“As an African American and an atheist, the recent stir caused by the PA Nonbelievers\/American Atheists billboard is both surprising and disheartening. While I expected a negative reaction from religious African Americans, I was disturbed to find dissent from Black people within the Secular Movement.<\/p>\n
The quote presented, “Slaves obey your masters,” was not taken out of context and is only one of the MANY locations in the Bible that you can observe a pro-slavery message. The image used was not created by American Atheists for this purpose, but was reprinted to illustrate the brutality that the Bible condones — and the reality of the conditions my ancestors endured. I am deeply saddened that the purpose of our billboard has been labeled as racist or as an “attack” on African Americans or a particular PA community. This vitriol is sorely misplaced, and should be directed at those who peddle Scripture as fact — or toward the PA House of Representatives that successfully sought to legislate it as such.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If you are rightfully upset by the Bible passage or the image used to represent it, do not take it up with American Atheists. We don’t agree with them either! The only difference is that we refuse to deny the reality of what is in the Bible, and its role the historical & ongoing oppression of African Americans. If that is controversial, then so be it. As long as 2012 is the “Year of the Bible” in PA, we will be providing even more samples of the “Good Book” to show the folks of Pennsylvania what their government thinks is important. Maybe 2013 will be the “Year of Improved Infrastructure” or the “Year of Job-Growth” instead.”<\/p>\n
AJ Johnson
\nDevelopment Director
\nAmerican Atheists<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“As an African American and an atheist, the recent stir caused by the PA Nonbelievers\/American Atheists billboard is both surprising and disheartening. While I expected a negative reaction from religious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[158,6,8],"tags":[94,117,192,102],"class_list":["post-387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news","category-opnion-commentary","category-religion-atheism","tag-atheism","tag-hypocrisy","tag-quotes","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":393,"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions\/393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}