For Black People, the Church Is More Than Just Religion

Having seen the mission churches in Africa use the sense of belonging and status to attract people, and bolster the egos of local dignitaries, I can quite understand where you’re coming from. The Catholic church may have made the mistake of shunning blacks in America, but they are making up for lost ground in Africa, the drive to convert is frightening.

I agree that religion provides many things including community, but it is I no way exclusive nor even sided toward black people. Religion is a facilitator of social cohesion, and it does that for Jews, Sikhs & pretty much everywhere religion thrives (most places in the world).

The crises in Africa and the RCC’s responce is quite frightening, especially the AIDS crisis and the RCC’s insistence on perpetuating their own destructive myths against condoms.

What exactly are your intentions when you say we want to “reach these people?”

Is the goal to get Blacks who are freethinkers and skeptics to realize that atheism exists, that they are not alone, and that there is a social community that accepts them and will provide a lot of the interpersonal activities that religion provides?  

Is your goal to make atheism a political force, so that politicians stop coddling those who want to impose their religion upon us?  Is it so that religious leaders don’t put prayer and creationism in the classroom, don’t block gay marriage rights, don’t outlaw abortion and birth control, and don’t try to co-opt the Constitution, stop trying to make homosexuality a capital crime in Africa, stop preventing anti-bullying laws?

I support both of these goals.

But if your goal is to convert Blacks away from their religions simply because you believe it’s better to be an atheist, I don’t support that.  I don’t care what people believe as long as they keep it personal.  Millions of people manage to believe in God while supporting religion-free science education, religion-free governance, and tolerance of those who are different.  I even support Fred Phelps’s right to believe that homosexuality is causing all the trouble in the world, so long as he stays in Westboro and believes it in the privacy of his own church.

It looks to me that those first two goals are consistent with Hemant’s usual stance. I don’t think Hemant (or many other New Atheists) are actively “converting” people. Most of our campaigns lately have been to reach out to young (or old, ostensibly) atheists who don’t know that they can hold a position other than a religious one.

I understand this to some extent. At another level, I’m always shocked and appalled at how many blacks in the US are involved in the Southern Baptist church (although to be clear many are parts of other baptist groups like the National Baptist Convention). This is a denomination that literally was founded because they believed they had a divine right/obligation to keep slaves. While a lot of protestant denominations schismed right before or at the beginning of the Civil War, the Southern Baptists are the only one which stuck around after the war, so devoted to their beliefs that they didn’t reconcile with their Northern believers. There’s an argument that this was due in part to other doctrinal differences which contributed to the split, but the basic primary issue pretty clearly was slaverly. I don’t understand how anyone who is black could could be a member. Sometimes I wonder if it is simply not knowing much about the history of their religion. 

It may be that a lot of these individuals simply don’t know much about the history of their church. The same Pew study which atheists love to talk about showing how atheists and agnostics have the highest overall religious knowledge levels also showed that black evangelicals have one of the lowest http://pewforum.org/other-beliefs-and-practices/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey.aspx . In fact, while they perform about as well as a lot of other groups when restricted to questions about the Bible, their knowledge base is one of the lowest of any group when one looks at questions relating religion to public life (that is, primarily stuff related to the First Amendment). It may be that this lack of knowledge translates into more willingness to be involved with the Southern Baptists. There’s also a correlation v. causation issue. Obviously not all evangelical blacks are Southern Baptists, but a sizable fraction are. I’m not completely sure what the underlying causal direction is here, but there’s a definite tradition in the evangelical black community of valuing charisma and the claimed spirit of God touching people over education and intelligence when it comes to selecting religious leaders, and that may have some impact. So, there’s a possibility that the lack of knowledge is a consequence of the religious traditions. (One could make an argument that this issue is due to secondary causes like disparate income levels but I don’t think this is likely to be the underlying cause given that this is primarily about religious knowledge levels.)

This entire narrative may also be missing a more serious issue: Many blacks joined the Southern Baptist convention right after the Civil War. At that time, blacks had to have been aware of the original formative cause. So it may well be that although the initial founding was over slavery, they saw it as a primarily geographic issue. And  black baptists in the south had more theological similarity with white baptists in some respects. If that’s the root cause, then this analysis is sort of besides the point. 

My impression has been that the goal is to make atheism more welcoming and appealing, both to people who are already irreligious and to people who are on the fence and trying to expand their horizons by looking at different worldviews.

That said, I’m always baffled by people’s resistance to the idea of “converting” others. Sure, people have the right to believe anything, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to change their minds. Saying “I don’t want people to convert others through coercion” is reasonable. Saying “I don’t want people to persuade others that atheism is correct, by any means whatsoever” seems silly. Why would this sort of “conversion” be any more intolerant than trying to convince people of other facts about the world (say, that global warming is really happening)?

If you stick with an organisation that has nice social benefits and are willing to put up with its mysogynist, anti-gay rhetoric then I am not sure you are the type of person I want to be associating with in the first place.

There are many functions that churches serve that I would want to see secular versions of (charity drives, feeding the homeless etc.) but the social aspect is one that people should really be trying to arrange in their own community to remove themselves from the church’s reach.  If national atheist or secular groups want to help then great, but I don’t think they should be out there creating those groups in local communities as the danger of becoming, or being viewed as, a national political movement is too great.

It’s not as simple as “I want these social benefits so screw the gays”. When your entire life revolves around a church community, you don’t see or here different views or lifestyles, which makes you much less likely to question some of the more unsavory beliefs of your religion(and lets remember that most churches don’t make sexism or homophobia centerpieces). Many former fundamentalists actually say that it wasn’t until they left their faith community (sometimes simply by moving to college or changing homes, without neccesarily losing faith) that they even started to question some of the beliefs they had held.

Some people will end up drifting away from their religious community and/or questioning and leaving their faith on their own, but unless you increase the visibility and viability of other ways of living for people inside those churches, those options will remain abstract notions at best and simply beyond consideration at worst. Not out of some cynical weighing of social benefits, but because that atmosphere prevents questions from cropping up and flourishing in the first place.

It’s not as simple as “I want these social benefits so screw the gays”.

It is and it isn’t – it’s like those golf clubs that discriminate, people like what they’re getting so don’t give a second thought to those who are being actively discriminating against.

So what we need is social pressure, and if people don’t want to leave the  social group because they like the benefits then it’s their choice, but we should give them the information rather than try to offer better/more social benefits.  We shouldn’t be bribing people to be rational, it is it’s own reward.

The internet may be enough for you, but there are others who are encouraged and appreciate seeing real, live humans once in a while. 🙂

I find it interesting that people have this kind of perspective about their community churches.  Growing up in England the church was a place that organised a harvest festival collection at schools for charity.  Hardly anybody I knew actually went to church so it hardly counted as part of the community.  It was always something on the fringes that was a bit odd but available if you were that way inclined.  Despite spending several years on a very racially diverse city (Reading) religion just wasn’t an interesting discussion point.  People spoke more about sport (rugby, athletics or one of several marital arts were favourites) or different social groups (wargaming, computing, CB radio, etc but there were community groups for different ethnic groups too) but not about religion.  

Religion was something personal for those who had it rather than part of the community.  I think that the difference between the US and the UK and other European nations with low religiosity is that of competition.  An established church like the Church of England hasn’t got much in the way of competition.  People grow indifferent to it when it doesn’t get attacked and doesn’t need defending rather than passionate about it.

I think that one way to attract more freethinkers from under-represented groups isn’t to challenge their position but to cooperate with them in enhancing and building on local community projects that people are passionate about.  If a community has a problem with crime then join with churches to set up neighbourhood watch areas.  If it has a problem with poverty then join with churches to attract business or charitable funding or to stage an event to win support and funds.  If a community has a local celebrity then get them to endorse a cross faith endeavour of some kind that shows support for the community.  Work in local schools as volunteers or for out of school activities like camp, city farms, craft activities or science demonstrations.  Atheists, by being prominent in the community, are presented as a viable option alongside a church based faith.  It is more difficult to turn down help than it is to turn away competition.

Compressed Jude: “I don’t have a problem with this, therefore everyone else shouldn’t waste my valuable time caring!”

First off, a public “Thanks, dude!” to Hemant for the linkage. I meant to get here earlier but it’s been a busy day.

Second, some people might find the discussion going on over at Richard Dawkins Foundation interesting – it involves the “We Are Atheists” campaign that Hemant posted about earlier, but more commenters there are questioning the goals (and the logo): http://richarddawkins.net/videos/642741-we-are-atheism-campaign

I am personally in agreement with those who see don’t see atheism as a movement, and aren’t interested in converting others. I do approve of things like the billboard messages, which in essence say, “Hey, I’m your neighbor and an atheist and you didn’t even know it,” since this is a message to both “closet” atheists and religious alike.

But I’m not too fond of building a community. First off, this seems far too much like replacing one religion with another, and that’s a much smaller goal than I think we should have – if there’s any atheist “movement” I could get behind, it’s simply the acceptance of atheism as a reasonable viewpoint, rather than the baby-eating demon-worshiping image far too many people still seem to have. This should not be within its own community, but throughout all cultures.

“Community” also has a subtle aspect tagging along, an “outside” to go along with the “inside” – there are people, even though not excluded (or self-excluded) who are not part of the community. That is, in effect, a wall/separation/distinction that I don’t feel is necessary. I feel much the same way about the black community, which seems to perpetuate those distinctions that we tried so damn hard to get rid of. “Colored bathrooms” were terrible, but now we have black churches? How valid is this distinction? And I think we need to be very careful guessing about why this is, since I suspect many black people don’t know themselves, and sociologists could argue about it for years.

Personally, I push critical thinking, and that’s not exactly community-oriented – the emphasis is on thinking for oneself, so it’s kind of antithetical. I don’t care what religion someone is – but I care if they try to affect someone else with it. That’s not really atheism, or anti-theism; it emphasizes individuality more than anything. “This is your choice, and that’s as far as it goes – everyone else has their own choice and you leave it alone.” Can you build a community with that? 😉 Regardless, I’d like to see this as a cultural (if not human) norm, transcending community.

I think most people aren’t very aware of the history of their particular sects, to be honest. It’s certainly not something that the churches themselves do any sermons about. And since it’s hard enough getting evolution taught in the schools because of the religious hand-wringing, I imagine teaching the unsavory history of the local churches would be pretty hard too 😉

That said, the black southern baptist churches might be considered distinct from this history solely on the basis of being black. As the churches began to spring up during emancipation, there almost certainly wasn’t much knowledge of  the variations available throughout the world – “religion” probably revolved around what was practiced locally, so the black churches were simply a variant of that, and most likely remained through inertia and tradition (a ridiculously powerful word.) I’m not up on my history enough to know how often there were separate religious services, for instance among the larger plantations, before emancipation, through the permission or even insistence of the slaveowners, but this is potentially a factor as well.