THE BLACK MESSIAH

Mr. Cleage is a Negro, writing for black people about the place of Christianity in their lives and in the emerging ""Black Nation"" of America. He writes forcefully, but not always well, about the significance of such events as the Last Supper and the Resurrection for the Negro, in twenty pieces cast as sermons in which Christ is portrayed as a specifically Black Messiah, a sort of foreshadowing of Martin Luther King, a Messiah who preached universal brotherhood and love and human dignity for all men. The analogy is indisputably correct, though the author tends frequently to sacrifice the historic Jesus to the Jesus of here-and-now expediency in his determination to bend all things to his thesis. It is a tendency that will put off some readers but then, in any revolution, historic truth is always the first thing to be sacrificed. Black Christians will find the book inspiring, interesting; white ones will find it puzzling.