Our God too: Christianity in selected texts by Olaudah Equiano, James Baldwin, and Richard Wright

One only needs to read a few pages of a slave narrative such as that of Olaudah Equiano, or of a modern novel by James Baldwin or Richard Wright to encounter similar descriptions of Christian worship. Even in cases where the author has no perceptible evangelical motive - Baldwin and Wright ultimately reject the practice of Christianity described in such texts as Go Tell It On The Mountain, and Black Boy, and Equino seems preoccupied with using his new religion as a tool in the cause of abolition - Christianity maintains a central, pervasive position in the overall description of African American society. As with non-black writers observing the role of churches in the community, Equiano, Bladwin, and Wright offer varying appraisals of the impact of Christian worship in the black community. By definition the result of a conversion experience - religious or otherwise - should be unity of the self. Christianity as portrayed by these authors, however, while sometimes providing a unifying influence in the community, often perpetuates division. Regardless of any individual author's view of its effects, however, the ubiquitous presence of Christianity in African and African American texts is startling - particularly in comparison to non-black texts in the larger English literacy tradition.