As the moderator, Kilgore started the dialogue by asking Baldwin, “Does the missing face of Christ on the stained glass window, which survived the bombing . . . suggest to you a meaning of the Birmingham tragedy?” At first Baldwin responded with irony: “The absence of the face is something of an achievement, since we have been victimized so long by an alabaster Christ.” Then he turned serious, and suggested that “it sums up the crisis we’re living through. If Christ has no face, then perhaps it is time that we, who in one way or another, invented and are responsible for our deities, give him a
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