Visit the Abbey of the Arts online retreat platform to access your programs:

Login Here

Featured Book for November 2025

You Mean It or You Don’t: James Baldwin’s Radical Challenge

by Jamie McGhee and Adam Hollowell

After a speech at UMass Amherst on February 28, 1984, James Baldwin was asked by a student: “You said that the liberal façade and being a liberal is not enough. Well, what is? What is necessary?” Baldwin responded, “Commitment. That is what is necessary. You mean it or you don’t.”

Taking up that challenge and drawing from Baldwin’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and interviews, You Mean It or You Don’t will spur today’s progressives from conviction to action. It is not enough, authors Hollowell and McGhee urge us, to hold progressive views on racial justice, LGBTQ+ identity, and economic inequality. True and lasting change demands a response to Baldwin’s radical challenge for moral commitment. Called to move from dreams of justice to living it out in communities, churches, and neighborhoods, we can show that we truly mean it.

Welcome to life with James Baldwin. It is raw and challenging, inspired and embodied, passionate and fully awake.

Order from Bookshop.org
Order from Amazon.com

Video Conversation

Audio Recording

Additional Author Links

Jamie-McGhee.com

AdamHollowell.com

Community Questions

PrayingWithJamesBaldwin.com  - prayers and meditations from the authors.

Community Questions from Claudia Love Mair

Part I

  1. You Mean It Or You Don't opens with the story of young preacher James Baldwin knowing he has to commit to becoming his authentic self, and doing what he knew he must do, through he didn't know how. p. XII. Describe a time in which you were faced with the decision to choose authenticity was difficult, and what you did when faced with that challenge.
  2. The entire book has concrete and well-developed calls to action at the end of the chapters. How do these prompts motivate or radicalize you?
  3. Pages 2-3 offers readers some searing quotes from the play, "Blues for Mr. Charley", one being, "People who shut their eyes to destruction invite their own destruction." Collectively and on a personal level, life can be full of challenges we find it easier to shut our eyes to. What is your response to Baldwin's words here?

Part II

  1. The section on pages 6-8, "If Only There Had Been a Witness" does not afford readers naivety of the potential dangers of being a witness. What is your response to these potential dangers, and how do you think it informs your willingness to be a witness if you're placed in that position?
  2. Finding your horizon, p. 10-14., is about learning from Baldwin's radical challenge, not drowning in it. Jamie invites readers to sit in the messiness of human life. How do you think embracing the full spectrum of our humanity supports our call to the horizons of liberation?
  3. Embracing the messiness of human life can be a challenge as some lives are much messier than others. Name some messes in yourself or that you see in others that you have a hard time sitting in.

Part III

  1. "Baldwin calls the willingness to lose everything a refusal of despair. He is describing divine freedom. He is describing a freedom that is called witness." p. 50. What is one way you can choose to be this kind of witness for someone?
  2. "(This) is about the day after the confrontation with reality. And not just days, but weeks, months, years after. This chapter is about building sustainable, restorative avenues of justice in a broken world. It is about living into new habits and practices that address our brokenness, too." p. 55. It can feel so profound to honor the long human journey after confronting reality in some way and answering the call to move forward. Name a way you can help build restorative avenues of justice while also living into whatever supports and helps heal your own brokenness.
  3. Jamie reminds us of the power and expansiveness of the word "queer"on page 73. "Queerness is a way of relating to the world that makes room for creativity, curiosity, and new ways of being. It makes space for fluidity and experimentation. It makes space for people to experience novel ways of looking at gender, of moving among genders, of encountering more than one gender within themselves. And it's constantly in dialogue with itself about the very nature of queerness." How can you open your life to make space for more queerness in it?

Part IV

  1. "Baldwin pushes his readers to brave the vulnerability and exposure of opening the unusual door. In his hands, physical spaced of comfort and shelter--homes, apartments, churches, schools, and offices--become opportunities for extending care to the vulnerable." p. 125. Name an unusual door you opened, and what happened when you did.
  2. "At every turn Baldwin channeled his emotions, energy, pain, and vision into expressions of artistic creativity. Whatever life handed him, Baldwin attempted to create something beautiful from it." p.165. How can you continue to follow the path of creativity when systems are actively trying to exhaust you?
  3. What is something you can create right now from whatever life has handed you? p. 165-168
Return to main Book Club page
Join our Lift Every Voice Facebook group