Black Secular Humanism and Its Significance for Contemporary Methodologies in Religious Studies

Abstract

Review| November 01 2023 Black Secular Humanism and Its Significance for Contemporary Methodologies in Religious Studies Black Freethinkers: A History of African American Secularism. By Christopher Cameron. Northwestern University Press, 2019. 256 pages. $99.95 hardcover; $34.95 softcover; ebook available.Emancipation of a Black Atheist. By D. K. Evans. Pitchstone Publishing, 2017. 176 pages. $14.95 softcover; ebook available.Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical. By Sikivu Hutchinson. Pitchstone Publishing, 2020. 135 pages. $14.95 softcover; ebook available.A Qualitative Study of Black Atheists: “Don’t Tell Me You’re One of Those!” By Daniel Swann. Lexington Books, 2020. 208 pages. $100.00 hardcover; ebook available. Roy Whitaker Roy Whitaker Roy Whitaker, San Diego State University dwhitaker@sdsu.edu Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar dwhitaker@sdsu.edu Nova Religio (2023) 27 (2): 101–110. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2023.27.2.101 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Roy Whitaker; Black Secular Humanism and Its Significance for Contemporary Methodologies in Religious Studies. Nova Religio 1 November 2023; 27 (2): 101–110. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2023.27.2.101 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentNova Religio Search Throughout the tragic and dreadful onslaught of Western colonialism causing the Atlantic slave trade, the Black Church has been—as Henry Louis Gates Jr. chronicles in both the book and the PBS series The Black Church (2021)—a primary source of strength and solace. But this option is not the only viable life-choice, as humanists like to say. D. K. Evans’ Emancipation of a Black Atheist, Christopher Cameron’s Black Freethinkers, Sikivu Hutchinson’s Humanists in the Hood, and Daniel Swann’s A Qualitative Study of Black Atheists offer compelling counternarratives of segments in the Black community negotiating (post)coloniality, religion, and race through the prism of secularity. A major contribution of the research by Evans, Cameron, Hutchinson, and Swann is their enrichment of a burgeoning academic identity subfield in religion: Black secular humanism. Black secular humanism consists of a growing body of epistemologies, discourses, ethics, and literature grounded in an African diaspora... You do not currently have access to this content.