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In this regard, On the Side of My People: A Religious Life of Malcolm X, by Louis A. DeCaro, Jr., is a helpful guide. This may seem like an already exhausted topic, given the plethora of books written on Malcolm X, but DeCaro's study explores the crucial nexus in Malcolm's life between Christianity and the Nation of Islam on the one hand, and between the Nation of Islam and orthodox Islam on the other.

With a robust style and meticulous research, DeCaro interprets Malcolm's religious journey in terms of two conversions, first to the Nation of Islam and second to orthodox Islam. On the Side of My People first explores what attracted Malcolm to the Nation of Islam and its central theological figure, Elijah Muhammad. DeCaro explains that there is an incarnation motif that enlivens the theology of the Nation of Islam; that is, God is a black man, and at this very moment the divine is at work in black bodies. More significantly, the plight of Africans is understood within a Christian theological drama of fall and redemption, creation and eschatology. This theological drama has at its center, not at its periphery, black agents joined to divine agency. What made (and makes) the Nation of Islam's theology credible is not its internal consistency but its black nationalist vision and its ability to touch tender spots in the collective experience of African Americans. Malcolm found the words of Elijah Muhammad credible because they were consistent with his experience and amiable to his religious upbringing, a blend of Garveyite nationalism, biblical ideas, and independently minded spiritualism.

DeCaro makes possible a more accurate analysis of Malcolm's religious transitions, in turn shedding light on the nature of black leadership in America. Malcolm did not simply move from Christianity to the Nation of Islam; rather, Malcolm's life discloses a much more circuitous process. The most important thing Elijah Muhammad did for Malcolm was resolve any tension between black nationalism and religious faith. As Malcolm's assessment of the Nation of Islam's prophet changed, however, so did his religious self-understanding. Malcolm's moral crisis with Elijah Muhammad led directly to a theological crisis centered on Islam. We find in the later Malcolm someone constantly negotiating the demands of a clarified Islam with the nationalistic aspirations that originally gave flight to his religious commitments. When Malcolm walked away from Elijah Muhammad, he walked away from what Elijah Muhammad had worked out in his theology: an easy confluence of nationalism and religious faith.

Yet a confluence remained. That confluence remains at the heart of the dilemma for black religious leaders in America. At one level, this confluence of the universality of religious faith combined with the sectarian interests of black nationalism is an essential part of the legacy of American civil religion. At another level, it derives from the Afro-American tradition of religious leadership that is always, simultaneously, political leadership. Malcolm X, like Elijah Muhammad before him and like Louis Farrakhan after him, became a public performer who exhibited the utility of religion in service to a would-be black nation. Unlike Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan, for Malcolm X that service became a much more constrained and conflicted matter.

In Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X experienced the cult of personality that is often the driving force behind a social movement. In his own life he experienced the same dynamic. This cult of personality is another side of black religious leadership. Over time, the heroic efforts of African American leaders (a great number of whom have been ministers of one sort or another) have solidified into a kind of public mask. While we have enjoyed the benefits of this legacy, we have also encountered its pitfalls: being bound to a leader's arbitrary decisions, which are often claimed to be the divine will for black people; tied to their idiosyncrasies, which become law for black behavior or permission for questionable behavior; and trapped by their intellectual limitations, which discourage attempts to rethink accepted ideas or explore new and different models of leadership. The effects of these pitfalls are yet to be fully reckoned within the lives of ordinary black folk.

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