The portrayal of African-American religion and the black church in James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On The Mountain

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Amerikanistik, Anglistik und Anglophonie), course: Religion in American Literature and Culture, 16 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This paper deals with the religious aspects in James Baldwin’s novel Go Tell It On The Mountain. As this book is partly autobiographical, the first chapter delivers a short biography of the author James Baldwin. His life and (religious) experiences had a great influence on his writing and several common aspects between his own life and the one of the novel’s hero John Grimes can be identified. Prior to treat the topic of religious aspects within the novel, the background and an overview of Pentecostal and Black Church belief in general are given. After a short summary of the plot in chapter 4, the paper deals with the aspects of Afro-American Religion and the Black Church in the book, including the title and every single chapter of the book. At the end of this paper, there’s a short conclusion.