What Baldwin believes about faith, I would argue, is that belief and action badly applied make us more dangerous, more limited, more blinkered in our vision. A bad religious understanding may breed jealousy, greed, and hatred. Bad faith may in fact be worse than no faith at all. But rightly applied, faith and hope make us bigger, better human beings, capable of seeing and loving the world and all those in it, capable of working for larger aims than our own desires, capable of living in hope rather than in fear. Baldwin argued late in life, “I know that we can be better than we are.”16 It was,
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