In one of his later extended essays, James Baldwin remembered how his stepfather, David Baldwin, a one-time Baptist minister, died because of his "unreciprocated love for the Great God Almighty," James Baldwin's God engages most directly those aspects of Baldwin's work that address the substance and character of this unrequited love for a Christian God that is depicted as both silent before black suffering and as white - i.e., actively opposed to the flourishing of black life. Despite his consistent portrayal of a black holiness culture full of energy and passion, Baldwin implicitly condemns the fact that the principal backdrop to black people's conversion to Christianity in the United States is shame and not hope. Hardy's reading of Baldwin's texts, with its goal of understanding Baldwin's attitude toward a religion that revolves around an uncaring God in the face of black suffering, provides provocative reading for scholars of religion, literature, and history.