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Transcription: [00:30:12]
{SPEAKER name="James Baldwin"}
The question is in essence whether or not we should give up Christianity, whether Black people in this country should give up Christianity.

[00:30:16]
I think that's fair, isn't it? That's the essence of the question.

[00:30:20]
{audience member 1}
Will you make some assumptions [[inaudible]]

{SPEAKER name="James Baldwin"}
I beg your pardon.

{audience member 1}
Will you make some assumptions first. [[laughter]]

{SPEAKER name="James Baldwin"}
Let me try simply to answer what you take to be his question.

[00:30:34]
His assumptions, well I was going to address myself to one assumption which I think is false.

[00:30:38]
You will see soon through example.

[00:30:41]
That the reason Negros, or the way Negros became Christians was because their masters taught them Christianity.

[00:30:48]
But is that what happened?

[00:30:50]
They became Christians in as far as they did, and by the way, the word,

[00:30:55]
you know on a scale of several definitions, when they practiced the Christian religion by making it their own.

[00:31:01]
They took it over and the songs we were talking about earlier, come out of that experience.

[00:31:08]
It's not a question of giving up therefore Christianity and certainly, one couldn't give it up just because white people are Christians.

[00:31:14]
It's a question of whether or not being able ( -- ) This is our experience, it is all ( -- ) it's what brought us here

[00:31:20]
and it is only this which carries further than this.

[00:31:22]
It is not a matter of the Christian religion, it is a matter of something which we have done with it

[00:31:29]
and it one of the technics of our survival.

[00:31:33]
And I think that we can carry it much further,

[00:31:35]
I don't, I don't associate with Christian religion.

[00:31:38]
I associate it with something else. I associate it with the auction [[??]] and I'm not concerned with the Pope, at all.

[00:31:43]
I don't care what white Christians do ether, that's their problem. I really don't care.

[00:31:48]
But I do, care, that we,

[00:31:53]
we, Black Americans, in moving into the future, do not deny our past, that's what I [[inaudible]]

[00:31:59]
[[clapping]]

[00:32:13]
{audience member 2}
Mr. Baldwin, in a number of ways