AHC: More secular African-Americans

Alkahest

Banned
Now, as a Swede who's never set foot on the North American continent I may be talking out of my arse, but as far as I know both statistics (a few seconds on Google gave me this) and the common stereotype say that African-Americans tend to be more religious than the (US) American population in general.

What would be required for the opposite to be true, a US where black people tend to be more atheistic/agnostic/apatheistic than other ethnic groups? (I put this in After 1900 because I would prefer a post-1900 POD, but earlier ones are acceptable too.)
 
Its not a stereotype - African Americans are stastically the most religious sub-group in American Society. Religiosity is strongly negatively correlated with socioeconomic status, so it would seem plausible (not certain, of course, but plausible) that any change that would have improved the socioeconomic status of African Americans in the long term would correspondinly reduce the religiosity of the sub-group. Earlier (true) civil rights seems to me the best option.
 
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As a Texan steeped in Southern culture, removing the religious element from society is like removing oxygen from the atmosphere but let me work with you on that OP. When are you looking for this to happen? Before 1900, so unlikely it's ASB.

Churches were the only social organization that freed slaves had of their own. Look into how the blacks had to split off from the dominant churches to have their own churches in the 1800's.
Toward the 1920s Harlem Renaissance you started seeing a lot of intellectuals questioning a lot of eternal verities, flirting with socialism and so forth. How influential they were in their own community and the community at large is a matter for historians, but AFAIC, not nearly enough to move African-Americans away from churches until at least the 1940's.

Also, remember the key motivators for the civil rights movement IOTL were religious leaders MLK and Malcolm X, not sponsored by any political party.
Socialists and Communists tried to do that but were so marginalized that they were largely irrelevant.

Keep in mind what made your own society secularized- one official church that everyone nods to but doesn't take too seriously because y'all are well-educated, comfortable folks.
Socialism's not a dirty word, it's the motivating factor of your society to where it becomes common sense to have a welfare state and secular society.
Blacks have gotten more comfortable and better-educated, but not to the point a plurality could be affluent college-grads in gated communities to not need churches and the sense of community they provide so much to deal with a tough life. We could bandy about whether it's a life vest or a straightjacket.
James Baldwin is very enlightening about that internal struggle as a black intellectual.
Once African-Americans do become more comfortable and well-educated, you'll see a lot more secularization is all I'm saying.
 

Alkahest

Banned
Thanks for your replies! Yes, socioeconomic status matters, but there are enough exceptions to poor = religious and rich = secular that a different development seems possible. What if people like Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes had more prominent positions as African-American thinkers in the early 20th century? Both were, as far as I know, non-believers. Zora Neale Hurston was also a bit of a proto-libertarian. An amusing thought: What if she had become an early Ayn Rand-like writer and philosopher, making *Objectivism a "black" philosophy? Atlas Shrugged off the rather literal chains of slavery...

In addition to that, couldn't Christianity be considered another method of controlling the African slaves? If Christianity was seen as a "slaver religion", could atheism become more popular among the descendants of slaves? Religions like Vodoun and Islam have been popular IOTL, but Vodoun has borrowed many elements from Christianity and the Islamic world is frankly not known for its kind treatment of Africans, either.

And of course, we always have communism. Can't go wrong with communism.
 
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More secular afican-Americans.

Well Voudon would be around the Lousianna area. The other areas of the south and Applachia would be hoodoo. Their are differences.
 

Alkahest

Banned
I thought Vodoun was the religion and hoodoo was the folk magic, but I have to admit that I'm not all that familiar with North American syncretic religions.
 
Just adding a little bit to the roux here

Believe me, there's been a lot of debate about Christianity and its role in slavery and its aftermath.
I mentioned the black churches that split off from the Methodists and Baptists to have their own churches they led and felt comfortable attending b/c the white leadership either endorsed or excused slavery and/or excluded black pastors from leadership positions in the wider church hierarchies.

I mentioned the contrast between Sweden's national church vs the USA's motley assortment of locally-led churches that fractured along doctrinal and regional differences preventing much of a national religious consensus folks could accept or reject until the 1960's for both whites and blacks.

What this means is that secularism tends to flourish when the religious dogma has become less of a passionate issue. In America, we got close, to being as secular as Europeans but ever since the 1970's, there's been a backlash and now two generations later, we're drifting back to a more secular consensus.

The passionately religious have always been a minority, but they intimidate a lot of the casually religious to unreligious folks into treading carefully around them here.
How secure the secular population feels about telling the religious to step off depends on how secure they feel about things in general and by and large I'd say we're a rather anxious lot here in the States. We know the status quo is broken but don't dare try anything else b/c no other alternative really is acceptable.

Back to the OP, explicit socialism here in the States has been a non-starter since the 1920's. We'll try something packaged as a liberal social welfare program as a line item issue but not as part of a broader social movement.

I'm with you about the Harlem Renaissance figures, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Thurston et al. They were cool folks with neat ideas and dreams. However, their ideas and politics and lifestyles were so far outside what the average person's concerns were that their example didn't translate to much cultural or social impact.
We Americans, whatever color we are, collectively don't embrace intellectuals of any stripe here in the States. It sucks but there it is.

For African-Americans to be weaned from churches, you have to have a lot more secular organizations involved and involving them. Eleanor Roosevelt tried to make New Deal programs address black poverty, illiteracy, and other social ills as well as what devastated the general population.

That was social engineering that Dixiecrats weren't going to tolerate so it didn't even get beyond the talking stage. If it did, say Huey Long and other progressive Southerners include blacks as part of their war on poverty, then you could see a secularizing trend from the Depression on.

Ending segregation wasn't easy or simple. As long as African-Americans were hyphenated Americans, seen by whites as subhumans, enemy aliens, or unfortunates marooned on a hostile shore, it was difficult for African-Americans to trust or embrace something or somebody outside of their community. Of course, it was a social absurdity and a crime that blighted millions of lives for centuries. In many ways, the effects linger.
 
Well, I agree with you on the fragmentation being a rather good thing for religion among African-Americans, but I must remind you that practical secularism wasn't invented in the Seventies. IIRC the pre-independence colonies had even lower rates of church attendance than today, and was only being raised by the beginnings of the Great Awakening.
 
@ Francisco Cojuanco:
Bravo! You make a splendid point- the US did have a very secular beginning, but IMO and as you've noted, it got lost in all the social kerfuffle of the early 1800's and the Second Great Awakening (what an ironic phrase) in the 1830's and 40's.

However, I was trying to stay in relatively recent times to illustrate current social trends as to why American blacks have stayed religious in greater numbers and what might shift cultural attitudes and behaviors in a more secular direction.
 
@ Francisco Cojuanco:
Bravo! You make a splendid point- the US did have a very secular beginning, but IMO and as you've noted, it got lost in all the social kerfuffle of the early 1800's and the Second Great Awakening (what an ironic phrase) in the 1830's and 40's.

However, I was trying to stay in relatively recent times to illustrate current social trends as to why American blacks have stayed religious in greater numbers and what might shift cultural attitudes and behaviors in a more secular direction.

I'm just making the point that attitudes and practice towards religion in America tend to undulate...
 
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