Social Justice Magazine
In her landmark work In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Alice Walker wrote: “What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmother’s time? Our great-grandmothers’ day? Did you have a genius of a great-great-grandmother who died under some ignorant and depraved white overseer’s lash? Or was her body broken and forced to bear children (who were more often than not sold … [Read more...]
Lately, the sound of galloping hooves and rustling white sheets has risen in a deafening squall from the Capitol. Like their Klan ancestors, elite white males in Congress’ political lynch mob are once again savaging communities of color. The House’s vote to gut Planned Parenthood is a criminal act against poor and working class women and their families. In many rural and urban neighborhoods … [Read more...]
Religion Dispatches Interview with Sikivu HutchinsonWhat inspired you to write Moral Combat?As an African American feminist atheist I found that there were virtually no books that explicitly addressed the intersection of gender, race, sexual orientation, and humanist ideology from the lens of progressive politics. The most visible, widely-touted representatives of the atheist movement are … [Read more...]
Jean Simmons and Burt Lancaster in "Elmer Gantry" The con man claimed to be a devout man of God: the title “visionary” figured prominently on his business card. Going door-to-door with promises of easy mortgage-refinancing deals and claiming to have a direct line to the Lord, Timothy Barnett wheedled his way into the houses of elderly homeowners in South Los Angeles. Scared, vulnerable, and … [Read more...]
17-year-old suspect in custody at Gardena High School (LA Times) An hour before last Tuesday’s accidental shooting at Gardena High School the campus radiated calm and placidity. I had just finished doing a workshop on homophobia and gender stereotypes with a peer health class headed by the fabulous teacher Debbie Wallace. The campus is a big geographic hybrid. It abuts a train corridor to the … [Read more...]
What is it about “death with dignity” that Christian fascists don’t understand? Recently the ultra right wing crackpot at the blog American Power came out swinging against dearly departed Satanist Elizabeth Edwards. Apparently the ailing Edwards wasn’t clear about her submission to God in her deathbed message to family and friends.In a final Facebook posting before her death on … [Read more...]
As a radical humanist critic of America’s Christian slavocracy Frederick Douglass once wrote, “I prayed for twenty years and received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” What would Douglass, a trailblazing male feminist, have made of the brutal ironies of twenty first century black America? How would he have reconciled the “triumph” of its first black president with the travesty … [Read more...]
“God hates fags,” says the face of terror. It is the now repugnantly familiar slogan of the Westboro Church, a clan of white Christian fundamentalists recently in the public spotlight for a Supreme Court free speech case on anti-gay protests at military funerals. This particular brand of free speech is pure stars and stripes terror, easily repudiated by the enlightened, easily placed in that … [Read more...]
Who was it who said that it would be easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a filthy rich pastor with a $350,000 Bentley to get into the Kingdom of God? And how long will it be before the Lord, working mysteriously, delivers New Birth Missionary Church Bishop Eddie Long -- Bentley ditched for a Pinto -- sobbing Jimmy Swaggart cum Ted Haggard-style in a warm lather of repentance … [Read more...]
During the 19th century the “Manifest Destiny” of the United States was one of “God-ordained” expansionism. African slaves, indigenous peoples, Mexican nationals and other “non-Europeans” were deemed aliens and enemy combatants, anathema to the democratizing force of America. Using that “old time religion” to shepherd the flock on the 47th anniversary of the 1963 March on … [Read more...]
In one of the more ham-fistedly symbolic episodes of the 1960s Twilight Zone series, a Kafkaesque tribunal declares people to be “obsolete” based on their allegiance to outmoded cultural practices like literacy and critical thought. Operating in the same vein, the Los Angeles Times’ recent publication of the so-called “value-added” assessments of Los Angeles Unified elementary teachers … [Read more...]
I have a vivid memory of the first time I became aware that children could die. It was early evening in the leisurely dusk of summer, and after eating with my mother at a local coffee shop, we passed by a newspaper vending machine outside. A child victim, kidnapped, murdered and disposed of like garbage, stared ominously out at me from the front page of the paper in grainy black and white. I … [Read more...]
The intersection of Figueroa and Slauson in South Los Angeles is an unremarkable one, a mundane swath fronting a gas station, an old train right of way, and a Harbor freeway overpass. It is the site of a spate of serial murders committed during a ten-year period by serial rapist and murderer Chester Dewayne Turner.Like the Grim Sleeper serial killer, Turner, aka the South Side Slayer, stalked … [Read more...]
My daughter is no princess. Loud, assertive, and headstrong, she would just as soon as stomp on a castle drawbridge with her size six feet than pine coyly from it, twirling a dainty lock of hair waiting for a Ken doll suitor. Yet the multi-billion dollar media marketing regime is poised to shoehorn her 2-year-old self into being one. As any parent with eyes and a pulse knows, a trip to … [Read more...]
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Black Atheists in the Pulpit
Black Atheists in the Pulpit: Dialogue with Zion Hill Baptist Church Congregants of Zion Hill Baptist Church in South Los Angeles probably thought Pastor Seth Pickens was certifiable when he proposed a community dialogue with the L.A. Black Skeptics Group. Founded in March of last year, the group provides a safe real time space for atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, humanists, and skeptics … [Read more...]