features as Existentialism,Feminism,Post-Colonialism,Freudianism,traditional African religion and black music.His religious journey is a dynamic process of awe,escape,rewriting and transcendence,expressing such humanistic concern as racial harmony,gender equality and freedom of sexual love,demonstrating the absurdity of human existence represented by the black.Because of the dense pursuit of life philosophy,Baldwin’s religious ideas acquires universal value,while the black cultural elements in it provide the effective context for ethic aspirations,manifesting a unique moralist’s “double consciousness” and socialized psychological contradiction.Second,the essence of Baldwin’s religious ideas is a liberation theology aiming at secular salvation,steeped with hard and persistent humanistic care,being the solid unity of religious and earthly rationality.His religious Utopia is neither reduced into Nietzsche’s religious nihilism due to the complete deviation,nor as crazy as the Fundamentalist.Instead,it is the practical deconstruction and reconstruction of Christianity,manifesting universal pursuit of the life philosophy.On the one hand,Baldwin deserts the cruel theological rationality,overthrowing its alienating nature,trying to change it into a constructive power of liberation.Therefore,he pointsGod’s love from the heaven to the earth,stressing the ultimate benefits at the earthly present and the release of human nature,giving ultimate understanding and concern to the religious taboos.Such religious toleration transcends the time and challenges the traditional ethical bottom line and appears to be odd and rebellious.On the other hand,Baldwin absorbs the reasonable elements of the traditional Christianity to examine the racial ethics,familial ethics and religious ethics,attacking bitterly the evil of racialism and establishing the objective racial self-criticism.He criticizes the destructiveness of familial deviation,emphasizing that harmonious family relationship is the strong fortress of the black in racial trouble.He satirizes Christians’ blasphemy before God,calling for the rational return to the original meaning of God’s love.The religious paradox in his repeated criticism of and return to Christianity is the strong evidence of his dividedness of his religion,illustrating the absurdity of human existence caused by man’s limitedness before the overwhelming alienating forces.Third,Baldwin’s religious ideas exert a great influence on his literary creation,serving as the very source of his literary aspiration.The close relationship finds expression in the omnipresent religious signs in his works on the one hand and in his internalized literary thoughts.His religion,therefore,becomes the literary consciousness.Baldwin’s literature exhibits an obvious intertextuality with the Bible both in terms of artistic quality and ideological content.On the one hand,the pervasive Biblical images,protagonists named after the Biblical archetypes and the titles rich in religious connotations show fully that religious consciousness is the soul of Baldwinian literature.However,such religious symbols are the result of mechanical copy,but the creative artistic representation after careful realistic rational filtration.Consequently,they become the personalized literary rhetoric to probe into the subtle and question the true meaning of life.No doubt,they are also the key points to decode Baldwin’s works.On the other hand,Baldwin’s dialectical absorbing and practical reform of Christian love results in his truth-seeking view of art,demonstrating a writer’s high sense of responsibility.At the same time,he turns to the Biblical view of Children in the dilemma between religious ideal and the reality,interpreting the positive energy of children from various aspects.Both his value orientation and narrative mode are a rebellious transcendence of the Bible,witnessing a broken and lonely walker’s return to and thirst for the initial state of human nature.According to what is said above,religious ideas are “Ariadne’s red line” to have a deepinsight into Baldwin and his works.Undoubtedly,this dissertation provides a new angle to reveal the appeal of life philosophy in Baldwin’s religion and manifest his literature’s ultimate humanistic care from the very source.