Marjorie Corbman’s book is essentially two books: The first, comprised of three chapters, presents a condensed spiritual biography of Malcom X. It details the evolution of Malcom X’s radical Islamic theology. “God was Black; God was rising in righteous judgment against all racism, colonialism, and oppression” (48). Malcolm X saw “the militant struggle for worldwide decolonization as itself God’s judgment on earth” (Ibid.) Hence the book’s title: Divine Rage. Malcolm X conceived the global scale of the civil rights awakening as an extension of God’s will and power. This evolving theology shaped his short life.

The second book-within-a-book is comprised of the last four chapters in which Corbman underscores the influence of Malcom X’s theology of Black liberation spirituality on well-known activists such as James Cone, Albert Cleage, and José “Cha Cha” Jiménez.  Here, the prose truly shines. For purposes of this short review, I will briefly assess the author’s intertwining of the thoughts of Thomas Merton and Malcolm X. The author’s second-to-last chapter – Of Malcolm and Merton: Black Power Contemplatives – illustrates this book’s singular and important achievements.

Thomas Merton is seldom considered a revolutionary activist. Malcom X is rarely if ever painted as a monk. Still, both men’s emphasis on social liberation and divine justice overlap and complement each other, yet there are also contradictions. Though the two never met face to face, they did correspond. Their interior struggles partake of the same conflicts. Both men struggled spiritually as well as politically. So did their followers:

Emerging from the traumatic violence of racial terror, of government and police suppression, of movement conflicts, many participants in the liberation struggles of the period turned to the search for mystical or contemplative spirituality (148).

Merton consistently held fast to Christian nonviolence. At the same time, he was unambiguous in his agreement with the central claim of the Black Power movement: “that the protest movement of the 1950s and early 1960s had proved inadequate in the face of unacceptably persistent racial injustice” (149). Mere protest, it eventually seemed to Merton, was insufficient. But what was sufficient never truly made itself clear.

Merton’s life, like Malcolm X’s, was cut short before his spiritual thinking could reach full maturity. Merton never resolved the tension in his mind between the contemplative life and “a desire to hear the apocalyptic call of the times…” (152). At times, he seemed almost ready to quit the monastery and take up arms. Most of his journal entries relative to this struggle reveal a sense of despair. The motif which repeats itself is simply, “I don’t know what to do” (Ibid.) Nonviolent protest had proven itself useless, but militant violence, he was certain, was not the path, either. In Merton’s essays which fret about Malcolm X’s assertions, he does, however, see the exposure of pervasive racism as “a profound and necessary spiritual challenge to white Americans” (150).

Divine Rage is as galvanizing and inspirational as both men’s writings. It presents a critical reading of other civil rights leaders, as well, presenting Malcolm X as their interlocutor. The book’s revolutionary tone and spiritual focus are unique and well stated.