The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult

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A memoir of growing up with blind, African-American parents in a segregated cult preaching the imminent end of the world When "The World in Flames" begins, in 1970, Jerald Walker is six years old. His consciousness revolves around being a member of a church whose teachings he finds confusing and terrifying. Composed of a hodgepodge of religious beliefs, the underlying tenet of Herbert W. Armstrong s Worldwide Church of God was that members were God s chosen race and all others would perish in just a few years time. The next life, according to Armstrong, would arrive in 1975, three years after the Great Tribulation. Walker would be eleven years old. Walker s parents were particularly vulnerable to the promise of relief from this world s hardships. They were living in a two-room apartment in a dangerous Chicago housing project with their four children. Both were blind, having lost their sight to childhood accidents, and took comfort in the belief that they had been chosen for a better afterlife. When the initial prophecy of the 1972 Great Tribulation does not materialize, Walker is considerably less disappointed than relieved. When the End-Time 1975 prophecy also fails, he finally begins to question his faith and to see a potential future for himself."

Reviews

The key to the memoirs cumulative power is Walkers narrative command; the rite of passage is rockier than most, making the redemption well-earned.
Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Jerald Walker has a remarkable story to tell, and he tells it with a wealth of grace and intelligence at his command.
Vivian Gornick

Author Bio

Jerald Walker is a professor of creative writing at Emerson College. His writing has appeared in publications such as the Harvard Review, Mother Jones, the Iowa Review; the Missouri Review; the Oxford American; the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Creative Nonfiction, as well as four times in Best American Essays. He is the author of Street Shadows- A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, Redemption, which won the PEN New England/L. L. Winship Award for Nonfiction, and How to Make a Slave and Other Essayswhich is a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in Nonfiction.