Go Tell It on the Mountain

Religion has a domineering presence in Go Tell it on the Mountain. Not only does the narrative set in the present take place inside The Temple of the Fire Baptized church, but the characters’ thoughts are rife with religion, fear, and belief. The church functions as a pivotal location for the characters, providing them with a physical embodiment of their relationship to religion. Inside the church, they can forget about the racism, poverty, and abuse that defines their lives. The church is a community where they do not need to worry about the external pressures on their lives. Instead, they can be with like-minded people and share their joy in their belief in God. To the members of the church, their shared religion is a way to encourage moral behavior and to ensure that they are all able to improve their fortunes, in the next life if not their current lives.

Though the church claims to be a source of morality and guidance, the church is also a place where the repressed fears and anxieties of the members are unleashed. The threshing floor allows the members to give themselves up entirely to their innermost feelings, shouting, and writhing in apparent joy as they feel a direct connection to God. When John gives himself up to the threshing floor, he has a vision. In this vision, he sees his abusive family, and he tries to deal with the anxieties and fears that overwhelm his mind. As the other churchgoers clap and sing, the threshing floor allows them to abandon their publicly reserved personas and let loose the energy that society demands they repress. The pent-up emotions are unleashed in the church, at least for a brief moment, during the services. Whereas the characters might repress these emotions or abuse one another at home, the church becomes a place where the angst of the repressive society manifests in the form of religion.

The novel portrays two different forms of religion: the private and the public. The public demonstration of religion is an important social tool. Gabriel uses religion to mask his hypocrisy. Every sermon, he preaches the importance of morality and religion while hiding the immorality of his past and abusing his family behind closed doors. The public Gabriel is a God-fearing man who is respected by the community while the private Gabriel is an abusive hypocrite who uses religion to further his career while inspiring fear in his family. Religion becomes a tool for men like Gabriel. While other characters rely on religion to give them hope in desperate times, he cynically manipulates his public image, using religion to buoy his credibility. He marries Deborah as a public performance of his humility, all the while resenting her for her past and her infertility. Gabriel feels threatened by Florence’s letter from Deborah because the letter threatens to reveal the hypocrisy of his religion and his hypocrisy in shaming his wife for her extramarital relationship. Gabriel is worried that his public performance of religion will be merged with his private abusive immorality, thereby undermining the image he has carefully constructed.

Religion is not just an outlet for emotion or a physical place where marginalized characters can bond. Because of the importance of religion in the community, cynical men like Gabriel can use religion to elevate their status and mask their immorality. The contrast between the public and private forms of religion illustrates the way in which religion can be manipulated and used by hypocrites who—in a very literal way—do not practice what they preach.