The World's Largest Coalition of Nontheists and Nontheist Communities!

Who says slavery ended in the 1800's?

You rarely find Black people, mostly older ones, conversating for more than a few minutes without the subject of church or "how good God is" randomly being brought up. Me having yet to confess my Atheism to my family (only because I'm still somewhat dependent on them), I constantly have to endure my extremely religious grandmother giving me a two-hour lecture about the grace of God and how getting on my knees and begging for help will fix my life. Possibly even worse is my father telling me I should attend church more often to get more blessings and to sleep with a Bible under my pillow to combat frightening dreams brought about by a mental illness I have (dreams of the Hebrews slaughtering the Caananites at Jericho is hardly a desirable substitute). Needless to say it doesn't work at all. I've even had serious thoughts of deleting my Facebook account just because I'm so effing tired of seeing "God is so good","I'll let the Lord handle this", etc. You'd think young adults would be more proud of their own accomplishments and more willing to fight their own battles, but logic can't be applied to some situations.

Any person following any religion is illogical to me, but it upsets me to see even the most intelligent of my people following Christianity; a religion that was imposed upon us by slaveholders that kidnapped, abused, and sold us like loaves of bread, denies scientific facts and discoveries that have been proven a billion ways, condones slavery, and is based around a book that has so many opposing views and contradictions (if you can even find a copy that isn't over-translated.... good luck with that) that you would think the co-authors are Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly. Just think about it, this God placed you on Earth without your consent and expects you to praise him incessantly for it, makes you follow his guidelines to a tee in exchange for a somewhat decent life at most, and punishes you cruelly for even the slightest infraction of the rules he has imposed on you. It's damn near a dictionary description of slavery! So for the people reading this (thanks, by the way), I would like your opinion.

Why are Black people so overwhelmingly Christian?

Why are Black still openly participating in slavery?

0 members like this

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by John Salters Jr. on March 4, 2011 at 12:24pm

Check out the youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXgnpuKoWhU

Permalink Reply by Albert Terry on March 4, 2011 at 7:40pm

(claps loudly) Well said, sir!!

Permalink Reply by Alvin Nash on March 28, 2011 at 10:52am

Mr.Salter I could not agree with you more.To add if you would let me imagine if there was no religion the thing we could of accompliced.The inventions we have today might of happen 200-300 years earlier,if not for the fear cause by religion.What if our God was mankind.How many good men and women were killed in the name of religion.What if man proctected and love their women instead of mercy killings and gential mutilation.Worrying more about loving their families instead of how they might have brought shame on the so called God and the bible.It so sad religion is in our communities so deep.It is stronger than any drug.

Permalink Reply by Albert Terry on March 30, 2011 at 12:08pm

When you take in consideration the European Dark Ages, which effectively lasted for 1000 YEARS, mankind would be exponentially more advanced than we are now if not for the interference of religion.

Permalink Reply by Clarence Dember on March 6, 2011 at 4:58pm

Good to know you're surviving the homogenaity this fixation with religion has wrought with so many in our diaspora. People are comfortable with what they have been told and what's pumped into them via media as they live in a transe like fog. You're. better than this.

Permalink Reply by Albert Terry on March 30, 2011 at 12:12pm

Trance is a perfect word, a hypnotized person can only be brought back to reality with a phrase of some sort (I wish I knew what it was!). I can't even begin to explain why religion is slavery to my Christian friends before they shut me out and talk over me (usually by singing a gospel song lol).

Permalink Reply by DF Sparks on March 30, 2011 at 12:18pm

The role of the black mother in religious indoctrination can't be underestimated. Generalization here, but black folks worship our mothers and the women in our family, and if they tell us Jesus is our Savior and the Bible is the word of God, and we saw Big Mama reading the bible every night before she went to bed, well, those are powerful influence to cast aside even in the face of reason, logic, evidence, and the historical role of this particular religion in the oppression of black people

Permalink Reply by Sendero Rojo on July 7, 2011 at 12:16am

Sorry I don’t have time to read all the responses in this thread right now, but wanted to answer to one of your questions.

Black people are overwhelmingly Christian in this country because they are oppressed. Karl Marx said “religion is the opiate of the masses” and by that he didn’t mean that theists are a bunch of dopeheads, but rather that the capitalist class (those who own the means of production...factories, farms etc..) and former chattel slave-owning class use(d) religion to dope the masses. Marx went on to say that religion is the “heart of a heartless world” by which he means that if the world had a heart that people wouldn’t turn to religion. Black people have experienced tremendous suffering and use religion as dope. Anything to distract from their suffering, some use real dope, most use religion. Why search for answers to your oppression in a scientific manner when everything is in god’s hands? Why bother with trying to change your place in this world when the most important life is to come? Furthermore, Black families have historically owned less means of production and the vast majority spend a great deal of their existence wrapped up in securing their survival, whereas rich White families are afforded the ability to set around and study about what interests them while Black and other oppressed peoples (including some Whites) are doing the vast majority of the labor that keeps society going. There are less Black atheists, not because Black people are genetically inferior to others, but because White male supremacy is built into the very fabric of the capitalist system. Revolution to place the means of production into common ownership is necessary to defeat the dictatorship of the capitalist class and the White male supremacy that flows from it.

I’ll read all the responses and dig deeper into your excellent questions sometime tomorrow. There’s a real good talk about this subject that (should) autoplay on my page.

Permalink Reply by Maurisio Santiago on July 7, 2011 at 4:08pm

Albert, don't be too hard on our folk. Old habits are hard to break, especially when it was ingrained in our social structure by design many hundreds of years ago. Since the bible, and violence were used to break slaves, christian beliefs became the norm in the Black community up to the present time. I don't know how young you are or where you're parents, grandparent are from, but quite a few of our relatives came from the deep south. In the past, black southerners had to endure the horrors of segregation, lynchings, Jim Crow and the Black Laws. The church provided a place of refuge for many of them. In addition, look at the majority (not all) of the civil rights leaders of the time and you will see that they all came out of christian churches and jewish and muslim temples. There were also atheist involved in the civil rights movement. Quakers were significant in the abolition of slavery in the United States. In my opinion, all descendants of North American slaves owe a debt of gratititude to those religious people who had the courage to stand up for human rights. I may have given a quick blush of why black people are overwhelmingly christian, but in the end, I will show them respect for the things that they have done, regardless of their beliefs. For me, I find comfort in not having imaginary friends.

Permalink Reply by Carolyn on July 10, 2011 at 12:40pm

As a 1st generation Caribbean-American, I can assure you that both American and Caribbean blacks are plagued by religion. In my opinion, the number one reason is as to why both sets are so religious is slavery. Secondly, most have not been exposed to anything else as someone mentioned previously. I am inclined to believe that Caribbean blacks are more religious than Americans, especially Jamaicans and Haitians. A lot of people in this populations are STRUGGLING, to the point where some do not have running water and their homes are dilapidated. To my knowledge, most (if not all) of these countries do not have government assistance. Thus, a lot of people are literally dirt poor and truly believe that they need something to believe in. Religion is subsequently a source of hope (though we all know it's false hope). And when something works out for these people, it's automatically a miracle. Of course, poverty is in the U.S. too, but it is worse in third-world countries.

Aside from the financial hardships and false hopes, religion has become synonymous with black culture, and denying these beliefs viewed as "selling out". I believe that this is one of the many reasons why blacks are still religious- belief has become mandatory in our culture (hence why we all have some sort of coming out story).