This book investigates the black church and black community in James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain. It probes how and why the religion, namely Christianity, casts a loaded shadow for African Americans. Baldwin on the one hand vigorously illustrates a bodily pious black community. On the other hand, he serenely indicts a spiritually hollow black church. By borrowing God's spear and shield--the language in the Bible and the music played inside (and later outside) the Black Church-- as his writing tool to tell a gospel-like parable. Baldwin has sung a blues gospel to the secular world.