Black Americans are the most religious non-religious group in the country.
In a new report from the Pew Research Center Among the growing “unaffiliated” segment in the United States, they stand out for their loyalty. Almost all black people do not believe in a higher power, and a third still believe in the God of the Bible. Almost none of them consider themselves atheists.
Even among those who no longer identify with any faith, they pray more, attend church more, and view religion as more important than any other unaffiliated demographic.
“Black people are much more connected to the black church than white people are to Christianity in general,” said sociologist Jason E. Shelton, professor and director of the Center for African American Studies at the University of Texas. in Arlington. “They are not qualitatively the same types of people. »
Although non-Blacks make up less than 10 percent of all the unaffiliated in America, their disaffiliation is particularly significant for a culture historically tied to church and faith. One in five Black Americans has no religious affiliation.
Black Americans are abandoning religion for the same reasons as others: they feel that the Church is not open to answering their questions and doubts; they have been hurt by bad experiences; they found a sense of community and identity elsewhere.
Additionally, there is a segment of Black Americans who have LEFT white evangelical churches and ministries due to the intense polarization around race and politics during the last years.
“They say, ‘I don’t want to be a part of this if this is Christianity and you’re dehumanizing me,'” said Lisa Fields, an apologist and founder of the Jude 3 Project ministry. “When Black people have been in white evangelical or multi-ethnic churches, I find that they use the language of ‘deconstruction’ a little more than Black people from the Black church.”
As more Americans deconstruct or abandon their religious affiliations, so do black Christians; the proportion of people who are not black has remained steady at 9% over the past decade, according to Pew polls.
Overall, however, blacks do not feel as negatively about religion or are as adamant about their disaffiliation as any other demographic group; In Pew’s findings, they stand out by double-digit margins on many questions.
A quarter of black people with no religion say they don’t need religion in their lives, compared to 41% of people with no religion overall. Thirty percent of blacks dislike religious organizations, compared to 47 percent of all non-blacks.
More than 80 percent of unaffiliated Black Americans believe in the spiritual world, the soul, and a higher power, and more than half still believe in heaven and hell. For this group, typical apologetics aimed at proving the existence of God is not necessary. They already agree.
“We are so connected to faith as a community, from our families to how many of us were raised,” Fields told CT. “It’s hard for us not to believe that there is a God, that He helps us navigate this world, and that He brought our people out of slavery. »
This sense of history and heritage of the black faith anchors many in their beliefs, though none can lose their connections to the church services, celebrations, and ministries that black churches continue to hold. While black people are four times more likely than white people to continue going to church, three-quarters of them have largely stopped attending services.
Research shows that religious disaffiliation—particularly for the “nothing in particular” group in which the vast majority of Black people are found—is correlated with a decline in community involvement and engagement. While this is true for all, Shelton fears this loss will have a disproportionate impact on Black America, which has relied so heavily on the Church.
“The Church has always been the vehicle that we as Black people have used to create community and solidarity,” he said. “It’s the church that holds (black society) together, so if no one walks away from it, what does that mean for the community? What does this mean for black music? What does this mean for black politics? And what does this mean for this country’s long-standing legacy of racial discrimination?
“If we, who are moving away from organized religion, are not here…to keep our nation on the path to progress and equality for all of us, then who will?
Shelton analyzes the implications of major changes in black faith in his upcoming book, The Contemporary Black Church: The New Dynamics of African-American Religionreleased in August by New York University Press.
He sees the black church, in some ways, being stung by its own success. It is through the role of the black church in education, civil rights, entrepreneurship and community organizing, he says, that African Americans today have reached a position where they have other options and opportunities apart from this one.
And black churches of all denominations are seeing this happening in their neighborhoods and in Sunday sanctuaries. Shelton found that No-Nos now represent the second largest religious group among African-American denominations, behind Baptists.
“The future does not look bright for organized religion in Black America, especially for historical traditions,” he said. “The Baptists are still the most numerous, but they are losing people. The Methodists are really small. The Pentecostals are losing, but they’re not losing as much because they’ve always been small.”
Even with emptier pews and a new generation less tied to the Black Church than any other in history, the lingering beliefs among non-Blacks are also a sign of hope.
Religious statistician Ryan Burge, author of a book on the growth of non-religious people, found this “The data indicates that black people do not have a stronger faith and are much more likely to embrace religion in the future than other racial groups.”
Shelton said churches should be open to people’s questions rather than closing them off. In the Pew study, blacks were less likely than others overall to abandon religion due to skepticism, but just under half said they question “many religious teachings.”
The growing field of urban apologetics has taken up the challenge in Black communities, particularly in addressing doubts about faith that stem from racism and injustice.
“It gives Black people a reason to hope for the Gospel despite the cultural, historical, spiritual, and theological barriers that Black people have to the Christian faith,” writing Eric Mason in his 2021 book on the subject. “And at the heart of urban apologetics is a restoration of imago Dei.”
Fields adopts the strategy of attentive listening to hear and understand the stories of black Americans who have left the Church.
A few years ago, Jude 3 organized a discussion series titled “Why I Don’t Go,” engaging and listening to African Americans who have left the church or are on the fence. Certain areas of hurt, doubt and disconnection inspired Field’s latest book, When faith disappoints: the gap between what we believe and what we livewhich comes out this summer.
The book recognizes “how, for some, Christianity may have failed to meet these very valid needs, so they turned to various counterfeits” like syncretistic beliefs and spiritual practices like crystals or sage .
Field called this his plea for them to “come back or stay.”
“I’m very optimistic,” she said. “What people are looking for, Christianity has it. We have the hope that the world is looking for.
