David Anderson

“Ultimately, the concept of a religious left is problematic at its core because the Bible (or for that matter the Koran, Torah, etc.) cannot be used to unequivocally defend and advance human rights. Using Fox News, Christian radio, and the Internet as bully pulpits, Christian fundamentalists have capitalized on this simple unimpeachable fact and built a political empire. They have hidden behind scripture to justify and advance a fascist agenda that has set the struggle for democracy in the U.S. back decades.”
― Sikivu Hutchinson in Moral Combat Black Atheists Gender Politics and the Values Wars

“The idea that the commodification and suffering and forced labor of African Americans is what made the United States powerful and rich is not an idea that people necessarily are happy to hear. Yet it is the truth.”
― Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

“James Baldwin’s words haunt: “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” Are we a nation of monsters?”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“At an 1870 Anti-Slavery Society convention, Frederick Douglass proclaimed, 'I bow to no priests either of faith or of unfaith. I claim as against all sorts of people, simply perfect freedom of thought.' Douglass' comments were in response to black preachers' insistence he 'thank' God for Emancipation. His failure to be appropriately devout elicted a firestorm. After his speech, a group of prominent black preachers passed a Resolution censuring him....This rebuke was perhaps one of the first documented instances of the black 'authenticity police' trying to silence an eminent thinker.”
― Sikivu Hutchinson in Moral Combat Black Atheists Gender Politics and the Values Wars