"Come-to-Jesus Stuff" in James Baldwin's 'Go tell It on the Mountain' and 'The Amen Corner.' - a novel and a play

African American Review, Summer, 1997 by Barbara K. Olson

... the church, even as protection from

the streets, is not given any positive

characteristics here; its depiction is

much less balanced than it was in Go

Tell It on the Mountain. The scales of

judgment are heavily loaded in favor

of worldly love and family rather than

congregational communion. No member

of the congregation is admirable

for any reason. Most are despicable--sex-starved,

ambitious, jealous, cruel.

(96)

In the play we find no Deborah who loves sacrificially, no Elisha who exudes spiritual enthusiasm and infectious affection, and no Elizabeth who models for her son "that patience, that endurance, that long suffering, which he read of in the Bible and found so hard to imagine" (Mountain 15). And, rather than ending, as does Mountain, with a young man's conversion to Christ and incorporation into the ranks of the adult church, Amen Corner ends with a young man's abandoning the church and his preacher/mother being removed from authority and essentially excommunicated. Baldwin was more eager to express his disenchantment with Christianity than Lunden has allowed. The play was the young Baldwin's attempt to make Mountain's ambiguous criticism of the faith he had abandoned more explicit, more pointed. Ironically, however, this second attempt is only slightly more successful than the first, in large part because Baldwin's return to the church idiom riddled his message more than redeemed it.

Sylvander contends that although "The Amen Corner is a better play than its production history or criticism would seem to indicate," it is nonetheless flawed:

Here Baldwin is directly trying to

recreate the ritual of the black church

as he knew it, in the ritual of the theater,

while teaching a lesson antithetical

to the lesson emanating from the

church. The play is powerful. The lesson

is somewhat less so. (91)

Carlton Molette has assured those who have never had a chance to see the play performed that its emotional impact is every bit as "powerful" as Sylvander has claimed. As a "theatre worker," he can say that the play, built, as it is, "upon the rhythms of the Afro-American church ... is one of the most successful Afro-American plays that I have seen." Molette continues:

The dominant force in the

play is this rhythm. The congregation

is swept up in the

rhythm. The congregation is

compelled to participate. I

say "the congregation"

because this play is more of

a black church ritual than it

is a play in the sense that

modern Western culture

defines a play. (184)

Amen Corner tries to give the theatre audience at least a taste of the overwhelming experience of black pentecostal worship which they can only imagine while reading Go Tell It on the Mountain. The problem is that, however likely "the rhythms of the Bible readings, the sermons, and the antiphonal phrases ... are ... to arouse audience reaction" (Sylvander 96), the reaction is more likely to be positive than negative. The depiction of the church members on stage is unfavorable, yes, and some skeptics in the audience may view the church's worship as the members' avoidance of the strife among themselves and with the rest of the world. But as the play works its ritual power, audience members come themselves to feel a part of the church that extends beyond the church's walls (the fourth wall, in particular); a part of the church that sympathizes with a Margaret they can see in private moments, a Margaret they can admire as she softens. So the church as a whole does not appear so flawed as it might if the audience had not been incorporated into it. The strife within the church and with the world beyond is ameliorated.