The Ebony Exodus Project: Why Some Black Women Are Walking Out on Religion—and Others Should Too

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ON RELIGION IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY

Not Forsaking the Assembling of Ourselves Together.

—Hebrews 10:25

Drive through any black neighborhood and you are guaranteed to see churches on every corner. You will see signs advertising Christian daycares, Christian beauty salons, and Christian restaurants. Scripture verses pop up in some of the most unlikely places—like on restaurant signs and school yards. Crosses are everywhere.

Statistical studies bear this out. According to the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, 86 percent of black people identify with some Christian denomination.The level of religiosity in the black community is also high, especially among black women. The 2008 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reports that more than eight in ten black women (84 percent) say religion is very important to them and that roughly six in ten (59 percent) say they attend religious services at least once a week.¹

Black people love their religion even when they do not go to church. I used to be a street evangelist who went to some of the toughest neighborhoods in the cities in which I lived. It was not unusual to be invited into a home to talk and to find myself sitting beside people smoking marijuana, admitting that they did not go to church as much as they should. In one instance, a person with whom I was speaking pointed to a large heirloom Bible that lay out on the coffee table opened to the 23rd Psalm: The lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. . .

A lot of observers attribute the pervasiveness of this level of religiosty in the black community to slavery. And truthfully a comprehensive discussion of black religiosity would not be complete without exploring this history. It is widely accepted that religion has, at various times and in some instances, been used as a tool to manipulate and control. Indeed, the Black Church began under duress, on pain of death and eternal damnation. But some black people have gone so far as to profess their gratitude for slavery because it introduced their ancestors to Jesus and paved the way for their own salvation. Without slavery, the thinking goes, they would have been born into a pagan tribe and doomed to spend all eternity in hell, even though they never would have even heard of Jesus. Of course, this line of reasoning is extremely faulty for a number of reasons (not to mention indicative of a cruel deity), not least of which because today many African countries are among the most Christian in the world.

Since slave masters told slaves how good their god was, is it any surprise that slaves, a lot of whom believed in the existence of many gods and spirits, would want to see if the slave masters' god would help them, too? The slaves' commitment to their new religion further solidified as the abolitionist movement got under way, when many religious leaders joined the fight. After all, it was their god, the god of Moses, who would lead them out of captivity into Canaan Land. Unfortunately, the slaves had forgotten, after decades of indoctrination and biblical censoring, that it was their new god who had enslaved them in the first place, the same way that Yahweh had allowed the enslavement of the Jews in Egypt. As Lincoln and Mamiya write, The black church has often experienced difficulty in conceptualizing or knowing itself except as an amorphous, lusterless detail on some larger canvas devoted to other interests. In consequence the black church has often found itself repeating history it had already experienced, and relearning lessons it had long since forgotten.²

What people do not realize—including most in the black community—is that the abolitionist movement was largely initiated and supported by freethinkers. Sojourner Truth, for example, was relatively more freethinking than many know. Frederick Douglass was an atheist who was very vocal about his disdain for religion: I would say welcome infidelity! Welcome atheism! Welcome anything! in preference to the gospel as preached by those divines [i.e., clergy who defend slavery]! They convert the very name of religion into a barbarous cruelty.³

The same is true for the Civil Rights Movement. Many people do not know the influential role black nonbelievers played in it. Although black religious leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. are often credited with the success of this movement, history has written out freethinkers and atheists like James Forman, A. Philip Randolph, James Baldwin, and Lorraine Hansberry. Often not remembered too is that much of the opposition to the movement in white America came from church folk who found support for their hatred in the Bible. In their opinions—and according to the Bible itself—it was okay for some people to be treated like secondclass citizens. The Bible plainly says that government has been ordained by God (Romans 13:1). Indeed, leaders of the time pointed to the Bible as validation for their racist laws.

Regardless, the presence and authority of religion in the lives of black Americans has been so strong that it has helped make the modern Black Church the inescapable, omnipresent, all-powerful, infallible institution that it is today. Why is this? Why do African-Americans insist on hanging on to their religion and their god even in the times when they clearly are not serving him and when he clearly is not delivering them?

The African-American version of Christianity tends to be significantly more fear inducing than other brands of Christianity. One can expect the average sermon or church service in a black church to make some reference to hell: why hell is such a scary place, what kinds of people are going to hell, and how to avoid hell. Black children are taught from an early age that dark, scary demons and devils are relentlessly after their very souls and that they must always be sin free lest they die and end up in hell! I remember being a young child and listening to some uncles discuss the existence of hell hounds—demonic dogs that can be dispatched by Satan at any time to terrify, torture, and fetch a sinner anywhere in the world. The existence of the hell hounds was, to my uncles, reason enough to stay prayed up. You cannot imagine the number of terrified, sleepless nights I had, afraid that a hell hound would snatch me out of my bed and drag me to hell if I did not pray without ceasing.

Besides directly teaching about heaven and hell, the Black Church focuses on several other favored topics that are intimately and uniquely tied to one's salvation in a way that is not as obvious in nonblack churches. Sex and sexuality, for example, is one such topic. Because the Black Church rigidly tries to impose many prohibitions on its members and because humans love sex, black leaders have to constantly remind congregants that sex is only for married men and women. Anything outside of that is an abomination that will, without a doubt, lead to eternal burning in the lake of fire.

Submission is another favorite topic. Congregants must submit to their leaders (Hebrews 13:17). Wives must submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-23). Children must submit to their parents (Colossians 3:20). And everyone must submit to Jesus (Ephesians 5:23-24), who is, ironically, submitted to god, who is himself. There is a whole chain of command that must be followed if one does not want to end up in hell. Submission demands obedience and unquestioning loyalty, which creates a breeding ground for abuse of power. Since urban black community and religiosity are almost incestuously intertwined, faith-based leaders are provided with an especially wide political berth and moral license, writes Hutchinson.⁴

Countless religious adherents around the world and throughout time have been raped, beaten, stolen from, and killed, all while being told they must not complain because they must submit—and so it is in the Black Church. Church officials should be by very definition above worldly criticism and reproach because of their Christian altruism. In his critique of the unimpeachable status of the religious, Frederick Douglass noted, 'To be an infidel no more proves a man to be selfish, mean and wicked than to be evangelical proves him to be honest, just and humane.'⁵ And since the Bible says that it is the church leaders who pray for the souls of the members, it becomes imperative that the members be in total submission at all times or risk their eternal soul's salvation.

An additional theme found in the Black Church is the concept of demonic possession. Although an obsession with demonic possession certainly exists in other cultures and Christian denominations, its presence in and impact on the Black Church is unique. Any and everything can lead to a person being possessed or affected by demons—whether TV, music, friends, food, activities, thoughts, or jobs. They are all potential doorways for demons to be introduced into a person's life. And how would a woman know if she had a demon in her life? Signs include depression, anxiety, sadness, poverty, failed relationships, misfortunes, sickness, death, lost objects, mood swings, lack of faith, failures, disappointments, etc. The list could go on forever. Depending on whom you talk to, if you are not rich, healthy, and happy, you probably have at least one demon affecting your life in some way. So, even though she may be struggling with a host of real-life problems, a black woman must also grapple with the idea that she has demons in her life, which in turn is indicative of the presence of sin in her life. This worry just creates more emotional turmoil.

Other favorite topics include love, faith, gifts and fruit of the spirit, money, and wealth. However, the sad truth is that even the Black Church's seemingly positive and upbeat teachings come attached with a lot of conditions and requirements that are simply unobtainable. The constantly dangling carrot of promises of riches and happiness and salvation causes people to obsessively try to fulfill the requirements, only to fail miserably. And repeated failure is what leads to much heartache and pain.

So, why is there not more conversation in the black community about the role of the church? Why is there not more analysis of the good, the bad, and the ugly? Perhaps some people simply have not made any connections between obvious life problems and the church. Some do not want to think about it while others simply have not thought about it. Some people may be completely apathetic, likely owing to their own nominal belief system. We also know that some people are judgmental from a distance, unable or unwilling to openly criticize the church. The age-old association of religiosity with morality is particularly ironclad in African American communities. Because religiosity is evidence of 'authentic' blackness, it is difficult for black non-theists to publicly criticize the Black Church's special trifecta of religious dogma, greed, and hubris.⁶

One of the biggest reasons I think that there has not been more conversation about this is that believers are afraid of the sin involved in entertaining such thoughts. Cue the Ebony Exodus Project and this book. While I fully support one's right to think and believe whatever one wants, I find it startling that a large number of black people not only do not think critically about religion, but they also do not even want to think critically about it. There seems to be no desire whatsoever to think critically about something that is so intimately intertwined in their lives, even for nominal