Several years ago, I pitched a freelance piece about black atheism to a prominent magazine geared toward African-Americans. The pitch was denied, but not for any real reason. "That one might be a bit, uh, hard," is all my editor said. I'd later come to find out that he was merely sheltering me from his ultra-Christian executive editor, who would never let a piece questioning religion run in the magazine.
Black America's religious problem isn't that it's highly religious—most of America is religious—it's that, in my experience, it's highly religious to the point of exclusion, as if black people living their lives without God don't count. Black atheists or agnostics are often looked at by other blacks as alien or pitiable. A black atheist quoted in the New York Times last year said his mother was bothered more by the admission that he is an atheist than the admission that he is gay. Another in the Huffington Post said that declaring she was an atheist to her black friends was "social suicide." More »
