SOURCE: "Fathers, Gods, and Religion: Perceptions of Christianity and Ethnic Faith in James Baldwin," in Critical Essays on James Baldwin, edited by Fred L. Standley and Nancy V. Burt, G. K. Hall & Co., 1988, pp. 125-43.

In the following essay, O'Neale "explores the complexities of Baldwin's concepts of fatherhood and how they impinge on his search—for a sympathetic Father/God—an odyssey that he deliberately identifies as the collective historic experience of the race and its artists."

In a 1965 television interview for the BBC, British author Colin MacInnes said to James Baldwin: "You spoke just now of the soul, the soul of the black man, the soul of the white man. I never have been able to make out, Jimmy, whether you are or are not a religious writer. Does the concept of God mean something to you? Are you a believer in any sense, or not?" As...