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Black atheists search for sense of belonging
At funerals, Warren Hughes always finds a seat in the back where, when the preaching and praying begins, he can slip out discreetly. He doesn't bow his head pretending to pray because he hasn't believed in prayer, or God, since he was 30 years old.
"If I stay there and bow my head, I am sanctioning what they are doing. I don't sanction it because I think it's wrong," said Hughes, who grew up in the Christian Science church. "I give no validity to mysticism at all."
Warren Hughes is 79, and until a year ago, he had never met anyone like himself: a black atheist. In the atheists groups he has joined, he was often the only black person.
It's been lonely, he said, but that is beginning to change. The number of blacks who identify as nonreligious increased from 6 percent in 1990 to 11 percent in 2008, according to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
"If I stay there and bow my head, I am sanctioning what they are doing. I don't sanction it because I think it's wrong," said Hughes, who grew up in the Christian Science church. "I give no validity to mysticism at all."
Warren Hughes is 79, and until a year ago, he had never met anyone like himself: a black atheist. In the atheists groups he has joined, he was often the only black person.
It's been lonely, he said, but that is beginning to change. The number of blacks who identify as nonreligious increased from 6 percent in 1990 to 11 percent in 2008, according to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2013-03-22/features/os-black-atheists-20130322_1_atheists-black-church-black-community
I will say there is a tendency of some people presuming if you're black that you're a churchgoer. My immediate and extended family at least locally weren't very religious. But more than a few times I remember raising a few eyebrows of relatives down South or some neighbors when they'd ask what church do I attend? And when said I we really don't go to church, getting a slightly shocked look, like they had never heard of such thing.
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