f Afro-American literature ... as one vastgenealogical poem that attempts to restore continuity to the ruptures of discontinuity" endemic to black history in the Americas (Benston 152). His faith in the love of Jesus will enable John to leave his father's barren house and journey to a richer promised land. John's natural father, Richard, provides a harsh contrast to both John's innocent faith and Gabriel's sharp conversion. Richard embodies, without John's knowing it, the voice of rebellion, urging him to raise himself off the threshing floor and to "leave this temple and go out into the world" (193). For Richard the church is only about a white God, and as such he has no use for it. When Elizabeth, John's mother, innocently asks Richard why since they have come north he and his friends never attend church to worship Jesus, he responds hotly: "You can tell that puking bastard to kiss my big black ass" (163). He regards the church as part of the oppressive white establishment, which both hounds his body and attempts to infiltrate his mind and spirit. John, however, finds that "his drifting soul was anchored in the love of God; in the rock that endured forever" (204). Jesus may be traditionally construed as a white man, but John can still identify himself with the promise ofsalvation in Christ's embrace. He is drawn to the "lore of Christianity, for it is both his cross and his curse. Without the hope found in ritual prayer, life would be unbearable" (Bell 232). Even so it becomes unbearable for Richard, who commits suicide in response to being physically assaulted by white policemen. Unlike his soon-to-be-born son, "Richard dies without believing in the redemptive power that the cross symbolizes" (Porter 104). For all the calculated irony on Baldwin's part, John at the novel's end does believe that he has been saved by Jesus: "The light and the darkness had kissed each other, and were married now, forever, in the life and vision ofJohn'...
