A guest will talk about an alternative to religion, and good works as salvation - for societal ills.
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published February 22, 2004
Religion has played a significant role in the lives of African-Americans, from slavery to civil rights to present day politics.
Norm R. Allen Jr., an avowed atheist and executive director of African Americans for Humanism, is willing to acknowledge that much.
But while conceding that belief in a supernatural being has produced some good in the lives of black Americans, Allen disparages its overall value and views a belief in God as so much mumbo-jumbo.
"Many African-Americans have been engulfed by religious irrationality, conned by self-serving faith healers and swayed by dogmatic revisionist historians," he wrote several years ago at the launch of a newsletter for African-American humanists.
Allen, 46, is in town this weekend for a conference, "Skepticism and Secular Humanism: Our Affirmative Life Stance," organized by the almost 2-year-old Center for Inquiry Florida, which has its office in Madeira Beach. The Pittsburgh native is one of the speakers at the conference that will also feature his boss, Paul Kurtz, founder of the Council for Secular Humanism in Amherst, N.Y., and author and columnist Susan Jacoby.
Like Allen, Kurtz acknowledged the role of religion in the struggle for civil rights, but said in the long run humanists believe that "the only way to ameliorate the human condition is to overcome poverty and disease and to achieve the good life by human efforts."
That was the message Allen, deputy editor of the council's Free Inquiry Magazine, planned to bring to Tampa this weekend, speaking about humanism as a positive alternative to religion for African-Americans and about using its ideals to fight AIDS, alcohol and drug addiction. On Friday he joined other humanists at a meeting to discuss plans to spread their gospel in the United States, the Caribbean and Africa.
But increasing the number of black humanists in America could prove an uphill task.
"We are a people who believe in the power of the transcendent," said Alton B. Pollard III, director of black church studies and associate professor of religion and culture at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.
Pollard added that research suggests that African-Americans go to houses of worship more often than other Americans.
"It's a recognition on the part of the African-American community that they are constantly in need of assistance in negotiating a very torturous society. We need all the help we can get. Clearly the role of religion in the heritage of African-Americans has been crucial and I would even say, central to sustaining of the community," Pollard said during a telephone interview.
It's been so from the beginning of blacks' history in America, he said.
"It was the center of worship and the center of commerce and recreation, industry, education. It was our legal forum. It was where we developed our sense of morality. It was everything for us. Because society was so hostile to us, it was, as the song goes, "A shelter in a time of storm,"' he said, quoting a Negro spiritual.
Even so, Pollard believes humanist ideals have a place in the African-American community.
"Any perspective, any religion that seeks to affirm the humanity of others and ourselves is not alien," he said.
One aspect Allen's job as head of African Americans for Humanism is to make humanist ideas, whose adherents generally are upper-class whites, more accessible to nonwhites. The group has come out strongly against faith healing, which Allen said attracts "large numbers of black people."
"Our organization did a very good examination of faith healers back in the 1980s" and found widespread deception, he said.
"We felt that we had to come out with an uncompromising stand."
Allen, who has written several books, including his most recent, the Black Humanist Experience, pointed to passages in the New Testament, such as in Ephesians, chapter 6, and Luke, chapter 12, that had been used to justify slavery.
"Coming up to this day, you still have a lot of very serious problems in organized religion," he said.
Pollard does not "dramatically disagree" with Allen's conclusions.
"Oftentimes," the Emory University professor said, "religion has prevented us from critical thinking."
White religious institutions urged African-Americans "to slow down and not create waves, because Jesus is very genteel, patient," Pollard said.
Also participating in the Tampa conference this weekend are Ghanaian Kwasi Wiredu, a philosophy professor at the University of South Florida, and Elayne Jones, a humanist organizer and musician from Barbados who now lives in New York City.
Wiredu planned to give a semi-autobiographical talk about skepticism in African culture. During an interview, he explained that though many Ghanaians converted to Christianity under colonialism, others retained traditional beliefs and still others, like himself, have chosen to be secular.
"It can be very, very misleading to speak of African religions," he said.
"In Ghana, it is not an institutional religion. They do believe in a kind of supreme being. There are no systems of worship. ... It is very personal and also pragmatic and very utilitarian. The role of religion in African life is very, very small."
Wiredu, who was brought up a Presbyterian, but abandoned all belief in God in high school, emphasized that faith should be rooted in rational thinking.
"I do not mind at all if people believe in God for good reasons," he said, "but you find that many Christians want to convert you to their beliefs, but they don't give you any reason."
