SOURCE: "New Godliness Douses Old Fire," in Change, Vol. 11, No. 7, October, 1979, pp. 67-70.

[In the following review, Hornak compares Soul on Fire to Cleaver's previous writings, perceiving a distinct change in his literary style and tone.]

Eldridge Cleaver, once a writer with a mission, has turned missionary. Instead of warring against racist pigs he stands tall for Christ. From blazing invective his writing has changed to tiresome entreaty. The revolutionary has been born again.

In the sixties, when God was just a curse, Cleaver urged blacks to arm for battle. Whites heard too; with alarm they watched him stride with gun-toting compatriots into the California state house. These were the Black Panthers. Unless blacks got land, money, power, the Panthers would wage race war, Cleaver said. Jittery officials canceled a college course he was scheduled to teach; he renamed the state education commissioner Donald Duck and challenged the...