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In my fourth chapter, Malcolm rides the third horse, the black horse called Famine. The black color of the third horse represents the grim circumstances of malnutrition. “And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, ‘Come and see.’ And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, a measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine” (Rev 6:5 –6, KJV). Malcolm is the black rider of famine because of his constant theme that the institutional church could no longer feed people.

An example of such a famished church was in how the institutional church lacked sufficient sustenance to remain intact over issues like slavery. Many Christian denominations resulted because of the split over slavery (e.g., Presbyterians of America, Presbyterians USA, Southern Baptists, National Baptists, the African American Episcopal Church, the Episcopal Church [ECUSA] etc). A church with a strong body would not easily split over whether or not a black person should be a slave or free. A strong, well fed church would not split during the Civil Rights Movement. Such splits would not occur if the church body were secure in its primary identity revealed in Jesus. When baptized in Jesus, primary identity is revealed as the corporate identity of Jesus who organizes all of our other particular identities (e.g., male, female, black, white, slave, free, etc.). The problem, however, is that the church often fails to demonstrate primary Christian identity—instead revealing a weak and divided body of people in conflict.

This famine aspect of Malcolm can be seen in Malcolm’s role as an Episcopal priest. Malcolm wrote me, “I was on the Freedom Ride as a priest (it was called a ‘Prayer Pilgrimage’). Through the 1960s I was as deeply involved in civil rights as any human being could be.”¹⁶ As we met weekly, I explored Malcolm’s times and places as a priest, especially in the unusual circumstances of Malcolm serving with Martin Luther King Jr. Then, continuing to follow MLK, Malcolm’s involvement against the Vietnam War, including an arrest inside the Pentagon while engaged in a Peace Mass in a corridor. What was unusual was how such events occurred through Malcolm’s identity as an Episcopal priest.

Since much of Malcolm’s life has been devoted to the civil rights of African Americans, I think it appropriate that this biographer is an African American who is different from Malcolm in age, race, and sexual orientation and yet resembles Malcolm’s identity as a writer, anti–war activist, theologian, civil rights advocate, and Episcopal priest in the institutional church.

Being gay in the institutional church made Malcolm “black.” Malcolm’s identity as a gay white man remains a stumbling block for many, especially those in institutional religion and more communal societies that socialize their members to see gay identity as an aberration. Such communities are often patterned around ethnicity and socioeconomic status. I also think it profound for me as a black heterosexual male to reflect upon Malcolm’s life in that much of the current tensions in religion are between more ethnic-minded identities—such as black and brown people—and white, liberally minded people who tend more to accept gay and lesbian people.

Malcolm taught me that all institutions are about self–preservation and perhaps this why he has been such an apocalyptic figure in relationship to what counts for religion today. “I don’t know why I am that way,” Malcolm told me (April 9, 2009). Being an institutional person myself (and in need of the epiphanies that Malcolm offers), I should not offer literary analysis or ruin your own epiphanies with my own; however, I have learned from Malcolm not to conclude from the demise of institutional religion that life is bleak and deterministic. Appropriate to Malcolm’s own character, there is an inherent optimism or hope in these pages. Like rigorous archeological digging, we may need to unlearn a lot of our own caricatures and stereotypes in order to see the hope in this book, but it is here. We need only to let God be God in order to escape the famine of institutional religion.