Dan Barker and Mandisa Thomas on Ethnic Issues in Freethought

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/26

*The interview conducted August 28, 2023.*

Mandisa Thomas is the Founder of Black Nonbelievers, Inc. One of, if not the, largest organization for African-American or black nonbelievers or atheists in America. The organization is intended to give secular fellowship, provide nurturance and support for nonbelievers, encourage a sense of pride in irreligion, and promote charity in the non-religious community. 

Daniel Edwin Barkeris an American atheist activist and former evangelical Christian preacher and musician. He is the Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation with Annie Laurie Gaylor and the Co-Host of Freethought Radio, and a Co-Founder of The Clergy Project. Barker is a member of the Algonquian-speaking Lenni Lenape Tribe or, more formally based on the official name, the Delaware Indians/Delaware Tribe of Indians (primarily named for being on the banks of the Delaware River rather than the state of Delaware) of Native Americans. 

Here Mandisa and Dan talk about contexts for Native American and African American freethinkers.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: This is an interview with Dan Barker and Mandisa Thomas. I want to get started on maybe a little background of community experience within the secular or atheist, agnostic, or humanist communities from the vantage of your lifetime of work in these areas. So, I’ll let you pick among yourselves who starts. For those that are non-religious, say broadly speaking, either within a Native American context or within an African-American context, what are some issues that might arise individually for that person as they become more public, vocal, and comfortable in that stance and point of view for themselves? 

Dan Barker: Well, go ahead, Mandisa, let the smart one go first here.

Mandisa Thomas: Oh gosh! [Laughing] So, speaking as a black African-American atheist, I would say that most of the challenges come from the heavily religious influence in black communities and the strong tie to identification to the point where it seems inseparable whether that’s throughout history and also about matters of racial justice and other areas of justice. They seem to be inseparable in the way that there is so much credence given to the religious leaders in our communities that the presence of atheists, humanists, and freethinkers is almost erased, which presents a challenge for representation and advocacy because there’s always or mostly an assumption that civil rights and freedom are tied into religion, which isn’t true. Also, this idea is that being black is automatically tied to being religious. They’re almost inseparable, so if you are identifying as black, then you must also inherently identify as an theist. If you don’t, that presents challenges to your credibility as black, especially within the United States. That becomes a challenge for those who are coming out and deconstructing because there’s still a challenge in trying to find other like-minded individuals because there is still, the black community, in particular, is still heavily religious. So, that becomes a massive challenge for many, which creates a sense of isolation and feelings and higher levels of concealment. So, it is that in the framework of simply being black in this country that makes it so much more complicated when religion is tied into the identity of the communities, which makes it challenging not just to find communities but also to effectively discuss matters of racial and other areas of social justice without religion being invoked almost every time.

Jacobsen: Dan, how about you?

Barker: So, I am on my father’s side. I am a fully enrolled member of the Delaware Tribe of American Indians, and that’s the name the U.S. government gave us. We call ourselves the Lenape, the Lenni Lenape. Initially, we sold Manhattan to the Dutch for $24, and we had seven migrations and almost went extinct. My great-grandfather was on the Tribal Council in 1900 during the census. There were less than a thousand members left. By then, we had been pushed from East into Oklahoma. We lived in Kansas for a long time on a reservation in the 1830s to 1860s, where Baptists and Mennonites missionized our tribe and Christianized. Even though my great-grandmother was a full-blooded Delaware Indian, her favourite song was Rock of Ages, a Christian song. They went to church, they prayed, and because my granddad was five years old during that census, our family, my brothers and dad, and I were all fully enrolled members.

Most of the Indian tribes count membership by ancestry, not by blood. So, I’m only about 10 or 12% Native American blood if you go by DNA. My mother’s, grandmother’s, and dad’s sides are mostly European stocks. So, I pretty much walk through life as a white person, although I love the heritage. We used to go to some Powwows, and I heard my granddad singing some of the prayer hymns in the Lenape language, and he did his beadwork. We’re proud of all that, but my brothers and I were urban Indians. We loved it, but it wasn’t a massive part of our life, and since we weren’t identified as much as blacks might be identified as part of a culture, we pretty much lived as white kids. 

I have 164th black ancestry, too. My great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother; my great grandmother’s great-grandmother was African, which shows up on my DNA as 164th. In the South, if you had even one drop of black blood, you were considered black, which is silly because what do I look like? There’s no heritage there at all, but in Louisiana, they had a word for a 164th; they had half-breeds and octoroons telling how much black blood you had. Well, there was a word called Sunmele 164th, which is also considered black. Even some half-blacks can pass as white. So, I would not have been allowed legally to marry Annie Laurey in Louisiana for a while there, but that’s all pretty silly because, functionally, my brothers and I have not experienced much discrimination for being members of the American Indian tribe. It’s usually the opposite; people are impressed, “Wow, so all about the buffaloes and wow! You know all about the great spirit.” [Laughing] 

If you’re a member of a tribe, you suddenly know all things Indian, like suddenly you’re some expert, but I will say that Christianity is a big part of most of the Native American tribes. Our tribe had a blend; we blended some native traditions with the Christian traditions like many tribes do today. If you look for the Delaware tribe of American Indians, look for it online. There’s a web page where you’ll see the tribal seal; it has the turkey print, the wolf print, and the turtle shell, and our clan was the turtle clan. In addition to those three clans, it also has a Christian cross on the tribal seal of an American Indian tribe, and nobody knows how it got there. I’ve asked the tribe how it got there, and they’re not even sure. They said, “Well, we’re all Christians.” My brother Darrell and I are not, and my dad wasn’t at the end of his life. So, there’s not much of a community that you would call Native American freethinkers or atheists or agnostics, but there is a small community. 

Brent Michael Davids is also part Delaware, part Munsee, and part Mohican. He’s a famous composer, and we’ve had him discuss our convention. He lives on a reservation here in Wisconsin. He, my brother, and I, along with a few others, have started a Facebook page called Indigenous Freethinkers. You can look that up and see all seven of us. Maybe there’s more. The writer, Louise Erdrich, is a Native American and also an atheist, and her sister sometimes gets involved with it, but there’s not much we can do other than maybe compare notes and so on. I don’t want to make it even look remotely like the current Native American freethinkers’ fair with the same difficulty that black freethinkers have in this community because racism happens with all dark-skinned people. Still, with blacks, it’s just an order of magnitude worse.

So, I can’t say much more about that because there is no super-organized indigenous freethinking atheist community other than just a few of us who happen to have gotten together.

Jacobsen: Well, at least in Canada, similar to the notion Mandisa was pointing out about the isolation and the trouble finding community, there was an Aboriginal Committee for Humanist Canada. I was part of it; it was headed up by the time vice president Dr Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson, who’s Metis, and after he finished his term and I was done on the board of Humanist Canada. We’re continuing that. There are a half dozen to eight, something like this, from just different smatterings of parts of Canada, continuing some of this conversation. I’m more tokenized into there. So, I did my 23andMe, and they sent me back a sleeve of salting crackers because I came back 100% Northwestern European. [Laughing] These are the least interesting findings ever, and if I look at a picture, I look like I belong as a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

These are important things to point out because there are some threads of commonality where, for instance, when I have reached out to interview some indigenous secularists, freethinkers, humanists, etc., in Canada, I would say the sample size is small granted, but about half would say no, not because they don’t want to or that they are against it, but that within the community they’re a little bit uneasy about the impacts on some of their family by having them outspoken like that. It’s a different sensibility, a community sense, of the impacts of my doing this on my family. That’s an interesting early finding in doing some of these interviews or at least doing some of this outreach. 

Do you find some of that, Mandisa, when you’re providing a community yourself what you’ve done for a long time for black African-Americans through Black Nonbelievers or yourself, Dan, in seeing some of these individuals who are indigenous freethinkers in the United States who come out publicly? ‘Here’s my photo, and I’m with a bunch of other indigenous freethinkers in the United States.’

Thomas: I would say that, of course, yes, there is a reluctance on the part of many identified blacks in this country to identify as atheists openly, and much to what Dan was saying about the indigenous people is that there is such a cultural identity tied into being Christian even though much like the enslaved Africans descendants; it was forced. In many indigenous or Native American cultures or tribes, there is a huge effort to preserve a sense of culture that was lost, especially when it comes to when the populations are decimated. So, we experience something similar with the history of enslavement and the black church playing again such a huge role in justice in this country. There is again that emotional tie to belief and the church because it was a place where many blacks couldn’t rise to power, black men in particular, and there are some denominations that do include some African traditions and rituals. So, there’s also a tie there. 

I would say that again; the challenge does come because they’re much like with indigenous folks; the church and the music have taken on a life of their own, especially in black communities. So, it’s so ingrained into the culture. In the community that it’s really hard to break, and again, some folks are reluctant to identify because not only do they not want to disappoint their parents or even their grandparents, but they feel like they are going against the community, that they are going against the history of what we’ve been through in this country not realizing that part of that history does include black atheist humanists and freethinkers. So, that piece of education and information is missing due to the strong emotional ties many have in this community, which again makes it sometimes challenging to have these conversations. So, if you will, there’s that sense of reluctance to go against the grain in the community and openly identify, even though it’s valid. It’s extremely valid considering the history, but when you count on that sense of community for many, you don’t want to disappoint your family and other friends. It makes that much more of a challenge there. I hope I answered that question.

Jacobsen: Great as always, thank you. And Dan, how about you?

Barker: So, back in the 1980s, when I left the ministry, I was a preacher for 19 years. Then, I started working with the Freedom From Religion Foundation and appearing on national T.V. shows. My grandmother, who lived in Oklahoma, and my grandparents lived in Oklahoma at the time. She was surprised when she saw a couple of those shows, like the Phil Donahue show, Sally Jessy, or Oprah Winfrey or something. She knew something had happened with her grandson, a preacher, and we inherited all of that through both sides of my dad’s family; through the Indian side and then through, there’s like a half Cherokee half French side and grandma wrote me a letter. She said, “Danny, I saw you on television, but that’s not our Danny that I saw, as if once you’re in the group, you just have to stay in that group and that family; that’s who you are.” I didn’t reply to her. She was older and had a mixture of Christian and Indian beliefs. She sometimes would have “visions” that were real to her, where some Native ancestors would come in with their beadwork alongside a priest or a preacher walking into the room, and she would see them walking into the house. And she said, “Danny, I saw them really for real. Don’t you believe that?” And I say, “Well, I believe you felt it.” 

So, there was a little bit of that feeling like I wasn’t supposed to leave, but I don’t think that’s a race thing. That’s a religious thing; I mean, it happens to Muslims, it happens to Jehovah’s Witnesses, it happens to anybody who’s within a certain… it can happen to Orthodox Jews. So because our tribe was forced to convert between 1830 and 1860, we had our reservation, and it was like America at the time viewed itself as a white Christian Nation and that whole idea of destiny. So, to survive, most of the tribes had to assimilate in some way or another or accommodate, and so both my great-grandparents became devout Christians. It was sincere, but I’m sure it wouldn’t have happened if the whites hadn’t come over here in the first place with European guns and European Bibles. So, what happens, at least with the Native American Community, is that to the same degree as a lot of blacks, you do have a sense that it’s your whole culture that you’re questioning if you question the religion.

Jacobsen: Dan, you’ve commented as a side note on the Lehigh County Seal as a symbol of white colonialism. These sorts of things have different meanings depending on cultural and communal context. Can you comment on that for a little bit?

Barker: Yes. So, Allentown, Pennsylvania, the county seat there is Allentown in Lehigh County, which was part of our tribe’s ancestor homelands there in Eastern Pennsylvania. The Delaware Indians were in that whole Manhattan, New Jersey, Delaware River area and the famous Walking Purchase that you might have read about in the history books, which was a way that William Penn’s nephew cheated our tribe and some other tribes of a whole bunch of land; they call it the Walking Purchase, what happened in that area. Today, if you go to Lehigh County, the county seal has nothing about the original inhabitants. It’s all the farmers and the whites and the implementations, and it’s all recognizing the “old history” of that area, which goes back about 15,000 years, not just 150 years. So, a cross was on that seal, so we sued and won.

Jacobsen: Congratulations!

Barker: We won at the first level at least, but then we lost. It was overturned by the appeals court just claiming historical reasons, and I don’t know if you know, I wrote an op-ed to the local paper claiming that that wasn’t white Christian ancestral homelands and that seal is memorializing as was my tribe; it was our tribe that was there. This would never happen, but you know how the Jews claim that God gave them the holy land, and they went over there and took it from the inhabitants? Couldn’t the natives claim the same thing about Manhattan or Lehigh County? Of course, that would never happen. There’s no real power among natives anymore because we were… it was more than decimated; it was the reciprocal. It was like 90% of the population either through disease or through genocide or through being run off; many tribes went extinct, and ours almost did too, less than a thousand finally in the year 1900. So, the county leaders did not respond to my op-ed, but a few people in town did. They were surprised; they didn’t realize that history. They’re sitting in that area where the Walking Purchase stole the land from them.

Jacobsen: And Mandisa, when you provide and have been providing much on the ground community for black African-Americans in the United States across the board for well over a decade, and I’ve been part of that working relationship in terms of doing conversations as you transitioned out of hospitality into doing that full time. So, I’ve seen that growth and a lot of that momentum that you’ve been working hard towards. What are you noting as the first moments when people come to you with their needs for themselves? What kinds of things do individuals need coming out of these contexts, not simply ideas such as community but on a personal level?

Thomas: So, one of the major concerns, I would say primary concerns among many black atheists or those who are coming out of religion, is dating and finding relationships amongst fellow nonbelievers. This is a huge challenge for many; this subject often comes up in many conversations. There are challenges with meeting fellow nonbelievers to converse with or connect with on a personal level, and also, there is a challenge at times with partners who may still be or spouses who may still be religious. So, that’s also a challenge. We have seen many of our members who have faced questions regarding raising children, like what do we do now? If one spouse is not religious, one still is; what do you do about that? Because I know many of our members or people in the non-religious community, we pay attention to more comprehensive education. More people are maybe not may not necessarily be having children, but that is a point of reference and concern to many is how are they going to find more lifelong partners that are atheists and nonbelievers or how are they going to coexist with their existing partners as they come out of this indoctrinated belief. Learning how to navigate is a major concern among many, and that is often at the core of the community-building piece and the networking piece that is often important to the work that we do because once people come to that realization that they are atheists and that there are other issues that they are concerned about specifically and what Dan reminded me of the fact that reparations for African-Americans or the descendants of the enslaved are often a hugely important conversation in our communities.

But first and foremost, having been a practitioner or being a practitioner for all these years, one of definitely the most important concerns that people have on a personal level is finding meaningful relationships and romantic relationships with fellow nonbelievers because dating is a challenge when it comes to believers. It can also be a challenge for fellow nonbelievers to find those connections. So, that is a huge concern amongst our members in particular.

Jacobsen: Are either of you aware of conversations between African-Americans and Native Americans on these free-hought issues, whatever they may be along that spectrum that we’re all familiar with?

Barker: I’m not aware of any of that kind of conversation. A lot of or some African-Americans have Native American blood, and a lot of them do because of the history, but as far as freethought goes, it’s still pretty rare, pretty, I guess, new to come out as a freethinker in either of those communities.

Thomas: I’ve known individual Native American indigenous people who have reached out to us, and they have asked whether they could participate with me, and of course, the answer is yes, anyone can participate with us. At different events over the years, we have connected with folks like Native Americans who have expressed the same sense of frustration and tension that many black folks do when it comes to finding fellow like-minded nonbelievers who can directly relate to the challenges. So, it’s been in pockets. We hope to connect with more because the populations here are as scarce as they are amongst indigenous people and their descendants.

I imagine that it’s even harder to find more Native American atheists because now, online, black atheist groups have exploded. Those are quite common on social media. Some folks are making themselves known through YouTube videos, TikTok, etc. However, when it comes to actually organizing and bringing together people as a community, that is still something that few organizations, namely Black Nonbelievers, are doing. There has been interest in other people of colour in starting something similar because they recognize that there is a need for it. Connecting directly with those folks is necessary because finding them and bringing them out is hard. So, the connections that we do have are still few and far between. Still, we have been fortunate enough to have engaged through either our website or through other events with indigenous and Native American folks who are relieved to see us there because it does give them hope that they can find others that they can relate to and hopefully start something similar.

Jacobsen: So, outside of the personal history or the organizational provisions or how County symbols can have a different impact on individuals coming across and with a different history, all of these tell me that we can’t eliminate history. It’s a truism, but it’s important to make it explicit. So, an important point is building those networks so individuals and communities can thrive. In contrast, Mandisa has explicitly pointed out they cannot find community in any way, or if they do, it’s a bit of an issue for them to come forward or even to find intimacy. So, Dan, what was the idea behind indigenous freethinkers to bring that forward in an early stage and Mandisa? What were some of the sparks for Black Nonbelievers Incorporated?

Barker: So, before I answer that, you said we can’t get rid of history or something like that, but we do get rid of history like a County seal in Lehigh, Pennsylvania, got rid of history, thousands and thousands of years and a lot of people in Allentown Pennsylvania; they have no idea that they’re sitting on the land that was stolen and had all that culture and history. They think old history is 200-year-old buildings. I just went to the web page of Indigenous Freethinkers; it’s a Facebook page, and it has yet to be active. It’s not like there’s a big crying need for indigenous freethinkers to find each other, but we do, and it’s more like sharing ideas and thoughts, and I just noticed this: there are 17 members there. So, it’s more than doubled since I was there, including Heid Erdrich; she’s the sister of Louise Erdrich, the famous author. She’s been on that list for a while; she’s a poet in her own right, there in Minneapolis. 

So, it’s a self-identification thing; we all know that we are members of indigenous groups and yet we’re out in the world, and yet we still hang on. I guess it’s like how Jews want to be with other Jews just for the common culture and the common ancestry there, although not all indigenous groups are the same. They don’t all have the same histories; there’s a lot of overlap in some of the mythology. In my tribe’s case, we know some of the mythology, but so much of it was lost, so much of it was just gone and mixed, and in Northern Oklahoma, there were seven or eight different tribes that the U.S. government mashed together. So, there was a lot of intermarriage between the Cherokee and other groups, but I guess whoever you are in this world, you feel a connection to some culture or ancestry and in my family’s case. It was our land that was stolen. Culture was stolen, and then, in Mandisa’s case, it was not that the land was stolen. They were stolen from the land and brought over to another continent to work as slaves.

I don’t know if this is relevant, but I’ve been reading about slave revolts, and I’m surprised how many there were. Not all the slaves were believers. There’s a history even before the Civil War. There’s a history of atheistic, skeptical slaves even working on the plantations getting together. So, they weren’t on their knees praying to Jesus or any of their particular African beliefs. So, it goes way back, but it is the sense of being not an insider, of being a bystander or being something extra to the real white Christian Americans who founded and run this country. There’s always going to be that sense that we’re somehow off or that we’re somehow not fully welcomed into American society, especially when you see what happened with the reservations and with the desecration of lands and holy places.

For most Native Americans, their religious beliefs were tied to geographical places: the River, this lake, and this mountain were important, and when they were yanked away from that, it ruined everything. We had to go to some kind of generic religious thing. In my family’s case, it was the River that was there in Manhattan, the Manhattan River, that is now totally paved over, and then it became a canal, and then the canal was paved over, and that became Canal Street. So, if you go to Canal Street in southern Manhattan, which used to be the holy River of the Lenni Lenape tribe, where the snake was driven underground in mythology, that’s gone, and when you uproot people, you lose all of that. So, we share some of those regrets and feelings, and we all share a kind of, I don’t know what you would call, a kind of specialness that we do have, an identity that we can hang on to. An identity that is being threatened by the majority religion in this country.

Mandisa Thomas: I agree, Dan, and I will say definitely. What sparked things to start Black Nonbelievers and to connect with more black atheists in particular, say that was a mentor of mine, one of my teachers, Diane Glover, who was keen on black liberation, education, especially for black children, and understanding the institutional factors of racism and injustice, but she’s a hardcore Christian. So, when I started expressing my dissent and my disdain for Christianity in particular, she was scared for me, and she became offended when I shared Jeremiah Camara’s website; Jeremiah, who is the director/producer of Contradiction, which she was featured in and she was quite upset about that. She couldn’t understand why I would choose such a path. I had to tell her that it was due to her mentorship and that it was leaders and strong women like her who always taught me to question the status quo to have a better understanding of what happened to our ancestors and these institutional atrocities that we endured and being Christian, in particular, was one of them. We can’t get around that. 

And I also knew as Dan said before, that black folks had a history of rebellion and resilience. Many do not just sit down or sit back and accept the conditions. It was because of that that certain brutality was imposed, but the fact that there is a history of humanism and free thought and atheism in the black community that is not often spotlit and the fact that there are more people. I had people reaching out to me privately, and they would ask, “Do you not believe?” I said, “No, I don’t,” They said, “Good, because I don’t believe either.” So, speaking up and speaking out encouraged more people to do and express the same. I thought that we were in Atlanta. This was right around the time that the Eddie Long Scandal broke, around the end of 2010, and there was a lot of discourse. There were a lot of people who were critiquing, even a lot of Christians. 

That was the right time to say, “You know what? Not only do I have an issue with this institution, but I have also thoroughly examined my identity and have come to terms with it and have come to truly understand that I do not believe in any God, Spirit, or supernatural beings whatsoever.” There must be more of us out here because of the history of resilience, resistance, and rebellion in black communities and other communities of colour. It’s like no one just ever accepted it. And in this day of information and people’s ability to speak up more, there has to be more of us out here. So, that was the driving force, was that it was needed. It was needed, especially due to the still lack of representation in both black communities and secular communities of people of colour, particularly black folks, and also getting them together in person. Being online and connecting through social media is a great start, but to truly build on that community aspect through good, bad, or what have you, nothing replaces that in-person engagement. There’s nothing like hearing people say I thought I was the only one, and the fact that I see people gives me a sense of relief that we exist. Many of our members credit Dan for their transition and deconversion; others in the community noted that many of our members do credit.

However, when it came to actually finding the black folks, that was important to them because that is a starting point, and we always encourage that to be a starting point for those connections; we certainly encourage folks not just to stick with Black Nonbelievers, but, if you find that this is an organization that you call home, wonderful. That is what we focus on, and we focus intentionally from the perspective of being black. There are cultural experiences that many of us can relate to, and there are things that black folks like to do, and that is okay. We represent our communities; we represent our culture; we represent what it is not just to be an atheist but also what it is to be black in this country, which is diverse. It is diverse, and it is also about breaking that stigma about what it means to be black, especially when there is so much in the way of assumptions about what it means to be black, in the United States and even throughout the world, which usually implies that you are Christian or religious in some way. And so dispelling those misconceptions was extremely important.

Barker: And Mandisa, one thing that will help is Godless Gospel.

Thomas: Yes. [Laughing]

Barker: Have you got your plane ticket for the rehearsal yet? 

Thomas: I did. I am all set and ready to go.

Barker: Yes, this will be our second performance.

Jacobsen: What is the Godless Gospel? I have to plug it.

Barker: Well, it’s gospel music, a musical style directed by Andre Forbes, a former professional gospel musician, songwriter, arranger and a whole band of former gospel players. One of the drummers is still playing in church, but he’s not a believer. And singers, mostly black singers in the group, singing secular, atheistic, humanistic, and naturalistic lyrics to that gospel style, and Andre is the right guy to do that style. You’ll agree, Mandisa. It almost feels like you’re in church when you’re listening to it.

Thomas: Absolutely, and I am honoured to have made this connection with Dan, with me being a singer and Dan being the singer, pianist, and musician he is. I remember when you told me about this concept that you had about the Godless Gospel and one of the things that Black Nonbelievers do exist to do is make these connections, not just social and personal connections but also professional connections. For people with a skill set, talent, and creativity, some things can be created from that, and that has come from that. I remember that Andre was a gospel producer and singer, and he had his journey of coming out as an atheist. It was wonderful when there was an opportunity to connect him with Dan. It gives another style to some of the music that Dan has produced over the years, and it also connects Andre’s music, and it sounds amazing. It is wonderful to be a part of that and see it come to life. And yes, we have connected people with the gospel, which moves many people, black and white. Many folks love gospel music, but it becomes harder to listen to because of the lyrics as they come out of religion. So, yes, it’s a wonderful project that got people moving. It was great, it is soulful, it is just wonderful.

Barker: And you got us in touch with Andre in the first place and with D’Angelo. I don’t know if she’s part of the Black Nonbelievers, but D’Angelo is from Jacksonville, and you just heard about the shooting in Jacksonville yesterday, that racially motivated shooting. This crazy guy killed three people.

Thomas: Oh, jeez!

Barker: Anyway, and then, of course, you put us in touch with Andre, and Andre knew the other musicians because he’s in the professional industry of what you would call gospel music, and all he does is R&B, and he does some rocking stuff too. And so, Andre and I have written the songs, and our styles are different, but I handed over the control to Andre, and he took my songs and spruced them up into an amazing thing. So, this year, we’ll be doing our second performance on October 13th in Madison, Wisconsin, at the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Annual Convention.

Thomas: Yes, we are still looking for singers. The audition process is ongoing, so Scott, if you could promote it to encourage more people to audition, that would be awesome!

Jacobsen: Link in the text. [Laughing]

Thomas: And the one thing that I’m grateful for is D’Angelo came along with Andre. He might share it with her, but I got the involvement of Cynthia McDonald, Candace Gorham, and Steven Phelps from Sunday Assembly Nashville. I had the wonderful opportunity to connect with other singers and producers throughout the community, and I have been encouraging them to audition and become a part of this project because we want it to be multicultural and diverse, and anyone can sing it; anyone can be a part of it, and it is just great to have people within the community who have responded to it as well. So, it is awesome that those connections we build mean something beyond just leaving religion behind. We are being innovative; it’s being innovative, it’s historical, and we’re doing unprecedented things, and I’m just really excited about that.

Barker: And I found Tahira Clayton; she’s an internationally known jazz vocalist, and her husband, Addison Frei, is a well-known jazz pianist. When she came to audition for Godless Gospel, she had been raised in the church, in a black church somewhere in Texas, and he had never heard her sing. He never heard his wife sing gospel; she always sang beautiful jazz. She does all the standards, and when she auditioned, she started belting out this gospel music; he said, “What is that coming from?” [Laughing] 

Thomas: Her voice, she is amazing.

Barker: He said it was just there from my childhood; it’s just something you grew up with. So, yes, she’s a great soloist.

Jacobsen: There’s a larger topic here, too, around secularizing parts of communities and culture. They were so, taking the gospel, removing a lot of the supernaturalistic elements and making it something that people enjoy anyway. Are there other aspects of American culture generally that can be secularized in such a way that ordinary people can make free thought more accessible to individuals who are looking for that community or just looking for a good time while being a free thinker?

Barker: Well, what first came to my mind was Jeremiah Camara’s films. He was at our conference in Canada this weekend. It was in August, and his films are on Hulu or Amazon Prime; Holy Hierarchy is the one we screened just this last weekend about the history of oppression and slavery in our country. So, that’s using art to get a message across, and he interviews many people, but he has a lot of history in that. He’s an incredible filmmaker, talented, and a Freedom From Religion Foundation board member.

Thomas: I agree with that 100%, but religion, Christianity in particular, has always borrowed from secularism. I would say that it has always hijacked secularism. It has been a common practice for secular themes and humanistic themes to have been co-opted by religion, and, unfortunately, so many people think that the barometer or the standard is set by religion, and it’s not. Practices of secularism and humanism predate religions, especially the Judea-Christian religions. that being able to point. We even see it in things as we see it in children’s literature, and we see in other cultures throughout the world that being a good person and doing the right things have nothing to do with any belief. So, it is a matter of pointing out that religion has always borrowed and not just borrowed but has stolen from many other cultures that aren’t as dogmatic. 

I credit my upbringing and having learned about various aspects of history and culture, especially on the continent of Africa, which is undisputedly the cradle of civilization. There there’s no disputing that now. So, knowing more about how the world has been secular and humanistic, even through different religions and cultures, can help turn that around. We can deep back this narrative that religion has the moral high ground, if you will, or sets the standard for what it means to be morally good because, as we see throughout history, that can stand a question. 

Jacobsen: I was talking in Copenhagen to Debbie Goddard about this, and that point about Godless Gospel, and I appreciate the corrections from both of you; two of the responses there, that I mean a lot of cultural artifacts in music and art have had Christianity or other religions grafted onto them often by force of coercion. So, this is a process of de-Christianizing art and cultural aspects already there. With regards to networking and community building, has there been any discussion or efforts from some of the larger not individual organizations like State, provincial, or national but more from umbrella organizations that may be national or International to have these conversations more formally because they’re more in a position to do so simply for the matter of the fact that they represent several different organizations?

Thomas: I certainly appreciate Freedom From Religion Foundations’ willingness to have these conversations at the events, at the conventions and their support for previous events that we have put on, like the Women of Color Beyond Belief conference, where we have featured all women of colour; speakers, activists, organizers, etc. We are seeing an intentional shift and willingness to listen, not just listen but put it into practice. When we talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, it’s something that takes time to dismantle these institutions that have certainly kept white supremacy alive for so long, like that has impacted other white people. So, being intentional about especially listening to those of us who have come into this community to say, “Hey, these are the things that we are working on that we see need improvement. We’re not just sitting there waiting for the organizations to do it on their own. It takes a team effort to do,” even as the process becomes challenging at times and can be downright uncomfortable, that is what allows us to improve and be better.

They are also taking from the work that has been done already because there has been incredible work throughout the years speaking of Annie Laurie and her mom, Nicole Gayler, who founded the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who founded American Atheist, and all the folks who have done this work to make this a part of institutions. Certainly, as more folks come into the movement in the community as an organization or as a community that prides itself on evidence and new information, these things have to be taken into consideration, and they have. They have many other organizations who work alongside us, Black Nonbelievers, speaking and being willing to keep it, not just at one-time initiatives and conversations. These things must be put into practice for this to continue. So, from my vantage point, there have been some good changes throughout the years in the community and through organizations and their willingness to take us seriously.

A few years ago, The U.S. Secular Survey was launched. From that came the black non-religious Americans report, which we collaborated with American Atheists on, spelled out the challenges that black non-religious people face. So, now there’s data for that. There is empirical information to show those challenges so that people are not just saying, “Hey, they’re just saying it, and there’s nothing to back it up,” even though few research and other research forums do back it up. However, it comes from a specifically secular source, allowing for more credibility. So, there will always be more work in those areas. However, in my work and over the years, there has been tremendous improvement in the initiatives and work being done collaboratively.

Barker: Well, Mandisa, I must correct your serious mistake. 

Thomas: Okay.

Barker: Ann Gaylor’s middle name was not Nicole; it’s Nicol. 

Thomas: Oh.

Barker: Nicol; that’s her Scottish ancestry. People always say Ann Nicole Gaylor, but she didn’t like that. She and Annie Laurie are proud of their Scottish ancestry. Mandisa, you deserve a lot of credit for making a real organization to address this, a formal organization to unite people. Otherwise, we’re just a bunch of acquaintances and friends. So, congratulations to you for making Black Nonbelievers happen.

Jacobsen: Truly. What are your primary efforts in creating community through annual events? One of those I’m aware of is the convention. What is it, and what other ways are the Freedom From Religion Foundation or yourself doing it?

Barker: Creating community is an important part of the Freedom From Religion Foundation; we’re a national organization. So, we do have a yearly National Convention. We’re coming up on our 46th this October. There are a few hundred people, sometimes five or six, or we even had a thousand at one convention. It’s not our entire membership; we have over 40,000, but it’s a good place for those who want to get together to hear speakers, have good food, hear music, and interact with each other. Many tell us that the most important part happens in the hallways when they bump into others and say, “Wow! you too?”; the unplanned part of a convention, which is nice. And then we’re working on an app, which I don’t know if we’ll have in time this year, where people can say, “Hey, I’m from Michigan. Who else is from Michigan?” that kind of thing can we get together.

We also have chapters, and again, even though the community is not our main focus, our main focus is working to keep the State and church separate through legal action and then educating the public about freethinkers. We have 25 or 27 chapters around the country, which are bottom-up. We don’t try to start chapters; we’re not like a denomination, a church that goes around planning churches everywhere. The best chapters are those that can’t help but form bottom-up organically. So, the chapters have different purposes and activities; some are just social groups, some are activist groups, and some are involved in litigation, whatever they want to do in their local area as they come together to form some community. Sometimes, it’s just cleaning the streets doing Highway cleaning, and sometimes, it’s contributing to charities, raising money to help local charities.

Community happens when people have a common goal or common sense of identity, and of course, our national convention is just a huge part of that. Many people who come for the first time say, “Wow! This is the first time I’ve ever been in a room where I can say whatever I want and not worry about it,” and meet other people. Sometimes, they meet people and go, “You mean you just live around the corner from me? I never knew that” They’ve been keeping their mouth shut in their local communities because they’re afraid, especially in rural communities. In fact, at one of our meetings, this woman walked in the door, and Howard said, “What are you doing here?” She looked at him and said, “Well, what are you doing here?” They were neighbours; they shared a common property line. They thought the other was Baptist and were keeping their heads down; they didn’t put any bumper stickers on their cars, and for almost 20 years, they could have been friends and freethinking, but they didn’t. They came to one of our meetings and found each other, which was a fun story.

So, yes, community is important, and with FFRF, we accommodate that. Our main purpose, of course, is the legal action and the educational efforts. We have a national radio show, a national T.V. show, a national newspaper, a weekly ‘Ask an atheist’ on Facebook Live, and we publish books as educational. People wanting to have the same result, the same purpose getting together; that’s exciting, that’s electrifying to say let’s march together, let’s work together, let’s protest together, let’s sue the government together, and that creates a special kind of community,

Thomas: I’m glad I could rethink my response now. [Laughing] Yes, in addition to our annual cruise convention, we host an anniversary celebration every five years. It is an opportunity for people who have been involved with the organization or are new to see how far we’ve come as an organization and the folks. We are still developing leadership and connections throughout the community and have affiliate groups. We certainly have a model we follow to bring people together. Most of it is social; however, it is similar to FFRF. We do volunteer work; we certainly encourage that. Sometimes, we have guest speakers. We started doing a YouTube show on our YouTube channel called In the Cut; we’ve been doing that since 2022 and collaborate on various initiatives with other organizations. We are now co-sponsoring a student scholarship with the Secular Student Alliance. 

The one thing about our events is an intentional focus on people. There’s an intentional focus on making sure that people feel welcomed, feel included, and that people are communicating with each other not just simply on an intellectual basis but that people know that they are feeling supported because when you feel that support, and you know that there are people who understand and can connect, then that blossoms activism. The further activism of the state-church separation, the protesting. People find that they can do this together once they understand that there are others out there, and I love people meeting for the first time. Folks who come to our events and are inspired by them are inspired to stay involved. And that’s one of the things about community; it’s more than just fun. Sometimes, we challenge each other, especially as people go through that indoctrination process, which helps us grow as a community. So, I’m proud of what we have accomplished at Black Nonbelievers regarding our consistent community engagement, helping people stay informed about what is happening throughout the community, and helping us sustain it. 

Jacobsen: There was another topic as well that I wanted to focus a little bit on, the economic, political and social force that it is with greater impact on Native American or American Indian and African-American or black communities in the United States. And that’s inverting the focus or reversing the focus from how one feels coming out of a religious community within either African-American tradition or within the Native American communities and more the wider culture having racist stereotypes about people coming from those communities. How does this fact-of-life factor come into play for individuals leaving those communities and entering the wider society? I recall in one of your earlier responses, Mandisa, you noted the isolation that can be a real factor and then Dan, you noted that there’s a long history of white colonialism and racist oppression that is here even though, as properly corrected, it can be erased; the symbols and things of the history. Either can start.

Barker: Go ahead, Mandisa, you’re on a roll right now.

Thomas: I’ll make this brief. In combating those notions and those stereotypes, as a community, at times, we tend to fall into those preconceived notions about what Native Americans are like and what black folks are like due to misinformation and the miseducation, and also just a general sense of not being directly involved with those communities. And so, often, we’ll be in secular spaces, and we talk about these challenges. Sometimes, there’s resistance even among fellow atheists, humanists, and nonbelievers because these are things that they’ve never been confronted with before, and so with that tends to be a sense of defensiveness. We can’t blame people for what they don’t know, but again, because we are a community that prides itself on evidence-based practices and practices and verification. 

Telling people to confront those notions they may have had can be uncomfortable for many. There have been instances where a person of colour may step into a predominantly white room of secular folks and be asked all these questions about the black community or indigenous community, expecting that we’re supposed to speak for everyone or expecting that we all care about those issues the same and that isn’t always true. Just like no one community is a monolith’, people must understand that our experiences also vary and that there should not be one barometer of what it means to come from those communities and represent them. So, the challenge comes in at times, not with the people we are opposing but with those who are well-meaning and who may not necessarily know but get so defensive that they may not want to know, which becomes a challenge. So, many more in our community must be mindful of that because we are people at the end of the day, and human beings will make mistakes. We need to acknowledge any indoctrination outside of religion that may have clouded the view of different folks and be ready to understand and learn and also do better.

Barker: I can’t speak with much authority on this for indigenous Americans. My granddad, of course, was born and raised in Indian Territory. Still, my dad’s generation in Southern California was pretty much assimilated and living as urban Indians, proud of the heritage and not feeling inferior because of it, but noticing, of course, that there was some discrimination. So, my brothers and I were pretty much white most of our lives with just this fact that we were members of a tribe, and when it comes to freethinkers in the indigenous community, I don’t think there is such a thing. There are just a number of us individuals who know each other, and maybe some of them contact Mandisa because Black Nonbelievers welcome all people of colour, but other than that, we are on our own, at least in this generation. I never had to live on a reservation, or I never had to suffer the deprivations of watching the U.S. government come up with billions of dollars to build an oil pipeline under our land, but they couldn’t afford to build a water pipeline to bring water to the reservation; just this inequity, this inequality that’s happening with people of colour.

I wish there were more of us; I wish we could be more active, at least those who are online; we don’t seem to feel the same type of real oppression now that some of our ancestors did.

Jacobsen: Do you want to make any final summative thoughts or summary statements to conclude this broached conversation?

Barker:‘ I’d like to say something going back to your first segment about reparations; maybe you could just edit it back to that point. As I said, I’ve been reading many books about enslaved people’s revolts in history, not just in the American South but even back in Spartacus in Rome, and they never turned out well. Spartacus was the exception, his revolt lasted two years, and they really kicked the Roman Army’s butt, but basically, slave revolts ended pretty badly. I just read a book called American Uprising, the untold story of America’s large slave revolt. It happened in 1811 in New Orleans in the sugar plantations where there were first and second. Third-generation Africans and then, of course, a lot of new Africans that were just brought over, and more than 500 of them successfully revolted and rose against these churchgoing Christian enslavers who were becoming wealthy off the sugar plantations. I mean, just obscenely wealthy off the backs of these people whose lives. They only lasted about seven years in that heat, and because of the work the enslaved people had to do and the oppression, they revolted. The Louisiana Purchase was just new; it was just a new part of the U.S. government. 

So, there weren’t many military forces the government could call on. There were a few, but after a few days, the formerly enslaved people marched on New Orleans. They were fed up and somehow ingeniously communicated through all those plantations, but the revolt was put down. The soldiers and then, of course, the enslavers themselves fought back. They murdered the leaders and cut off their heads, and this happened a lot, especially in South American plantations, but stuck their heads on poles along the road and along the Mississippi River. And the U.S. government saw fit to pay reparations to the enslavers for the loss of their property. They killed their slaves who revolted, and the government found the money because it was more important to the economy of the U.S. than to have these sugar plantations going. They found the money to pay back these enslavers for the loss of their property, and yet we’re still struggling over trying to find the money to do real reparations to the people who were real victims of all of this.

Thomas: I couldn’t agree more with that, Dan, and I would say there’s a tribute to that slave revolt. The Whitney Plantation is right outside New Orleans, and people must understand that black and indigenous history and our struggles are American history. It’s also important to our survival as a community to understand how State-Church separation, racial justice, and economic justice all play into our activism. We need to be educated on all of that, and if these are areas of activism that atheists, humanists, and agnostics can be a part of, then they should because it impacts us more than we realize. We need to understand and get a layer on the perspective of the folks who have lived it. Again, there is a history of people of colour; atheists, humanists, and agnostics that have played a role in resistance movements and how that is extremely important to the work that we do because if we don’t understand where we come from, then how do we know where we’re going? And so, that is often a phrase definitely in African-American communities. There is a phrase called ‘Sankofa,’ which means return and fetch it. And so, to understand and to reclaim parts of those histories and parts of those cultures and to gain a better understanding of where we’re going and the work that is still needed and it can be done while we embrace the liberation and the joy of being free from religion at the same time.

Jacobsen: Mandisa, Dan, thank you very much for the opportunity, your time, and the great work you’ve continued to do for many, many years.

Thomas: Thank you. 

Barker: Well, thank you, Scott. We can come back to the Vancouver area and see you someday.

Jacobsen: Sure, you can come to the farm, and I’ll show you some horses.

Barker: Oh really? Okay. We didn’t have a chance to talk about Kamloops, the Indian schools and the dead bodies that were found there because of the church. I’m sure you’re well aware of that history in your part of the continent. 

Jacobsen: Yes, I mean, even in Canada, there was the Attawapiskat; it has the highest suicide rate of any community in Canada. There’s a lot. 

Barker: The pope came over and apologized, but that was it; he just apologized. 

Jacobsen: Well, there’s a background there. So, Lloyd and I, Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson, we’ve been talking about this for a while, and, the first instance, the pope came in, and he didn’t apologize. Still, a subtle point was pointed out by a Canadian writer who’s now deceased, who I do have an interview with, which I cannot find, but her name was Lee Maracle. This name is familiar to either of you: an indigenous writer, a cutting writer. In an interview, she commented that if he’s not apologizing in an open-hand situation like that, he probably can’t feel he can do it because it’s probably happening elsewhere. Then you have to make an apology there, too. So, it becomes a cascade of responsibility. That’s what she was implying. That was before, and that’s a sharp point that even the basic idea had occurred to me. 

And then later, most recently, he has come and apologized, but yes, to your joke, Yes, he just apologized, but he’s not doing anything. Thoughts and prayers are equivalent, but there is a lot of stuff like that. I mean the little group that I’m a part of, which is intermittent, we get emails and articles, and I’ve done many interviews with Lloyd and others. It’s similar to your indigenous freethinkers’ group where it’s there, but it’s so informal as not to be there. It’s a couple of handfuls of people, and they do some good work. 

Barker: Yes, there’s no driving need or driving issue. So, we poke in every year and say hi.

Jacobsen: Yes, another thing sparked this whole thought years ago; this is a credit to Mandisa. We must have done 50 interviews or something. In one of those, you mentioned to me this years ago, like three, four or five years ago, with the first mention, which is basically if you leave the black church, you’ve considered no longer black often; you’ve lost your black card. That’s similar to the notion I got from indigenous Canadian folks; like they were comfortable as freethinkers, they have no problem giving interviews. They were just a little uneasy and nervous, so they declined due to its impact on their wider clan’s use of the phrasing. So, they have no belief in the Creator. They like the rituals but don’t believe in all the supernaturalism around them. They’ll go to smudge ceremonies, but for the community, they’re afraid they’ve lost their indigenous card. It’s not put in those words, but a similar concept and consequence seems to be at play regarding what Mandisa was saying first with the black community and leaving the black church.

Barker: Yes, and in both cases, it’s ironic because Christianity wasn’t the people’s original religion. 

Thomas: Not at all, and it’s White Evangelicalism that was the problem, not atheism. 

Jacobsen: Right. There’s this strong Anglo-Saxon European Christian identity. I remember Noam Chomsky had an interview years ago, and it was like a series of really in-depth interviews. There was some piece of European Christian propaganda that was trying to entice people from the old world Western Europe to come to the New World North America. It was an indigenous person, an Indian, to use the phrase in the time, and that person had a scroll out of their mouth and in the language it had said to come and save us… something like that.

Barker: That was the original Puritans; that was their motto.

Jacobsen: There you go. 

Barker: When they came over, they had that sign ‘come over here and save us.’

Jacobsen: Yes. I’m going to be doing one of my friends, she’s Alaskan and American, she’s a Tsimshian. She’s a little bit of Haida, too. I started publishing with her ex-husband. He’s a carver, and he noted within their particular band, they were quick to adopt the Christian religion; he was an Anglican guy because they saw a close relationship between the totem and the cross, and they prided themselves on being the most progressive, the most willing to accept new ideas. And so, it was like a greased-wheel situation for European Christian Colonials for them. 

Barker: So, I have to go, Scott. It was fun talking to you again, Mandisa. 

Thomas: Yes, same here.

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