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Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars Paperback – February 16, 2011
| Sikivu Hutchinson (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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- Print length280 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateFebruary 16, 2011
- Dimensions6 x 0.64 x 9 inches
- ISBN-10057807186X
- ISBN-13978-0578071862
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Product details
- Publisher : Infidel Books (February 16, 2011)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 280 pages
- ISBN-10 : 057807186X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0578071862
- Item Weight : 13.3 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.64 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,864,269 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,361 in Feminist Theory (Books)
- #22,631 in Ethnic Studies (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author

Sikivu Hutchinson is the author of Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles (Lang, 2003), Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars (Infidel Books, 2011), Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels (Infidel Books, 2013), the novel White Nights, Black Paradise (2015), on Black Women, Peoples Temple and the Jonestown massacre and Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical (Pitchstone, 2020). She is also the author of the plays Grinning Skull, Narcolepsy Inc, and White Nights, Black Paradise
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These thinking actually hurts black men . They are left to fend for themselves. Relationships that should bring joy are often a source of pain and despair.
The pastor tells the faithful to trust God and pray when they seek counsel. The truth is that the pastor is clueless and faring no better in his/ her relationships.
I still attend church and witness how guilt is used to fleece and abuse the faithful. Religion has it's place but the severe limits must be appreciated.
"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 American Social Thought, 5. Not Knocking on Heaven's Door, 6. In God We Trust: Whiteness and Public Morality, 7. The White Stuff: New Atheism and Its Discontents, and 8. The Road Ahead.
Positives:
1. Well researched, elegant and passionate prose.
2. I love books that provides me with a unique and new perspective on topics that I care about and this book does exactly that.
3. A book with conviction. Ms. Hutchinson provides compelling arguments for all her positions.
4. Great use of studies and well grounded references to back up her points.
5. This is the first book that makes it perfectly clear to me why African Americans embraced Christianity. With a number of well conceived explanations that hammers the point home. Bravo!
6. The key differences between black and white atheists.
7. An understanding of African American politics.
8. The courage to come out as an atheist in the black community.
9. The role of patriarchy and its impact.
10. The stranglehold of religion in the African American community.
11. Great wisdom throughout, "When the language of a given creed opposes human rights, no moral high ground can be claimed."
12. Religion and economics.
13. The dangers of faith based initiatives. Including the prison variety...
14. Prayers as the primary means of emotional therapy and why that is so.
15. Great quotes from African American atheists. "If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him." - James Baldwin.
16. Frederick Douglass the intellectual pioneer of African American free thought.
17. A historical look at African American atheism.
18. How the business of organized religion is detrimental to poor blacks. Fascinating topic.
19. How the Bible's view of violence against women justify treating them like property.
20. The truth about morality.
21. Thought-provoking book that challenges old cultural views. Example, scientific studies that indicate that there is "little solid evidence of sex differences in children's brains." My skeptic nature will force me to follow up on this since it goes against my preconceived notion but I will accept the facts according to the best evidence.
22. So much enlightening history in this book including recent history such as the Texas Board of Education making a mockery of the very institution they are suppose to uphold.
23. The issue of abortion.
24. God as the last refuge of scoundrels.
25. Pigliucci versus Harris on "scientism."
26. The importance of atheist movements incorporating more women and people of color.
27. Moral values in proper context.
28. Park space and its impact to children, interesting.
29. Incarceration rates and race.
30. Secular Humanism and the power to do good. In the African American community this will only be viable if it is culturally relevant.
31. The links worked great! Great references too.
32. One of the best Kindle values!
Negatives:
1. Graphs and illustrations never hurt to better illustrate points.
2. So many great books mentioned, a separate bibliography would have been welcomed.
3. Having to wait for Ms. Hutchinson's next book.
In summary, this is an enlightening book. One of the main reasons I love to read it's because great authors like Ms. Hutchinson take me to a world that I admittedly know very little about and expose me to new and interesting perspectives. The author summarizes in one sentence many of the topics covered in this excellent book, "For many black atheist women, atheism's appeal lies in its deconstruction of the bankrupt more, values and ideologies that prop up patriarchy, sexism, heterosexism, racism, white supremacy, imperialism, and economic injustice." An important book, I highly recommend it!
Recommendations: "Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, "Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know About Our Biological Diversity by Guy P. Harrison, "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism" by Susan Jacoby, "Doubt" by Jennifer Hecht, "American Fascists" by Chris Hedges, and "Man Made God: A Collection of Essays" by Barbara G. Walker.
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.





