Black Atheists Are a Minority within a Minority
I once happened upon a YouTube clip of the actor, comedian, and author Steve Harvey being interviewed by interim host Joy Behar on the Larry King Live show. Harvey made some interesting, yet disturbing, comments about atheists that are worth examining further. The topic of religion and atheism came up after she quoted Harvey’s book Think Like a Man, Act Like a Lady, in which he advises ladies to not date men who do not believe in God. Behar followed up by asking, “Do you believe that only people who are religious are ethical and moral?”
Harvey then jumped into a pointed diatribe, “If you don’t believe in God, where is your moral barometer? That’s just me talking. You can believe what you want to believe, but if you’re an atheist you’re basing your goodness and morality on what? I mean but what is an atheist? I don’t really get, you know I talk to people all the time, ‘I’m an atheist,’ I just walk away. I don’t know what to say to you.”
Behar explained, “Well, an atheist is someone who doesn’t quite believe that there is somebody out there, some god out there.”
Harvey continued, “Well then to me you’re an idiot, so I’m cool with that. It’s probably not the right, politically correct thing to say, but if you don’t believe in God, I mean really you gotta have an explanation on this. You can’t tell me this just spun out of gasturous [gaseous] ball and then all of a sudden; then we were evolved from monkeys, why we still got monkeys? There’s too much open here, I just believe that and if you don’t believe that I don’t like talking to you.”
There are so many ignorant ideas packed into this statement that a book would be required to adequately address them, so I will address a couple of the more salient themes. First, although many African American believers may denounce these statements, we can’t ignore the direct influence Harvey has on culture in general and the African American community in general. To disrespect people who happen to disagree with your religious beliefs in this manner is juvenile and, I would guess, contradictory to the faith he professes to believe.
Why would Harvey walk away simply because someone claims not to believe in God? What does he hope to achieve by showing such disrespect to another person? How would this coarse action be Christ-like and exhibit his adherence to Christianity as instructed in 1 John 2:6? He then resorts to name-calling by labeling every person who doesn’t believe in God “an idiot,” which doesn’t seem to be the most Christian thing to do, at least not based on my interpretation of the Bible. But then again, I’ve found that most believers are adept at finding religious loopholes that attempt to justify their non-Christian behavior.
It’s not necessarily the juvenile comments that bother me, however. The hate-filled breeding ground created by his closed-minded perspective is the much bigger problem. Minorities have seen this same paradigm in the form of vehement racism. It’s unsettling to think that there could be millions of Black people who think like he does. Is there not a better way to maintain an air of civility while disagreeing?
Furthermore, the gross misunderstanding of science revealed and almost celebrated in Harvey’s comments is embarrassing. It is entirely possible to have a better grasp of evolution and the origin of the cosmos without compromising one’s Christianity, which makes Harvey’s comments about evolving from monkeys and a “gasturous ball” almost shameful. Another Black comedian, Katt Williams, echoed similar sentiments in his comedy special Kattpacalypse. His comments may have been made in jest, but with such role models in the Black community, is it any wonder so many cling to their misguided views of evolution and the cosmos as stubbornly as they do their faith?
I do not expect Harvey, Williams, or anyone else to denounce their faith, but people should at least get the facts right before publicly admonishing scientific theories. Our ancestors bravely gave their lives so we can enjoy the privilege of learning; they do no good to themselves, our ancestors, or our community by remaining willfully ignorant.
It almost seems as though religion was so infused into the DNA of Blacks upon our forced introduction to the Americas that being Black or African American even today means that you are also a Christian. The paucity of openly Black atheists and agnostics in the United States is astonishing. Many of the Black nonbelievers that I have interviewed admitted, sometimes humorously, that I was one of the few Black atheists they knew—if not the only other atheist they knew.
For many Black nonbelievers, it can feel as though randomly encountering another Black nonbeliever is as statistically improbable as winning the state lottery. Some Black nonbelievers might know by name only a scant few other Black nonbelievers, if any at all. Roughly 13 percent of the U.S. population is Black, but Black atheists, agnostics, skeptics, secularists, freethinkers, antitheists, and nonbelievers are a minority within a minority, as they make up only 9 percent of the “nones” in this country, according to a 2014 Pew research study. A scant 2 percent of African American adults say they do not believe in God compared to 11 percent of White American adults.
I initially felt alone as a Black nonbeliever before I learned of other, more prominent Black nonbelievers, such as Frederick Douglas, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Carter G. Woodson, Lorraine Hansberry, W. E. B. DuBois, James Farmer, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Dr. Anthony Pinn, and many others. To know that such influential Black intellectuals, activists, and artists are not afraid to consciously remove themselves from the tradition of religion is comforting.
Black academics such as Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Dr. Yosef-Ben Jochannan, Hubert Harrison, and John G. Jackson were my Black Four Horsemen counterpart to the White Four Horsemen. These Black scholars of the early twentieth century studied African history, the origins of Christianity created from Egyptian culture, and the Christ myth. Reading some of the works of these gentlemen gave me a more diverse perspective of Black people’s relationship with Christianity and Christianity’s relationship with African traditions. At times, I desperately wished a few of the more dogmatic believers I personally knew would read just a few of these literary works to help them break from the homogeneous thinking of the Christ-conditioned mind.
That said, I have never had the intention of deconverting anyone, as each person must go through their own path of discovery, but my hope is for other Black people to further their understanding of their religion and the God they profess to know.
Although Black nonbelievers are rare relative to the population, groups of nonbelievers do exist that are filled with people who look like me. Black Nonbelievers Inc. is one such organization. It has both an online presence and holds events in a handful of cities in the United States. While in the past Black atheists only saw White celebrities and entertainers openly discuss their own atheism, Black atheists are now able to point to well-known Black figures discussing their nonbelief. For example, UK-based gospel rapper Jahaziel renounced his Christian faith in December of 2015 and posted the following message on his Facebook page:
Now, after 20 years of being vocal about the positives of Christian faith, I would like to take some time to be equally vocal about the negatives I have found. i.e., Christianity and its controlling dictatorship, its historic blood trail, its plagiarized Bible stories, characters and concepts, the many human errors of the Bible and its contradictions, the brutal nature of its God, its involvement in the slave trade, the crusades, the inquisition, the witch hunts, its second-class view of women, its masculinization of God, its emasculation of men, its financial corruption . . . you get the drift.
Even closer to home for African American nonbelievers, NFL running back Arian Foster publicly came out in 2015 as an atheist. Foster, who was once silent about his beliefs out of fear of backlash from others who could have adversely affected his collegiate and professional football career, was inspired to come out by Bill Maher and the entertainment duo Penn and Teller. In an interview with the organization Openly Secular, he shared his experience growing up. Though raised by a Muslim father, Foster described his upbringing as freethinking. He admitted after studying a lot of other religions and belief systems he didn’t know if there was a god or not.
Foster shared his thoughts on faith in an ESPN article that same year. ”Everybody always says the same thing: You have to have faith,” he said. “That’s my whole thing: Faith isn’t enough for me. For people who are struggling with that, they’re nervous about telling their families or afraid of the backlash . . . man, don’t be afraid to be you. I was, for years.”
I applaud Foster for publicly coming out as an atheist. I can only imagine how challenging it must have been to play a sport culturally entrenched in our overly Christian country, especially in the Bible Belt (Tennessee and Texas) of all places. There are so many Black figures who are not religious, but who have not explicitly stated that they are nonbelievers, such as Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Rock, and Morgan Freeman. If in fact they are nonbelievers, they should be able to state their belief without it being a detriment to their careers.
Indeed, there are many White public figures who have come out as atheist with little damage to their careers, at least from an outsider’s perspective. Public figures such as Brad Pitt, Kevin Bacon, Paul Giamatti, Joaquin Phoenix, Daniel Radcliffe, James Cameron, Jack Nicholson, Bill Gates, Dave Matthews, and Rafael Nadal have been unencumbered in their careers despite their public admissions of their lack of faith. How many Black Christians would no longer support their favorite Black celebrity if they were to learn they do not believe in God?
For those who aren’t celebrities, the negative impact of coming out is very real and one that I did not fully understand until much later in life. While conducting my research, I was fortunate enough to schedule interviews with a few Black nonbelievers in New York. I took the bus there from North Carolina, which gave me plenty of time to prepare for the interviews and rest. The bus made a couple of stops within North Carolina before continuing on to our destination. At one of the stops, a Black woman and her two young daughters boarded the bus. The woman sat beside me and her two daughters sat in the two seats directly in front of us.
I was staring out the window when the woman initiated a casual conversation. She told me she was going to meet her husband, an attorney in Washington, DC, and assumed I was going to Howard University’s homecoming. I shared with her that I was researching the phenomenon of religion and nonbelief, specifically in the Black community. She was intrigued by the provocative topic.
We continued talking about my research, religion, and other subjects, and she finally asked the question that almost always comes up in every conversation between newly acquainted Black people.
“Which church do you and your wife attend?”
I replied, “We don’t attend any church.”
“Oh, why not?”
“Well, we don’t believe in God.”
Her jaw immediately dropped, her eyes widened, and she slowly leaned away from me as if I had confessed to her I was a convicted felon for a triple homicide. Her ghastly gaze was similar to the one I had given all those years ago when my coworker, Ken, casually confessed his atheism. She expressed her astonishment at meeting a Black person who doesn’t believe in any god at all. She told me of the Jews’ and Muslims’ adherence to the wrong god, but at least they had a god, as if it was sort of a consolation prize. We didn’t argue or even debate; she simply stated her point of view and I stated mine before we moved back to other topics. We exchanged information and she asked that I keep her updated on my work.
This is the type of civil discourse I would hope that more believers and nonbelievers could have with each other, especially in the Black community. This is the sort of conversation that would have never taken place had she taken Steve Harvey’s sage advice. Not a conversation to prove who’s right, but a conversation that seeks understanding, thereby bringing us closer together as a diverse community.
This essay is excerpted from Emancipation of a Black Atheist, which is available for purchase at these paid links: Amazon, Bookshop, and Pitchstone.
D.K. Evans, PhD, is a consultant in North Carolina.