RECORD
Go Tell It on the Mountain
- Title:
- Go Tell It on the Mountain
- Author:
- James Baldwin
- Date of Publication:
- 1953
- Description:
- Go Tell It on the Mountain is a 1953 semi-autobiographical novel by James Baldwin. It tells the story of John Grimes, an intelligent teenager in 1930s Harlem, and his relationship with his family and his church. The novel also reveals the back stories of John's mother, his biological father, and his violent, fanatically religious stepfather, Gabriel Grimes. The novel focuses on the role of the Pentecostal Church in the lives of African Americans, both as a negative source of repression and moral hypocrisy and a positive source of inspiration and community. (Source: Wikipedia)
- Keywords:
- Belief Body Critique Experience Ritual Sexuality
- Religions:
-
Christianity-Protestant majorNon Affliated-Atheist major
- Locations:
-
United States major
- Wikidata Entity ID:
- https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1444052
- Open Library ID:
- https://openlibrary.org/works/OL49653429M
- Item Type:
- Text
- Item Image Format:
- image/jpeg
Keyword Engagements
- Belief
- Several characters in James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain struggle with belief. Fourteen-year-old John Grimes finds himself doubting the Pentecostal religious dogma he has been raised with, especially that relating to the body and the material world. Other youths feel the same: during an evening service in a Pentecostal church, Sister McCandless frowns at the lack of young people attending. Adults struggle too: John’s aunt, Florence, has scarcely entered a church in years; John’s mother, Elizabeth, remembers valuing her lover, Richard, over God; and John’s father, Gabriel, uses his extreme religiosity to cover up his lack of devotion in his youth. John’s scepticism is only encouraged by the hypocrisy of his family and community, as well as his religion’s distaste for bodily wants and needs. He does, however, ultimately accept God into his heart, but through his own acceptance of his body and sexuality.
- Body
- In Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin depicts Black Pentecostal Christians struggling to uphold the tradition’s division between body and soul. Young and old internalise the notion that “the flesh” is sinful and thus by extension any sexual feelings or material wants. Fourteen-year-old John Grimes fears divine punishment for his burgeoning queer sexuality and the desire to enjoy the pleasures of the material world. His adopted father, Gabriel, poses as a devout man, while hiding a history of adultery; John’s mother, Elizabeth, likewise bore John outside of marriage – a fact for which she refuses to apologise. Despite the pressure to repress bodily needs in pursuit of the spiritual, characters either deliberately choose or simply cannot resist the needs of the body. The conflict culminates in John’s religious conversion: an intimately bodily experience in which he is faced with the hypocrisy of his own community and ultimately accepts both his sexuality and God, thus bridging the gap between body and soul.
- Critique
- James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain criticises hypocrisy in Pentecostal Christianity. The young protagonist John Grimes’s narrative of sexual awakening in his sexually repressive community is interspersed with flashbacks of his stepfather, Gabriel, committing adultery and engaging in premarital sex. Head deacon Gabriel treats John as sinful, and the community at large preaches against the sins of the flesh while failing to recognise that their religious experiences – such as John’s conversion – are bodily experiences. John, however, does not reject his sexuality nor his body upon being converted, thus offering an alternative to the sexual repression of traditional Pentecostal Christianity. The novel includes other examples of hypocrisy: the virtuous Deborah being treated as “filthy” for having been raped; the pastor’s nephew, Elisha, criticising other young people for not attending service regularly while he himself is inconsistent; and the devout Christian Gabriel striking his son, Roy, with a belt.
- Experience
- Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin is a novel of bodily religious experiences. Young John Grimes has his conversion on the threshing-floor of his Pentecostal church, in which he has vivid visions of his hated father, the fires of hell, and his sexually conservative religious community, before ultimately glimpsing God. It is a deeply bodily experience, including visions, smells, tastes, and most of all the sounds of his community – the older boy Elisha in particular, whom John finds sexually appealing. John’s conversion thus leads him to accept God as well as his body and sexuality. Other characters are less fortunate: John’s father, Gabriel, has had multiple religious experiences throughout his life: a baptism he resisted, a painful conversion atop a hill, and sinful dreams supposedly sent by Satan. His experiences make him deeply devout but also leave him violent and sexually frustrated, showing a failure of religious experience to improve him as a person.
- Ritual
- Ritual in James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain primarily manifests through prayer, song, and conversion. Each member of the novel’s Pentecostal church must kneel and pray privately to God before joining a service, and the service is itself is shown to be filled with passionate song. The fourteen-year-old John is alienated by these rituals, as is his sceptical aunt, Florence, who only remembers one song from her youth. The main body of the novel is focused on prayer specifically, the chapters being named “The Prayers of the Saints”, “Florence’s Prayer”, “Gabriel’s Prayer”, and “Elizabeth’s Prayer”. Each prayer is introspective, taking the narrative back through a given character’s memory. Head deacon Gabriel is shown to have been baptised and having consistently prayed and worshipped throughout his life, believing that for salvation, one must be reborn perpetually. The act of rebirth is most obviously seen in the conversion of John: an irresistible hallucinatory experience which renders him “saved” by God. While in its intensity and unexpectedness the conversion may well appear far removed from the repetitions and observance of ritual, the conversion experience itself and subsequent reference to and recreation of it is a central part Pentecostal worship. In placing a conversion at the centre of the narrative, the shape of the novel bears the imprint of this dimension of Pentecostal worship.
- Sexuality
- The Black Pentecostal church in James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain openly condemns sexuality as sinful. Their church’s pastor, Father James, publicly humiliates teenager Elisha and Ella Mae for spending time together, and Elisha warns the fourteen-year-old John Grimes to be wary of temptation. In private, however, characters experience and engage with sexual feelings in various ways: John undergoes a queer sexual awakening and fears divine punishment for having masturbated; his stepfather, Gabriel, hides a history of masturbation, infidelity, and brothel-visits and projects his shame onto John; and John’s mother, Elizabeth, remembers her premarital affair with John’s biological father, Richard, whom she loved deeply. The conflict between religious chastity and worldly sexuality shapes John’s conversion, in which the voice of his same-sex crush, Elisha, leads John towards both God and an acceptance of his sexuality. His sexuality becomes a pathway to transcendence, while other characters’ sexual conservatism renders them unhappy and hypocritical.
Attribution
- Citation:
- "Go Tell It on the Mountain", Mapping Religion in the Global Anglophone Novel (MaRGAN), https://ghjensen.github.io/margan/items/margan005.html
Rights
- Rights:
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- Standardized Rights:
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/