It's Okay To Let Go: Why It's Time For Blacks To Walk Away From Christianity

By J.L. Ford

The vast majority of Black people have been loyal to Jesus and Christianity for hundreds of years and it's time we assess the return on our investment. In this book the effectiveness of this religion for the Black community is being called into question, and it's about time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.L. Ford
• Release date: Jun 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780989596572

Book preview

Just yesterday, I received a text message from my sister, who I refer to as the bearer of bad news.

The message informed me that Sister Davis, a long-time member of my father’s church, had passed away. It was a somber moment.

News of her death caused me to stop and think about some of the delightful moments I had in the Church as a child, moments I wouldn’t trade for the world. I thought about that one gray Easter suit I hated because my mother purchased it from Goodwill. I recalled singing the same song every Sunday because I was afraid to try anything challenging in front of the other parishioners. I remembered playing with my siblings on the church grounds while the adults talked after service, trying not to laugh as my cousins would make funny faces in my direction while my father preached, and getting big hugs from our own silver-haired angel, Sister Davis, every time we walked into the building.

I didn’t always like going to church, but I loved the cul-ture. Even now as an adult, there is so much that I will be forever grateful for, like the Church of Deliverance in Junction City, KS for welcoming me with so much love, and the lifelong friendships I found along my journey in the Christian faith.

Still, for all that I have gained from the experience, I realized that there was so much more that I had been missing out on, such as the sheer cost of holding to a religion that was not created for me or people who look like me. As is often said, ignorance is bliss. Throughout my awakening, I found that it is also expensive as fuck.

Let me make one point very clear, I am not anti-Christianity, nor am I against white people. If that is what you are looking for you will be sorely disappointed. In fact, I am not against anything or anyone as much as I can help it; rather, I choose to focus on things I am passionate about and believe to be righteous. What I am for, more than anything, is the liberation of black people, which will require breaking the chains of the last and most detrimental form of slavery, which is mental bondage.

The black mind has been forcefully intoxicated with the opiate of religion. We have developed a toxic attachment to Christianity, the handmaiden of white dominance, and a gross need to be a servant to a God who has done nothing for us as a people.

To be clear, I am not against Christianity, and for the most part, I have done my best to stay away from Christian bashing in this book because it’s not about beating up on the religion or its followers, but shedding light on the fact that this religion does not work to the benefit of black people, and never will. Religion will always benefit a people. In reference to Christianity we must beg the question, is it benefitting us?

When a family decides to give up a sizeable percentage of their income for tithes and offerings, and the Church places that money into white-owned banks that refuse to lend to black people who wish to start a business, who does that benefit?

When pictures of a white Savior-god hang on the walls of Black churches and homes, who does that benefit?

When we are passive about the troubles we face such as racial inequality and injustice because we are focused on a promised afterlife, who does this benefit?

When an unarmed black child is gunned down by those who have sworn to protect all, and the people respond with prayer and an immediate, I forgive you, who does that benefit?

When we beat our children and they grow to be angry, violent or abusive, then end up in the penal system, who does that benefit?

When our women are shut up or oppressed in any way, shape, or form, who does that benefit?

When we have a system of belief that has provided little more than hope when we’ve spent hundreds of years on our knees begging for action, who does that benefit?

For a long time in this country, we have reached for Black liberation. While we have made significant strides, we continue to fall short, and it is the result of reaching for liberation while holding onto the untouchable parts of ourselves, the beliefs and traditions that have been planted deeply within our core.

Understand, this is not about turning away from a God so much as it is about turning toward the truth. That truth is that this omniscient God has not been present for us as a people. This all-powerful God has offered no protection for us as a people. This all-loving God has shown no love to us as a people. And, after all that we have endured, He has failed on His promise of returning for His own.

The truth is that we do not need a fiction book with talking animals and empty promises, and we do not need a shortsighted, baby killing, warmongering, jealous and rage driven, trivial-minded, misogynistic, irrational and petulant childlike God. We are more than capable of understanding right from wrong, being the answers to each other’s prayers, and governing our own lives.

Still, I am under no illusion that people will simply walk away from their God, no matter how non-deserving He or She is of their servitude. My goal is simply to show you the ways in which Christianity is and has been, hurting you; and, more importantly, how it has caused more harm than good in our push for Black Liberation and Black Power.

CHAPTER ONE

Questioning God

Reverend Clementa Pinckney

Reverend Daniel Simmons Sr.

Cynthia Hurd

Sharonda Singleton

Myra Thompson

Tywanza Sanders

Reverend DePayne Middleton-Doctor

Susie Jackson

Ethel Lance

On June 17 of 2015, these faithful servants of the Christian God walked into a Charleston, SC. sanctuary to enjoy an evening of fellowship and prayer. Unbeknownst to them, they would not leave alive. Instead, their lifeless bodies, torn by the hollow-point bullets of a Glock 41 handgun, would be carried out in black body bags.

The breaking news of the event paralyzed most of the country with consternation and disbelief. Even in a culture that has become accustomed and desensitized to mass shootings, this gruesome outlier shot right into the hearts of millions of people. It impacted the Black community especially hard. It wasn’t just the fact that nine of our own brothers and sisters were killed. It wasn’t just because the shots were fired by yet another hate-filled white man. It was the location of this tragedy that made this specific massacre all the more haunting: the church. Historically, the church was the one place where the Black community was able to seek comfort and refuge in a country that has always been hostile towards us. It was the reminder that we can count on anytime we become passive or complacent, that we share a home with evil, and there has been little protection from it besides that which we have provided for ourselves.

I cannot say I felt much of anything as I stood in front of the television watching the news coverage. There was the initial shock, and then I fell numb. As the reporter shared the horrifying details of the senseless murders, I asked myself a very simple question, one that I am sure many did before their training and life-long indoctrination caused them to dismiss it altogether.

Where was their all-powerful God when they needed Him the absolute most?

I’m not the first to ponder this; I’m sure a wife once asked this while her husband and son became what Abel Meeropol would call strange fruit, dangling from the limb of an old tree. It is likely a husband once asked this question while being forced to witness the rape of his wife by their slave master, or when he helplessly watched as his children were torn away from the grasp of their mother to be sold like cattle. Perhaps some asked when four little girls (Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair) became a part of the ashes of a predominantly Black Alabama church in 1963 when it was bombed and burned to the ground by the Ku Klux Klan. Maybe a few of those who heard the news of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, or those who actually viewed the indistinguishable face of Emmett Till at his funeral.

I am sure that I am not the first to wonder where God was, while all of this was happening.

Emmitt Till. In 1955, after being accused of flirting with a white woman, the 14-year-old boy was lynched by two white men: the husband of the woman and his half-brother. The lynching consisted of him being beaten, mutilated, shot dead, and having his body sunk with a weight to the bottom of the Tallahatchie River. Although the men confessed to the crime, they were acquitted by an all-white jury. The photo displays the before and after. Photo: Crime Magazine

Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair. Killed Sept. 15, 1963 when four members of the Ku Klux Klan planted dynamite beneath the front steps of a church. Photo: Huffington Post

It’s an uncomfortable question, but one many praying people ponder. Sure, bad things will happen. It is the ebb and flow of life; but is it too much to ask an all-powerful God to, at the very least, whisper a warning in the ears of his own worshippers that a gunman is on the way? I’m not talking about a supernatural occurrence whereby the gunman shoots at the parishioners and all of the bullets stop just short of them and fall to the ground. No, just a simple Excuse me, sorry to interrupt your prayer to Me, but there is a gunman on the way so, you may want to get the hell out of here, and quickly! would suffice. When you combine the years of service and the amount of faith that existed among the nine people killed in church that day, you would have to admit that they deserved at least that much. Instead, the apologists insist that we stand on faith and excuse God’s inaction because that would be an interference of free will. I also ask, is it fair to allow some-one’s free will to be taken away by someone who has their mind made up to commit an atrocious crime against him or her? I have to say, no.

There was a painful and pivotal moment in my life when I was forced to ask myself these questions. I did not wish to, and morally, it felt wrong doing so because, for all of my life, I was taught to never question the will or judgment of God. I was adopted as a baby; a fact I did not learn until I was a teenager. My parent’s recollection of the events surrounding the adoption of me and my sister, and why it happened, was void of many details. It didn’t take much thought, however, to piece together that, for whatever reason, they could not bare their own children, and so they adopted. There were many times that my father would tell us I never had dreams of wanting a lot of money or notoriety. I always wanted children. I loved the idea of being a family man. A reasonable desire when you take into account that there are so many men who run from that kind of responsibility. I have such a love and appreciation for my parents, not only for choosing me to be their own, but for loving me in a way that makes me question if I were ever really adopted at all. Secretly, I prayed my parents would be able to bare their own children one day.

In the fall of 2003, my parents received the news they believed would never come: they were expecting a child. At the time, my mother was 47-years-old. It was the miracle baby that gave an entire community hope that God performed one of His miracles. After one failed pregnancy in my mother’s younger days, adopting seven children, and my parents all but giving up on the dream of having their own, I had a baby sister on the way.

My mother and father were so full of Joy, they looked and acted the part of two kids who’d just fallen in love. It was an amazing thing to witness. It was a very high place to be, and the fall would be catastrophic; not only for their hearts and dreams, but also for our faith.

You see, at that time, I was what we call down south on fire for the Lord. Somewhere in the desert sands of Iraq, as a soldier for the U.S. Army, I had become a servant of the Lord. I was intense in my pursuit for the heart of God. I read the Bible from dawn ‘till dusk. I attended church services in bombed out buildings and sang praises to the top of my lungs. I prayed fervently into the midnight hours, and shed tears when others refused to listen to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yes, I was definitely on fire and in love with the relationship I felt I shared with the one true loving and eternal God. But all of that changed when I needed him the most, and he was no-where to be found.

Jereme! my father called, waking me from a deep sleep. I was home from Iraq for a few weeks and enjoying my