How This Black Atheist Was Inspired By Obama’s Eulogy For Rev. Clementa Pinckney

Reaction To Obama’s Speech

Anyway, after our long discussion we went our separate ways at about 2:30am, becauss I actually needed to work the next day at 8am (yeah, I know, but I’m a night owl), and then the news about same-sex marriage being legal kinda took center stage for me yesterday, so I didn’t come across Obama speech until today, although I did hear, here and there, about the fact that he sang “Amazing Grace.”

I was prepared not to like it for, among others, a couple reasons:

First, the concept of “grace” is highly offensive to me when it is referred to as something that is undeserved that God can choose to bestow or take away from you. Because God is often controlled by the rich, powerful, and/or influential (as he doesn’t actually exist, and they have the most power to define him), “grace” is granted to the Josh Duggars of the world, and denied all too often to others that Christians deem as unworthy. In addition, the concept of “grace” assumes that you need a special favor because you did something wrong – and all too often, the people controlling the God who supposedly gives grace hide in the gratitude for grace the nailing down of a “sin” that you needed grace for. They created the problem of sin and they give you grace to continue to control you. In short, as I’ve said elsewhere, becoming a Christian is like being forgiven for committing the worst murder in the history of ever. Leaving Christianity is like finding out that you were framed and the “forgiveness” was just a ploy to control you.

I really, really, detest the concept of being a “sinner” for similar reasons. I think there is no worse insult to human dignity than to say that we are unworthy of God’s glory, as if we have to apologize for our existence. We’re here because we belong here, and we’re part of all existence because – well, we exist. And, in addition, the concept of being a sinner is not dependent on what you did wrong and what you did right, it seems, so much as it is dependent on what people behind the idea of the puppet God want you to do. They can have God threaten you with hell if you don’t believe in the God they are trying to construct – and the fear they manipulate their congregations with in this way is disconcerting.

And third, the God of Christianity is closely tied in with the Bible. Elsewhere, I’ve spoken extensively regarding my many problems with that book, so I hardly see reason to hash it all out here.

I’ve spoken elsewhere about whether Obama is an atheist, and basically answered with an “it’s complicated” — but have also explained that the reason why many black individuals, like Obama, do not identify as an atheist is complex. I don’t think he really believes that the Bible is a history book, but I do think he has a strong belief in the black church, and I saw that tension in his speech on Friday.

I think “sin” is a man-made concept, a word made up for things that people think are wrong in some way. I have a major problem with the concept of “sin” in fundamentalism and most forms of Christianity, insofar as it is a word for something an Almighty God, often arbitrarily, says is a bad idea.

But Obama took the concept of “sin,” and applied the gloss of a community to it.

I know I’m walking a tightrope in what I’m about to say next. Many atheists I write for on a regular basis, and I myself, do not like the concept of sin, and most Christians fully embrace it. I’m not sure exactly who my audience is, here – if I haven’t lost you already, I may lose you in what I’m going to say next. But I can only hope that what I say is heard for what it actually is, with an open mind — a reaction from someone who is trying to be as honest and empathetic regarding the content of that speech as he can manage.

We atheists think certain things are “evil.” We will call things “wrong.” We don’t usually use the word “sin,” because it is so deeply entrenched in Christian tradition. It’s a dangerous word that invokes a God who has too often caused too many people unnecessary guilt, pain, and shame. But in the black church on that Friday afternoon, it took on a different meaning in the mouth of President Obama. The source of the word “sin” was not in the biblical story of Adam and Eve, but rather in a great wrong, a great evil – the greatest evil that the black church, and more than that the black population, in America can fathom.

The evil of slavery, which Obama called, “America’s original sin.”

And even though I hesitate to use the word “sin” to describe it, I cannot help but feel a sense of solidarity when a group of people whose very skin tone was seen as sinful, and who have been bludgeoned with the religion of Christianity and its definition of “sin” for 400 years, wrest control of that word from the mouths of racists, and turn the historically dangerous power of that word onto the prejudice that exists in this nation.

So, when Obama said:

“We do not know whether the killer of Reverend Pinckney and eight others knew all of this history, but he surely sensed the meaning of his violent act. It was an act that drew on a long history of bombs and arson and shots fired at churches, not random but as a means of control, a way to terrorize and oppress, an act that he imagined would incite fear and recrimination, violence and suspicion, an act that he presumed would deepen divisions that trace back to our nation’s original sin.”

It resonated.

And the memory of the conversation early in the morning yesterday with the liberal Episcopalian deacon came back to me. This was sin that was defined by a community — it was a way to fight back, to pack a punch with the influential metaphors of Christianity in order to respect nine people shot dead in a church. And then Obama said,

“But God works in mysterious ways.”

This God seemed to be a metaphorical device to change the writing of a story. It was a faith that whatever hardships came, the story could be written in a way that gave the deceased dignity. Dylann’s story that was meant to encourage an embrace of racism could be rejected as a bad script, and a new one could be written. And the respect for that script of equality and justice was exalted, reached out for, even seen as embodied behind the curtain of life’s current mysteries. You have a God of white supremacy and the KKK and the Westboro Baptist Church and Mike Huckabee and the Duggars? I’ll see your influential metaphor, Obama seemed to say, and raise you one of a God who will overcome your narrative, your harmful conceptualizations, your ill-conceived ideals.

I do not believe this God exists in reality. But if there is one thing I do believe in, however irrationally, it is in the community of our humanity, and our ability to make things better for each other and our planet. It may be a foolish belief. But I feel that this belief and hope is what life is for me. I would not presume that this need be true for all atheists, but it is the hope that opens my eyes every morning and allows me to smile at the new day. This full participation in the human life that we share during our time here, and the verse I have the privilege of contributing to the harmony within the symphony of existence, is what prompts me to sing.