Source: Religion News Service
WASHINGTON, May 2010: Jamila Bey and other black atheists, agnostics and secularists are struggling to openly affirm their secular viewpoints in a community that’s historically heralded as one of America’s most religious. At the first African Americans for Humanism conference recently hosted by the non-profit Center for Inquiry, about 50 people gathered to discuss the ins and outs of navigating their dual identities as blacks and followers of the non-religious philosophy known as humanism. “You renounce your blackness,” said Bey. “You almost denigrate your heritage and history of the people if you claim atheism.”
A 2009 study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that African-Americans were more religious on a variety of measures than the U.S. population as a whole, with 87 percent of African-Americans describing themselves as belonging to one religious group or another. Nearly eight in 10 African-Americans said religion is very important in their lives, compared with 56 percent of the general U.S. adult population.
The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey found that those who claimed “no religion” — popularly known as the “nones” — were the only demographic group that grew in every state within the last 18 years, according to researchers at Trinity College.