During the Q&A after his talk earlier this month at a City Club forum, one of the questioners (after making a long, rambling preamble in which she explained how hip-hop shaped her world views during her youth) asked Ta-Nehisi Coates if his views on religion have changed since the publication of his now famous book Between the World and Me.

Coates didn’t make a big deal of it in the book, but he was very clear in stating that he was raised in a family that didn’t engage in religious practices, and as an adult, neither does he. And, while he didn’t flat out state that he was an atheist, his views on religion were made quite clear, at least for anyone who is willing to respect them.

The questioner was obviously attempting to give Coates the opportunity to back away from his position by seeming to suggest that perhaps he was just “spiritual” and therefore not someone whose belief system was something she was uncomfortable with. But, alas, her attempt was futile.

Coates brushed aside the woman’s suggestion that he perhaps was spiritual — and really not an atheist after all — and flatly stated that he indeed was an atheist. He then expanded upon the reasons for his unbelieving in deities or gods.

The author holds that religion was — and to a large degree still is — used as a pacifier, a tool to keep poor people accepting of their downtrodden lot in life in the belief that a better world awaits them somewhere on the “other side” — in some kind of heaven — a place that is better by far than the misery they are currently experiencing on this earth.

And, in order to get to that greater reward in the sky, these true believers sincerely feel they have to stoically shoulder their reduced circumstances in this world like good little believers, while other so-called believers are robbing, looting, plundering and desecrating them and their culture — all in the name of whatever God they pray to.

The constant recurrent bombing of black churches over the decades is proof positive of the hatred harbored by those who would limit black progress, no matter how overwhelmingly devoted to their God people of color happen to be. Our fealty has all too often been repaid with oppression, primarily visited upon us by those whites that loudly profess to be Christians, while wearing hoods over their heads, carrying fiery crosses and hiding behind the Confederate flag.

One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve become more and more acquainted with history and cultures is this: Any group of people who pray to a God of another color are usually poor, downtrodden and taken advantage of, even in their own countries.

An incisive and illuminating quote has been variously ascribed to individuals as disparate as Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu, Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta and Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii: “When the missionaries came, they had all of the Bibles and we had all of the land. They then said, ‘Let us close our eyes and pray.’ When we opened them again, we had all of the Bibles, and they had all of our land.”

Indeed.

Does any of the preceding mean that I too am an atheist? No. I’m a dedicated agnostic; I work from the perspective of an enlightened secular humanist. I neither believe in nor need the promise of an afterlife to reach a self-actualized operational level. I do what I do not out of some promise of recompense somewhere down the road and in another place, but because it’s the right thing to do for the here and now: To leave this world a better place than when I first set foot upon it.

However, with that said, I deeply respect the rights of others to hold their deep religious convictions, and simply wish those individuals would also be respectful of mine — and indeed those held by Coates. To fail to respect the non-belief of others is one of the truest forms of bigotry.

Nonetheless, I firmly do believe in the concept of “Grace” — a very complex term with many definitions. Grace has manifested itself and been bestowed upon me and the projects I’ve undertaken in so many ways I cannot doubt its existence, power and ability to influence outcomes. But I also believe that Grace is earned, not prayed for. It’s the reward for doing good deeds, or at least doing the best you can with what you are given to work with.

And that’s what Ta-Nehisi Coates is doing with his powerful pen: The best he can to expose the fact that for the last half century, since the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, there really has been an attempt by some to return us to the Dark Ages of racism. We innately know, but need constant reminding of the fact that enemies of equality, fairness and justice are constantly attempting to block our progress by any means they can conceive of.

Coates’ writing sheds light into those hidden corners of America’s sometimes sordid history so that we don’t continue to stumble around in the dark in search of the truth. Which, in the end — and in spite of his avowed atheism — makes this brilliant young writer a Messiah of sorts, doesn’t it?

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com. 

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