Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars by Sikivu Hutchinson

May 25, 2013 Chris Cameron rated it 5 of 5 stars

"In an era in which African American communities nationwide are in socioeconomic crisis, the cultural dominance of organized religion merits critical evaluation. In a political climate in which the social justice compass of the Black Church has been broken by consumerism, institutional sexism, and faith-based with hunts of gays and lesbians, its moral capital is increasingly dubious." (2)

This declaration sets the tone for Moral Combat. Throughout this beautifully written work, Sikivu Hutchinson...more

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Sep 14, 2012 Nebuchadnezzar rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: gender-and-sexuality, politics-and-political-philosophy, religion-and-atheism

In Moral Combat, Sikivu Hutchinson provides a searing indictment of... well, the list would get extremely long fairly quick. Hutchinson provides an informed critique of the role of the black church in American society, noting its role in the civil rights movement as well as its more recent footsie-playing with the religious right. By exploring the intersection between religion, class, race, gender, and sexual orientation, Hutchinson manages to simultaneously keep her focus on a narrow and unders...more

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Jun 09, 2012 Rational Thought rated it 5 of 5 stars

I’m a member of a black atheist group based in central Florida (Black Nonbelievers of Metro Orlando). Our group was very fortunate to have Dr. Sikivu Hutchison participate in an illuminating, real-time discussion about her book Moral Combat. She answered many of our questions during the discussion, and she engaged us with thoughtful questions of her own. It doesn’t get much better than when you can have a book discussion with the author who wrote the book.

As for the book itself, Moral Combat dee...more I’m a member of a black atheist group based in central Florida (Black Nonbelievers of Metro Orlando). Our group was very fortunate to have Dr. Sikivu Hutchison participate in an illuminating, real-time discussion about her book Moral Combat. She answered many of our questions during the discussion, and she engaged us with thoughtful questions of her own. It doesn’t get much better than when you can have a book discussion with the author who wrote the book.

As for the book itself, Moral Combat deeply explores areas largely untouched by authors who make up the so-called New Atheist crowd. In her book, Hutchinson writes about the acute impact of religion on people of color in general and black Americans in particular, as well as what sets black atheists apart from their white counterparts. Working with an analysis that simultaneously employs multiple ways of looking at the social and cultural social forces that impact religion —race, socioeconomics , gender, heteronormativity, just to name a few of these forces—Hutchinson’s writing in Moral Combat tackles very fascinating topics. Some of these fascinating topics include the following: the plausible link between storefront churches and the lack of commercial investment black urban communities; how race and religion come together in the national political arena; how race and religion converge to the extent that they create or otherwise perpetuate ideas we have about black femininity; and the various unique challenges that black atheists and black secular humanists face in both the secular and religious worlds. Various other topics that connect with the themes spelled out by the book’s subtitles are examined as well.

With titles that range from “In God We Trust: Whiteness and Public Morality” to “This Far by Faith? Race Traitors and Gender Apostates,” Moral Combat is a book of eight chapters, each the result of meticulous research. The book is very contemporary, largely focusing on developments of the twenty-first century. However, Hutchinson does make some occasional turns to moments in history in order to provide important historical insights. Although the book’s language made this reviewer think that Hutchinson’s target group of readers is an intellectual audience, several personal anecdotes are effectively incorporated within the book’s chapters; they are a very nice touch. Indeed, the book’s revelations about the author’s life as a mother, her life as a young girl, her life as a black feminist atheist, and Hutchinson’s experiences as a founder of a black skeptics organization provide a humanizing quality for material that can otherwise be abstract and esoteric.

There are not many books comparable to Moral Combat. This is because Moral Combat is a breakthrough in the publishing industry: there are no other contemporary books on atheism like it available on a wide scale. With Moral Combat, Hutchinson has definitely made a much needed contribution.
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Sep 30, 2011 Jorge rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: atheism-religion

Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Value Wars by Sikivu Hutchinson

"Moral Combat" is an enlightening book about the current struggle of black humanist atheist beliefs from a feminist point of view. This informative 280-page book is composed of the following eight chapters: 1. "Out of the Closet": Black Atheists in Moral Combat, 2. This Far by Faith? Race traitors and Gender Apostates, 3. The Politics of Urban Religiosity, 4. Black Infidels: Secular Humanism and African Americ...more

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Mar 16, 2011 Ikonoklast rated it 5 of 5 stars

I don't know where to begin, but this book is PHENONMIAL!!! It doesn’t miss a beat at all! Sikivu, for one, you are damn good writer! Having read The God Delusion, I must say it had the tendency to get very dry, but not Moral Combat. It’s filled with a dialectical analysis of why it is people of color are so religious. I think the thing I really enjoyed about the book is that explored how it is most people of color come to being an atheist in the first place, COLONIAL EXPLOTATION! I mean really,...more I don't know where to begin, but this book is PHENONMIAL!!! It doesn’t miss a beat at all! Sikivu, for one, you are damn good writer! Having read The God Delusion, I must say it had the tendency to get very dry, but not Moral Combat. It’s filled with a dialectical analysis of why it is people of color are so religious. I think the thing I really enjoyed about the book is that explored how it is most people of color come to being an atheist in the first place, COLONIAL EXPLOTATION! I mean really, honestly, the scientific aspect being a major factor for me becoming an atheist, wasn’t really in my purview as much as the exploitation we suffer around the world being Western colonial subjects (the paradigmatic positioning of the African as being the “The Other”. We are nonbeings; we are the object that civil society points to so that they can know that they are alive. Our suffering being placed outside the confines of humanity is key to the existence of civil society; we are a fungible commodity to be used at will).

Another issue I am so glad you brought to light is the fact that we as African people in America (and abroad), aren’t “real Black people” if we are atheist, as if we are some type of alternative Negroes. You blow that myth right out of the water! I find the gender analysis amazing as well, as a male I must admit more blind spot in respect to why it is women of color are so hyper-religious ( I love to learn and you have taught me well. I thank you for clearing up my blind spot on this fundamental fact). Being that I am an atheist and a socialist, this book is an invaluable tool for politically educating people of color.

Basically, Sikivu you have done what we as Africans and all people of color need to do with all Western political and social thought (in terms of how white atheist think that merely subscribing to rational thought means it is impossible for them to be racist.); that is acknowledge the contributions that Western thought has brought to the world (Marxism…etcetera), but we also need to expose its objective blind spots of eliminating people of color (colonized people) from its purview, and then take this extended analysis into the world to eradicate suffering of all people. Western thought isn’t universal thought; it was/is developed within a culture (colonial) context. For example, if Western workers want to eliminate worker exploitation, then they need to look at the fulcrum from which their exploitation exists (i.e. raw materials from former colonial nations-the exploitation of The Third World and its people around the world).

I will defiantly be doing a write up of this book within the end of this month or beginning of next month on my website www.peopleofcolororaganize.com Everyone look for Sikivu’s writings on www.blackagendareport.com (that’s how I found out about her). Thank you, thank you, Sikivu! It’s hard at out here for a socialist-internationalist-atheist-brother in the Bible Belt South, and your book is a breath of fresh air in the religious cesspool of blind-faith and the fetishism of patriarchy which I must endure on a daily basis. You are a brilliant and brave person! PLEASE KEEP DOING WHAT YOU DO!
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Mar 08, 2011 Stephen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Well-researched critique of how a growing number of African American
atheists are resisting the social pressures of the community for unquestioned membership to the Black Church and to blindly adhere to Christian doctrine as it is taught by leaders now alligned with the politics of the Christian Right. Hutchinson examines the contadictions of the Church's male leaders ignoring important economic issues facing the Black community -- jobs, education, and the mortgage crisis -- for the social agend...more

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Mar 06, 2011 Jean Marie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Sikivu, i always love your writings, loved reading this book.

Powerful, well written, and thought provoking, as usual, Sikivu explores an extremely complex issue that does indeed, have a large impact on our communities and so few attempt exploring black religiousity, especially not with Hutchinson's brave unflinching, well researched style of enlightening us.

there is indeed, a much a higher mountain for black, feminist atheists, yet, dispite the strong opposition they have to rise above/overcome...more

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Dec 08, 2011 Alyson Miers rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Coming to the end of Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and the Values Wars by Sikivu Hutchinson, I am forcibly reminded of PZ Myers’s endorsement of The Greatest Show On Earth, by Richard Dawkins.

There are no more excuses. None.

Perhaps it’s a bad sign that I can’t think of a better comparison than a recent biology-focused tome by Prof. Dawkins, but bear with me a few minutes.

While Prof. Dawkins chose an ambitious but uncomplicated project of establishing in layman-friendly terms th...more Coming to the end of Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and the Values Wars by Sikivu Hutchinson, I am forcibly reminded of PZ Myers’s endorsement of The Greatest Show On Earth, by Richard Dawkins.

There are no more excuses. None.

Perhaps it’s a bad sign that I can’t think of a better comparison than a recent biology-focused tome by Prof. Dawkins, but bear with me a few minutes.

While Prof. Dawkins chose an ambitious but uncomplicated project of establishing in layman-friendly terms the reality of Darwinian natural selection, Dr. Hutchinson’s book takes place at a very different degree of sociological difficulty. She places herself between the black church, the larger white-supremacist and patriarchal society, and the developing atheist movement, and she schools them all. There are few people left uncriticized by her scholarship, only some largely invisible and unheard slivers of society left uninstructed to unpack some invisible baggage.

When it is finished, there are no more excuses. None. There should be no more hand-waving away the need for a wider range of voices in the freethinking movement, no more man-splaining and white-splaining about what issues should “really” be the focus of skepticism and atheism, and no more clueless hand-wringing over why there aren’t more women or more people of color involved in outspoken atheism. There are no more excuses for failure to comprehend these concerns, no more assuming that skepticism begins with the Big Bang and ends with Bigfoot. Outside of the New Atheism, there should be no more telling the godless that for the sake of harmony we should simply stop being so noisy about our non-belief. There should be no more pointing to disadvantaged groups’ reliance on religion as evidence of its veracity. There should be no more attempts to silence atheism with the presupposition that religion maintains a more ethical, just and civil society regardless of its explanatory power. These are the questions that live at the intersection of sexism, racism, economic injustice and religion in America, and if you just sit down for a while and prepare yourself to unlearn some party lines, Dr. Hutchinson will make everything clear.

There will be some ideas expressed in her book with which you disagree, and some connections explored with which you were previously unfamiliar, and that is only more reason to become acquainted with these concerns. Fear not the expanse of an overly ambitious tome, for Dr. Hutchinson’s writing covers an astonishing breadth and depth of research and insight in a remarkably modest word count. There is no more need for multi-megabyte Internet explosions of privileged obliviousness over godless demographic issues. Here are the answers to your questions.(less)

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Mar 15, 2011 Diane rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wonderful book that opens with a steep dive into the origins of the intersections of religion and racial identity in America--and yes this is just the opening. A fascinating and careful analysis between the intra-cultural dynamics of various African-American communities and the "never quite right" depictions of them in mainstream media. Aside from being a sharply critical and informative read, Hutchinson's Moral Combat, is also vivid and beautifully written book. I literally felt as if I was co-...more

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Jul 28, 2011 Leaving Samsāra rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: agitators, innovators, iconoclasts, and billy badasses

Shelves: africana, heathens-and-infidels, anthroapologies, evidence-of-things-not-seen, politics-and-bullshit, polysemous-performance, race-ism-and-class-ism, read-it-and-reap

Dr. Hutchinson did it on ‘em, she ran the streets and broke up houses on that ass. Yes she did, totally eviscerated the animosity of religiosity found within the African American community and snatched the wig completely off of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy in its many forms. YES, YES, YES! I loved how she shows the benefits of humanism as a framework to combat the ills of racism, heterosexism, and class inequalities. Heathens, people of color, women, LGBTs, and the underclass (the Oth...more

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Sep 21, 2011 Michael Strode rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Michael by: Kamau Rashid

Shelves: blackfreethought, afrowomenwrite, wishlist, afroessential, read-in-2011

"A radical progressive humanism recognizes that hand-wringing about diversity—be it in education, corporate America or cultural movements—without challenging the power dynamics of access and visibility, makes white supremacy a self-fulfilling prophecy." ~ Sikivu Hutchinson

After 10 years as the most prominent tool in my moral and intellectual arsenal, Ancient Future has been supplanted by the fierce effluence of ideas Sikivu Hutchinson has assembled in this manuscript. Moral Combat is easily the...more "A radical progressive humanism recognizes that hand-wringing about diversity—be it in education, corporate America or cultural movements—without challenging the power dynamics of access and visibility, makes white supremacy a self-fulfilling prophecy." ~ Sikivu Hutchinson

After 10 years as the most prominent tool in my moral and intellectual arsenal, Ancient Future has been supplanted by the fierce effluence of ideas Sikivu Hutchinson has assembled in this manuscript. Moral Combat is easily the most extensive modern black humanist examination I have encountered as I discovered myself on this sojourn to disconnect from the spiritual yoke which held me bound in years past. A yoke that I thought essential to exist as an ethical being whose grip I pursued through Pentecostal, Rastafari, Islamic and the Black Liberation Theological construct finding no satisfaction.

The sojourn eventually found me accepting solitude as the most perfect personal practice when group formations were given to paternalism and authoritarian instruction. In that solitude, I discovered that I was gradually more open to question all manner of ritual and tradition which gave rise to a rich skepticism. The skepticism began to pervade all areas of life until I had renewed my understanding of feminist tradition, black humanist social critique, and the history of power, race and privilege. All of these topics are investigated exceptionally by Hutchinson throughout Moral Combat.

Sikivu Hutchinson, true to occupation, writes with a densely packed professorial tenor striving to make every word explode upon impact. Upon first read this can be off putting because in conjunction with the multitude of ideas covered, one occasionally struggles to keep up. But once you reach a reader's stride which occurred for me after the second chapter, you move into the space where you desire to mark a notation upon every page where language strikes a chord or spurs you toward action. As I found myself rounding the corner of chapter three, my head was dizzy from all of the various cross references that made themselves apparent in my recent reading schedule.

As Hutchinson was remarking upon the government sponsored "white flight" and reinforcement of class divisions, I was meditating on Beryl Satter's "Family Properties" and pondering how those policies took root on the local level in Chicago creating the racially stratified city that now exists in the present day. When she invokes the notions of artificially earned white social mobility, I am reminded of Ira Katznelson's "When Affirmative Action Was White". Even her critique of the white atheist obsession with lambasting "religious identity" in the privileged pursuit of scientific aims caused me to recall that a generation of Black freethinkers were lost to a certain betrayal at the hands of Communism during the period of the New Negro Renaissance.

In Moral Combat, Hutchinson provides not only a present day lesson on the most pertinent aspects of the American culture and values wars, but she also reaches deep into the historical context in order to extract an understanding of how the tree was grown from unmistakably deep roots. No person of interest is held sacred from her examination from the white atheist or feminist unaware of their own sense of privilege to the black woman complicit in her own religious subjugation to the black man whose interpretation of masculinity reinforces all of the worst patriarchal forms of an enslaved past.

Hutchinson reminds in this text that a rich and enlightening skepticism requires not simply that we question religion or government, but that we question gender roles and privilege and power dynamics and leadership. She reminds us that a deep and moving humanism must overwhelm all of our previous notions about the world which were each and every one formed in a poisoned vacuum and now need to be rebuilt from the ground floor. So grab a hammer and smash that sacred cow to your left.(less)

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Jan 27, 2012 Stefan rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book has a good message, but it needs to be cleaned up a bit with more and better footnotes. I'm giving it four stars for its content.

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Jan 20, 2012 Meen rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: ALL HUMAN BEINGS

Recommended to Meen by: Sikivu Hutchinson

Shelves: feminist-womanist-gender, lgbtqia-lmnop, race-racism-colonial-imperial-ism, theory-philosophy-law, own-it, religion-spirituality-atheism

Brilliant, just brilliant. And oh so, necessary. Thank you for your vital work, Sikivu Hutchinson!

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