Some South LA churches support DOMA, Prop 8 rulings



A member of L.A.’s premier Black gay men’s wellness organization “In the Meantime” poses at the X-Homophobia campaign for National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day in February 2013.

 

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Christian Rap: Swag meets salvation



Everyone is familiar with the traditional sounds of Sunday morning. The sound of choir voices and organ riffs coming together to deliver the gospel, but USC student Makiah Green gets her gospel in a more contemporary form.

Makiah Green

Makiah Green believes Christian rap should not be alternative music but the standard. (Photo by Maria Eubanks)

“Oh man, I went to a church, Pastor for Christ Movement, filled with young people, and in service, they would play these really cool rap songs. And so I would just start asking who is this, who is this, who is this,” said Green. “They had a DJ that would play during service, and I went up to him and he put a playlist on a flash drive. And that was the beginnings.” [Read more…]

More African-Americans leaving religious faiths



Black Skeptics of Los Angeles

Members of the Black Skeptics of Los Angeles

African-Americans are significantly more religious compared to the rest of the U.S. population, but a growing community of black atheists, like the Black Skeptics of Los Angeles, are steadily increasing each year.

The American Religious Identification Survey of 2008 found that from 1990 to 2008 the number of blacks without any religious affiliation nearly doubled from 6 to 11 percent. Among Americans, that number also jumped to 15 percent from 8 percent in 1990.

“There have always been African-American free thinkers, humanists, agnostics and atheists who have really foregrounded the connection between eschewing religion and the liberation struggle, particularly as it pertains to women and the LGBT community,” said Sikivu Hutchinson, founder of Black Skeptics of Los Angeles.

Hutchinson is part of a national advertising campaign that was launched this year by the African-Americans for Humanism. Her photo was featured next to writer Zora Neale Hurston on a roadside billboard in Los Angeles with the phrase, “Doubts about religion? You’re one of many.”

“If you have an ethos that says black women should be self-sacrificing, should not question male authority and patriarchy…those kinds of things need to be questioned. In my mind, it does emanate from this biblical context,” said Hutchinson.

Nicome Taylor, member of Black Skeptics of Los Angeles, joined the group in September and has seen its membership grow.

Taylor said she recently started a Meet Up group in January from the website meetup.com, and it has now blossomed into 30 members.

“I just feel good about meeting other people that thought like me. I mean kind of going through the whole process makes you feel a little crazy, a little bad after being indoctrinated with [religion] for a while,” said Taylor, who was raised in the church and believed God.

The Inglewood native said she always questioned her faith. It was after she came into contact with people who challenged her beliefs that she started on a quest for more knowledge.

“I had no idea, previously, who wrote the Bible. Even attending bible studies in church, they don’t teach you from a very objective standpoint,” said Taylor.

Through her research, she began to see falsities in the Bible and disagreed with passages on slavery and genocide.

“Without pointing the finger, [the church] is doing it indirectly by saying everyone else is wrong, and Jesus is the only way. There’s other people in the world that are brought up with their belief system as well so what makes us more right than them,” said Taylor.

Before coming out openly about her disbelief, Taylor discussed it with her family and friends. Growing up in a religious family, she said it was difficult for her family to accept the news. Some relatives even stopped talking to her.

“Leaving the faith can be difficult for anybody,” said Taylor. “In the black community, a lot of them don’t want to do that…it’s devastating for some people because it’s all they know,” said Taylor.

Life is a little bit easier for her now because she said her way of thinking has been freed. Yet, Taylor said she still faces challenges because atheists tend to be demonized within the church and among religious groups.

This can be attributed to the overwhelming number of blacks who claim to be religious.

According to figures from the Pew Research Center’s Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 87 percent of African-Americans belong to a religious group, and nearly eight in ten or 79 percent of African-Americans say religion is very important to them compared with 56 percent of adults in the United States.

Out of those figures, 59 percent of African-Americans attend historically black churches like the National Baptist Convention and the American Methodist Episcopal Church.

Pew’s research also found that historically black Protestant groups were among the most religiously observant based on several factors such as frequency of prayers and church attendance.

Jimmy Thompson said his first experience at church was as a child on Easter Sunday. He said he was in church for seven hours and after that day he never went back to church.

“I don’t talk about [religion] with people because I know people hold their beliefs very true to their heart, and it could turn into a vicious conversation because you challenge their belief,” said Thompson.

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He said religion was never discussed in his family and the only time they went to church was on holidays like Easter and Christmas.

For Daniel Myatt, a self-proclaimed skeptic who revealed he is one sermon away from being a minister had a very different upbringing.

“To say I embraced religion or the faith would be an understatement. It was just a part of me from my existence as far back as I remember,” said Myatt.

Myatt said he was raised in Chicago in a neighborhood where every corner had a Baptist church. His sisters are missionaries and their husbands are ministers.

Growing up, Myatt said his family would pray every Wednesday and teach them regular bible studies and lessons.

“I remember saying in my Sunday School class that I wanted to be a scientist so I can really prove God,” said Myatt.

He remembers that one of the first things he did after moving to California was watch Martin Scorsese’s film “The Last Temptation of Christ,” a film that his minister banned the congregation from watching. After the film, he worried God would carry out retribution on him.

“If I drive back to my city and my car stops my first thought would be God is punishing me for something I did wrong,” said Myatt.

Yet, living in California made him think in a different way. He said it was the first time he saw black people who did not go to church, which was unheard of in Chicago.

“My parents used to say Sunday morning you have to be in church, anybody’s church,” said Myatt.

He began to ask questions like why God’s word must be filtered through a pastor who is just a man, and why his marriage had to first be approved by a pastor who was divorced several times.

According to Myatt, it has been difficult for him to depart from his religious background and become comfortable with being a skeptic. The rest of his family knows he does not go to church or believe in God, but his father still does not know.

“It’s a revolutionary act to say I’m not going to church or I’m not a believer. I think a lot of people play the game and stay in it…because it’s socially safer to do so…culturally it’s expected,” said Myatt.

Religion and black churches play a pivotal role in the black community. Their prominence has become so well-known that it is even a frequent conversation piece in films like those by Tyler Perry. Even the preaching style of black pastors is caricatured in popular culture.

Javon Johnson, a postdoctoral teaching fellow at the University of Southern California’s Department of American Studies and Ethnicity, pointed out that the black church has played a historically vital role.

“On the one hand Christianity was certainly used to justify slavery, but on the other hand Christianity was also used to sort of move away…from slavery. It’s a double edge sword…but I also think it allowed political access that was denied by legitimate means,” said Johnson.

He attributes the possible growth of black skeptics to a changing political landscape. The way blacks were fighting for equality 100 years ago is drastically different than now, and it may also have something to do with the ebb and flow of history.

“Leaving the black church could be seen as deviant by many, but I think history has shown us that…what constitutes deviant changes over time depends on the cultural milieu at the particular moment,” said Johnson. “If history is indicating that it’s more and more OK for folks to speak out against the church, even in this god fearing country it’s safe to say that, it might become more pronounced over time.”

Pastor Seth Pickens of Zion Hill Baptist Church said he has noticed people moving away from the church but has seen more individuals claim that they are spiritual instead of religious.

“They’re very turned off by the church. Some of the politics and some of the scandals and everything that happens in the church, it turns people off,” said Pickens.

He said it should be a concern for pastors because it tells them what they are doing wrong. In order to remedy the situation, Pickens proposes that the core teachings of Christ, like love and self-control, should be taught.

In the three years he has been a pastor at Zion Hill, the congregation has grown from 87 members to over a couple hundred. He said the favorite part of his job is making the Bible more understandable to his congregation.

In February, Pickens and members of the Black Skeptics group held a roundtable at the church to discuss African-American humanism.

According to Pickens, many Christians are unwilling to engage with atheists in a civil way and have a dialogue, but the event revealed that many of them actually share one belief and that was building up the community.

“Whether you believe in God, whether you confess Christ or not if you see someone hungry you should feed them and many of the black atheists feel the same way. So, I don’t see why we can’t work together,” said Pickens.

REVIEW: ‘Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars’



imageBy Don R Barbera, blackskeptics.blogspot.com

Sometimes, preaching to the choir is necessary to make it aware they may be singing in the wrong key, from the wrong hymnal and in the wrong church. Black atheist author Siviku Hutchison removes the ifs, ands and buts from that thought by demonstrating that the right religion is often wrong for the black community.

Her new book “Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars,” dissects the complex relationship between religion and reality as it relates to the black community. A PhD who teaches in South Los Angeles where life can be cheap, she understands the mean streets and even more so, she sees a clear dichotomy in race and religion where actual behavior often falls far from the tree of belief.

This book is filled with relevant information regarding Christianity and its magnetic relationship with the African American community, as well as explanations of the segmentation of nonwhites, including Latinos, Asians and Native Americans. Although written in a scholarly fashion, the book is accessible, relevant and straightforward. If understanding the nature of genderphilia, racisms role in morality and the coded world political pandering, this book is for you.

The author presents a view few African Americans ever think about and if they did, it would be dismissed out of hand because it comes from an atheist, a black female nonbeliever unafraid to speak openly of her humanistic views and the problems she sees in Christianity’s role in disabling the black community. The feminist author wastes no time in getting to the issues facing the black community when it comes to Christian religion and its affect on nearly every resident.

Some might wish to argue the point, but starting with the black community, the author presents an accurate portrayal of African America’s overwhelming attachment to Christianity. The author demonstrates how the patriarchal structure Christianity blocks the advancement and growth of women by using “holy” scripture to lock women into perennial second-class citizenship. Although the book acknowledges the historical beneficial aspects of the Christian church, it does not back away from tying today’s black church affiliation with the Evangelical Right and its obsession with homosexuality and abortion. Even though women are the backbone of most churches and the black church in particular, the author makes it clear that women of the church play a secondary role behind men by biblical decree, a position reinforced by the nearly all male hierarchy of most black churches. The book suggests that female independence is not possible under the sexist regime of the nearly all male clergy; implying that many of the female church supporters are unaware of the demotion.

From there the author presents a fair view of African American masculinity, how it is a product of the syncretism of male dominance and hierarchical religion inspired sexism all based on white supremacy and encouraged by the Bible. Ms. Hutchison also delves into the economics of Christian development by citing the construction of multi-million dollar religious complexes in the heart of urban squalor, citing the so-called “Prosperity Gospel” as an example of the materialism that is the modern church. The author connects the many ways the black church discourages many because of the constant conflict of reality, pastoral behavior and traditional morals, which seem negated by faith-based sexism.

Christianity and traditional morality fell by the wayside long ago according to current research, while nonbelief continues to grow. The author grabs this trend, introduces the reader to atheism and the black community, pointing out that atheists are considered outside the realm of blackness and is a white construct. However, the writer informs the reader of the long history of African American freethinkers and humanists who laid the groundwork for today’s growing ranks of nonbelievers in the black community. An old joke has it that there are 20 million black Baptist in the US and three atheists. It is no joking matter according to the writer as she points out not only the growing number of nonbelievers in the black community, but also the number of African American females contributing to this expansion.

A portion of the introduction to black female atheists contains the writers own story of how she came to atheism at an early age.

A significant chapter talking about prayer is revealing of the author’s thoughts on the value of what stirs legal battles in schools and government procedures. The writer sees prayer as little more than a convenient refuge from problems that remain after the prayer ends. The author ties prayer to doing nothing, while giving an individual the feeling they have done something. Ms. Hutchison debunks the idea by indicating that the number of unanswered prayers is often forgotten when coincidence provides a single example. The reader will find this chapter interesting as the author is relentless in showing that nothing fails like prayer.

Closing out the last three chapters, the writer explains the connection of race to traditional morals, indicating a connection with white supremacy, Christianity and the concept of morality. Once again, the writer goes to great lengths to be fair, and then points out the racist elements involved in the Euro-American concept of morality and its links with slavery and the slaughter of Native Americans. Taking the reader of a historical tour of the injustice sanctioned by Christianity, the author reveals the greasy gears of racism, religion and the dissolute excuses used to justify inhumanity to other human beings.

Humanity braces Ms. Hutchison’s resoluteness in dispelling myths about atheists and humanist, while offering humanism as a better way for the black community to move forward. The author also points out the need for atheist and humanist groups to work together in achieving people-based solutions and escaping the world of superstition for real progress.

Black church studies a changed South LA



Second Baptist in South Los Angeles, one of the oldest black churches in Southern California, commissioned a neighborhood report to figure out how it can expand its mission of social justice to a community that looks very different than its congregation.

“This church [has] become a transitional Hispanic community,” said Pastor William Epps.

In the last few decades, South Los Angeles has shifted from a predominately black community to a majority Latino community. Latinos make up 88 percent of a community where streets are named after civil rights icons like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Most people in the area are immigrant Latino, with African-Americans making up only 11 percent of the neighborhood.

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The stories of black and brown conflict, surfacing over cultural differences or perceived job competition, have often defined what this community has become.

Even the church has felt the challenges. It was once home to the civil rights movement on the West Coast. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke from the pulpit and the church helped fund legal briefs for the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of education, which paved the way for desegregation in schools.

“People used to walk to church,” said Epps. Now, most congregants commute to the church, often keeping it out-of-touch with the needs of the neighborhood.

Pastor Epps realized the difficulty continuing a social justice mission in a changed community when he took his job in 1987.

“I dubbed my years the ‘challenging years’ because it would be hard to maintain a viable congregation in a changing neighborhood,” said Epps, “and at the same time keep congregants excited about doing ministry that may not always benefit them personally.”

But as Second Baptist marks its 125th year in the community, the church is wondering how a congregation of commuters can spread its social justice ministry to a transformed neighborhood.

The church received a grant and commissioned USC’s Center for Immigrant Integration and Esperanza Community Housing to study the neighborhood, its needs and figure out ways the church might help.

“This is one of those neighborhoods where immigration is an issue, the environment is an issue and it all comes together, and it’s right there,” said Vanessa Carter, a researcher on the project.

The researchers looked at census data, environmental data, and surveyed more than 500 residents about living conditions in the area. The report, which was published earlier this fall, shows grim conditions in South Los Angeles.

The community is very poor, with families often living in overcrowded homes. The median household income in the Second Baptist neighborhood is $29,164, compared to the LA Metro figure at $54,993.

Heavy traffic from nearby freeways makes the area environmentally toxic. Residents are also mostly newcomers, often isolated from the rest of Los Angeles.

On average, residents are younger in this community compared to the rest of LA. They are also more mobile, only 7 percent of the people surveyed had lived in the community for more than 20 years. Most lived there ten years or less.

There are challenges to creating relationships with this community. Many don’t speak English and families often leave before reaching five years in the neighborhood. But the researchers on the project note similar experiences between the Black and Latino communities, where the church could build common ground.

“The way that incarceration affects the Black community and makes it hard to have a good paying job and pulls apart families, is the same way that deportation can affect a Latino family,” sais Carter. “They are different issues, but they have similar effects.”

While Pastor Epps finds the detailed statistics about the community revealing, the battles the neighborhood faces now, with poverty, poor housing and education, are not new to the church.

“The plight of Hispanics seeking full citizenship is similar to the plight of African Americans in the 60s. You can see a lot of the parallels,” said Epps.

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The report recommended ways the church could serve the community. The church owns property in the area and the report suggested the church could work with other community groups and find ways to utilize the property for childcare or affordable housing.

“Anybody who cares about making the society right, making the society a place where everyone can progress, regardless of their ethnicity or immigration status, has to worry about the unity of Blacks and Latinos as we move forward,” said Manuel Pastor, director of Center for Immigrant Integration.

Second Baptist hasn’t made any concrete plans on how they will use the data to expand their mission of social justice. But, those on the project say, understanding the new neighborhood is good place to start.

“I think that the church has the political will and the moral will to work with other groups of like mind and like mission so that we can we advance the cause and make this community better than what it is,” said Pastor Epps.

Timeline of the Second Baptist Church:

Graphs courtesy of University of Southern California’s Center for Immigrant Integration

OPINION: The Prosperity Gospel according to Eddie Long



imageSikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org and a senior fellow with the Institute for Humanist Studies. Become a fan of Blackfemlens on Facebook.

Who was it who said that it would be easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a filthy rich pastor with a $350,000 Bentley to get into the Kingdom of God? And how long will it be before the Lord, working mysteriously, delivers New Birth Missionary Church Bishop Eddie Long — Bentley ditched for a Pinto — sobbing Jimmy Swaggart cum Ted Haggard-style in a warm lather of repentance on cable TV?

Accused of sexually abusing young men in his congregation, arch homophobe and macho man mentor of boys Long would seem to be the devil’s latest casualty.

In a week in which “God” has been routinely invoked to immunize crooks from criminal investigation and social condemnation, the Long allegations are yet another shining example of the sexually, morally and fiscally corrupt business of organized religion.

In the scandal-plagued city of Bell, California an indicted City Council member/pastor trotted out his belief in God as a cover for alleged misconduct. In an investment fraud case reverberating through the Los Angeles Police Department, victims cited the “Christian” orientation of the suspects as the primary motivating factor for their trust. Arguing for clemency, supporters of Virginia Death Row inmate Teresa Lewis piously vouched for her Christian prison “conversion.”

Having learned zero from the global pedophile priest scourge, our stridently Judeo Christian culture still routinely uses the assignation man or woman “of God” to shut down debate or consideration of how religion and religious authority gives license to those who act immorally. Indeed, how many times have we heard that a certain person could not have committed ‘that there’ serial murder because he was a good man of God, a devout Christian and a churchgoer who could regurgitate scripture on demand? And how many times have predators and hardcore career criminals been given a figurative pass or viewed as above suspicion because they were churchgoing Christians doing the Lord’s (dirty) work? Conversely, how many times have we heard the caveat that a certain person could not have committed ‘that there’ serial murder because they were a humanist, atheist or agnostic?

imageThe ATL’s very own ringleader of the prosperity gospel, Long has blazed a trail as an anti-same sex marriage Christian soldier and self-proclaimed “spiritual daddy” to a nationwide army. After the death of Coretta Scott King in 2004, Earl Ofari Hutchinson notes that, “Long’s anti-gay phobia was so virulent that then NAACP president Julian Bond publicly declared he would not attend (her) funeral service at Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church.” A prominent supporter of George W. Bush and his anti-gay policies, Long and several other prosperity gospel predators were the subject of a 2007 federal probe on fiscal mismanagement of their tax exempt status. Launched by the U.S. Senate, the investigation was spearheaded by the Trinity Foundation, a nonprofit “religious media watchdog” dedicated to exposing fraud and financial improprieties within the billion-dollar megachurch industry.

imageLong’s empire of niche ministries, books, gospel shows and seminars powers a robber baron’s lifestyle of expensive cars, homes and private jets. One of these niche ministries involves spiritual counseling for young men and “delivering” men from homosexuality. According to a former New Birth parishioner, Long evoked themes of hyper-masculinity and required obeisance to himself as divinely ordained patriarch. The trespasses of Long and other good Christian evangelicals was scrutinized in Sarah Posner’s 2008 book God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters.

Yet while the sex abuse epidemic in the Catholic Church has received much coverage, similar epidemics in Protestant churches have remained underreported. Commenting on the 2008 Chris Brown/Rihanna abuse incident black feminist anti-violence activist Kevin Powell recounted how he’d been approached for advice by a young woman who had been sexually abused by her pastor since she was five years old. Similarly, a young woman of my acquaintance related that she had been repeatedly molested by her pastor after her parents had entrusted her in his care. Clearly, sexual abuse is an endemic social issue that is not peculiar to organized religion. However, the mindset of the religious sexual predator is markedly different from one operating in a secular context because of the presumption of righteous morals and a higher calling. Further, religious hierarchies (be they Muslim, Christian, Mormon, Orthodox Jewish, etc.) delineating masculine roles, responsibilities and privileges perpetuate a culture of patriarchal entitlement and heterosexist control.

The Bible’s sanction of violence against women (e.g., rape and forced marriage) provides theological justification for viewing and treating women like property. If women are deemed to be second class citizens in scripture, and consigned to helpmate roles in the church, why wouldn’t male clergy act with impunity when it comes to sex and power? And if the culture of compulsory heterosexuality demands that men hew to rigid gender norms, it stands to reason that some closeted gay clergy will abuse their power by sexually abusing young male parishioners. Indeed, the heterosexist cult of the exalted pastor is based on the belief that “real men” should be inscrutable in their exercise of power and authority. Thus, the religious sexual predator may rationalize his behavior as being “ordained” by God. God confers him with ultimate authority and moral license. “His” ways are part of a divine moral order that mere laypeople don’t have access to.

From the time African American children become socially aware, the dominant culture reinforces the heterosexist perception of male clergy’s invulnerability and “above the law” status. Preachers are revered as founts of knowledge, wisdom and “reason.” In middle to working class black communities the absence of formal religious training or education is no barrier to having the title “Rev” “Dr.” or even “Reverend Doctor” slapped in front of one’s name. Consequently, the strong preacher (father) figure is one of the most universally respected models of masculinity in African American communities. Available for counsel and succor to male and female parishioners, the “daddy” pastor’s biblically sanctioned faith pimping spiritual ministry translates into emotional manipulation, psychological control, and sexual exploitation.

In America being a macho man and a professional homophobe is big business, one that jeopardizes the lives and mental health and wellness of thousands of gays and lesbians. Regardless of whether the allegations against Long are true or not, his prosperity gospel of gay-bashing and robber baron profiteering at the expense of poor black people is another indictment of the moral injustice that happens on “God’s” watch.

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org and a senior fellow with the Institute for Humanist Studies. This article originally appeared here.