Religious Power Mongers

Briefly, I wanted to comment on the religious aspects of the Blueprints to Freedom play, for there were constant, conflictual, connected attempts to contain, define, and garner control of religion and the influence it held. Throughout the play and the historical moment it mirrored, we see religion being used as the double-edged sword throughout activism and politics. Constantly, Christians battled each other for meaning, for glimpses of God, and for interpretive rights. When Martin Luther King Jr. comes to Rustin at his headquarters, King uses this opportunity to tell Bayard about his religious experiences in the Montgomery jail. King tells Bayard about his experience with God, demonstrating his faith and his religious hold over the movement and Bayard’s position. Bayard stood there distraught. He had lost God, or contrarily, God had deserted him. In eighth grade, God had come to him in a bathroom, when he was questioning, when he was at his most vulnerable, but Bayard did not answer. In that moment and for the rest of his life, Bayard had lost some religious right, some aspect that would continue to hold him down throughout his years of activism and his religious life. Bayard was forced to be Joshua to King’s Moses. Moreover, throughout the play, similar religious complications played out. For instance, Randolph constantly lorded over Bayard as a mentor and a religious elder – continuing to deny him his role, his humanity, and his place. Randolph dictated what he wanted and Bayard’s only response was to comply. Bayard’s religious failings, in part due to his sexuality, his Godlessness, and his assistant’s atheism, are pitted against him throughout the play, denying him control and influence. Everywhere he turns, he loses due to his lack, due to his lost God. Finally, Bayard faces the harshest punishment: he loses his love; he loses his dream of Gandhian civil disobedience in the United States enacted on behalf of racial justice; and he loses his sense of self and autonomy. As a final act, he gives up his entire self: he gives himself to God; however, this dream, this promise could only be illusory in light of the entire play preceding it.