Black atheists and the black church
As African Americans faced first slavery and then Jim Crow, they nestled in the black church as a haven. In the 1950s and ’60s, blacks congregated to fight legal oppression. In The Color of Christ, American religion historians Edward Blum and Paul Harvey argue that blacks and whites were once unified under the mantle of Christianity in efforts to combat societal vice and ills. Yet in more recent decades, black religiosity has shifted.
Though many within the black community continue to showcase their religious conservatism, others have slowly drifted away. And not just from the black church—but from religion in general. With black educational attainment and hence the rise of the black middle class, more and more black people are asking, Do I believe in God? Can I afford to believe in God? Such doubt has allowed for the growth of support groups such as Black Nonbelievers, Inc., whose president wrote “Confessions of a Black Atheist,” published earlier this year by CNN. Mandisa Thomas discussed how she has “had to endure ostracism from family and friends as a result of openly identifying as an atheist.”
For many black Americans who have reached middle class status, the bourgeois life opened up a secular window. It has long been acceptable for white Americans to be drawn to a material world not confined by the beliefs of Western religious culture. Now Thomas and others in her generation are permitted to step back from the civil rights era and the narrative of Martin Luther King Jr. She and other black nonbelievers have no need for God and religion as they express grievances as part of movements such as Black Lives Matter.
