Broad church: The president and the pulpit

In his essay, Down at the Cross, James Baldwin recounts how, as a pastor’s kid and eminent lay pastor, he slowly lost his faith.

- Elisha Kunene

In spite of everything, perhaps we were all of us pimps, whores, racketeers, church members and children “bound together by the nature of our oppression” and achieved a “freedom that was close to love”.

Whereas “[t]here was no love in the church. It was a mask for hatred ... and despair. The transfiguring power of the Holy Ghost ended when the service ended and salvation stopped at the church door.”