The Heresy Club is great value, as you probably know.
Siana Bangura has a great post on “Black Atheism and why it’s something to talk about.”
For me, the biggest battle I face is dealing with the confusion and pity that my lack of belief often stirs in some. I remember an episode at school one lunchtime when I was surrounded by ‘The God Squad’ who chanted and prayed *AT* me with their Bibles and Rosary Beads. They said my ‘soul’ needed ‘saving’ and that I was on a one-way trip to hell and that lifelong bunsen burner if I didn’t ‘repent’. It was truly terrifying and also extremely laughable all at once. They simply didn’t understand me. I didn’t fit into their box, their little world, their narrow world view. They told me I was trying to be ‘white’. I was often called a ‘coconut’, or a ‘milkyway’ or an ‘Oreo’ if the mood was right. You know, black on the outside and white on the inside? I didn’t see it as bullying, and I don’t think it was. It was a terrifyingly real demonstration of the power of religion though. These girls quite often behaved in Un-Christian ways (although there was a wave of “Born Again” business just before we finished year eleven) and I didn’t quite understand why they felt they had the right to preach at me. But then again, the hypocrisy of religious people is something I have always known. The type of black community I was surrounded by was the type that accepts crooks, cons, thugs, woman beaters, drug dealers, absent fathers, womanizers and adulterers, but never gays and never non-believers. The latter did not exist.
She has a lot to say.