Humanists in the Hood can be bought here:

What a time to be alive watching the United States of America have NASA and SpaceX (of Elon Musk) jointly launch the first astronauts to the International Space Station since 2011, where some of the largest protests in American history for women’s rights and protection of civilian people of colour’s lives in recent years happen and then followed by massive and nation-wide protests over the murder of George Floyd and others, and all the while over 40,000,000 Americans are unemployed, and more than 100,000 are dead from the coronavirus, an interesting dichotomy marking much of the thematic interplays of American history harkening back to the first Black president sketch of the late Richard Pryor, “I feel it’s time Black people went to space. White people have been going to space for years, and spacing out on us, as you might say.” [Emphasis added.]

Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson is a brilliant writer and a decent human being, who writes articulately with moral force while working in and supporting underserved communities in which she lives in South Los Angeles. Hutchinson is a black woman sexual violence survivor (as a girl at the time) and a parent of a non-binary child, granddaughter of Earl Hutchinson Sr., and daughter of Yvonne Divans Hutchinson and Earl Ofari Hutchinson. She earned a Ph.D. in Performance Studies in 1999 from New York University.

She founded the Women’s Leadership Project (WLP) as “a feminist service learning program designed to educate and train young middle and high school age women in South Los Angeles to take ownership of their school-communities.” Also, she founded Black Skeptics Los Angeles (BSLA), which became part of the 501(c)3 organization Black Skeptics Group (BSG – founded in 2010) in 2012. She is a co-founder of the Women of Colour Beyond Belief Conference with Bridgett “Bria” Crutchfield (Minority Atheists of MI, Detroit affiliate of Black Nonbelievers, and Operation Water For Flint) and Mandisa Thomas (Black Nonbelievers), which featured speakers as wide-ranging as Liz Ross, Candace Gorham, Deanna Adams, Cecilia Pagan, Ingrid Mitchell, Lilandra Ra, Marquita Tucker, Mashariki Lawson-Cook, Rajani Gudlavaletti, Sonjiah Davis, and Sadia Hameed.

Her work and speaking have crossed paths with several prominent African American and Black freethinkers, including Desiree Kane, Anthony Pinn, Bobby Joe Champion, Sikivu Hutchinson, Andrea Jenkins, Charone Pagett, Diane Burkholder, Juhem Navarro-Rivera, Heina Dadabhoy, Sincere Kirabo, Candace Gorham, Liz Ross, and many others. Her previous works include Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles (Travel Writing Across the Disciplines) (2003), Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars (2011), Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels (2013), and White Nights, Black Paradise (2015). As well, she released a short film on White Nights, Black Paradise in 2016, which was made into a stage production in 2018.

As seems implicit in the works, any social, economic, and political progress for the godless will come in ethical form, as immoral acts in attempts to force or coerce an overarching ethical movement will provide ammunition for demagogues who wish to – so to speak – crush a neck with a knee or silence citizens who wish to protest by taking a knee. In short, she reads not only what comes in the academic volumes in intellectual interests for her, but she acts as a positive humanist agent in South Los Angeles, in particular, and America, in general, with a number of initiatives, including the First in the Family Humanist scholarship. Both personal attributes of intellectual rigour and community work come together in the written works for her. Humanists in the Hood becomes another manifestation of the universalist ink of Hutchinson.

In many ways, Hutchinson stands intellectually alone, as happens with many Black humanists in the global diaspora of Humanism. This is not to deny or neglect the reality of organizational and media buttresses, at times, for, or by, Black humanists. Certainly, supports have begun to grow, in part. However, in the cases of supports developed externally to the Black humanist community, how much sentiment is not overweening, affected, and simply nakedly fake? A woman in interviews having to define for the public even the meaning of atheism or agnosticism, as when on the “On The 7 With Dr. Sean” show. Chavonne Taylor and Hutchinson spent a not-insignificant amount of time on the basic definitions of agnosticism and atheism followed by further clarification. If you’re wondering, this was aired in 2020. However, there exists a history of writings with, for example, A. Philip Randolph who sponsored an essay contest entitled “Is Christianity a Menace to the Negro?” Naturally, Hutchinson loved the title.

Our first interaction occurred on December 20, 2016 with the publication of “Interview with Sikivu Hutchinson – Feminist, Humanist, Novelist, Author“ in Conatus News. Someone with identities disliked by racists as a Black or an African American citizen of the United States of America, by misogynists for feminist writings, women’s leadership organizational work, and lived egalitarian values, and by religious fundamentalists for rejections of supernatural claims of sacred texts and disbelief in the authority of purported holy figures, i.e., as a humanist or, naturally, a ‘heretic.’ Hence, the reason for the full title of Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical (2020). To add icing to the cake, Hutchinson advocates for socialist economic policy, which, in the United States, is heard as or translated by the culture into “antidemocratic” or “communistic,” as she notes.

The “Humanists” in the main title comes from fundamental humanist values lived out in ‘hoods’ in South L.A. while engraved with the flavors, the sounds, the emotions, and the patois, and the pains and the tragedies and the triumphs as humanists in hoods. Also, “Hood” comes from lived experience for Hutchinson. She grew up at the tail-end of COINTELPRO (COunter INTELligence PROgram) in which a program of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was destroying or decimating African American communities and political organizations. Hutchinson understands the contexts of state violence and its organized manifestations. One of her earliest moments of political protest was in hearing about the murder of Eulia Love/Eulia Mae Love/Eula Love by two LAPD officers in her own residence in 1979.

It was a first moment, even as a child for Hutchinson, of the issues around “use of force” by police. Or the Darrel Gates argument of African Americans responding differently to chokeholds. Similar forms of violence and subsequent political and social protests seen with the case of George Floyd and others to this day, where protests have been breaking out in Boston, New York City, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, D.C., Minneapolis/St. Paul, Louisville, Dallas, Sacramento, Bakersfield, and San Jose, and probably elsewhere. Both come to a context in which home is neither “safe space” nor “private sanctuary.” A deep history where African American bodies are not theirs except in service to White slaveholders with Black women in America as sub-human and not really women. These cultural bigotries rooted in a proper definition of White supremacy, as domination of Black bodies and lives.

Certainly, progress has been made, but legacies live into the present with African American, Native American, Latin American, Asian American, and working class European American women getting the shit end of the shorter stick more often. Even with prominent African American figures such as Steve Harvey, Hutchinson was correct in identifying the core issue in the blanket statements by Harvey making the argument of the amorality of African Americans who become atheists and the treasonous relation to the ‘race’ when non-religious. In other words, if you leave religion while Black, you have become a traitor to the ethnicity and lack morals, especially condemnable and criminal to community for Black women who leave communal faith.

The text covers some of these contexts, but the book represents a larger intellectual environment for Hutchinson. Don’t take this second-hand from a young Canadian humanist, the reviews on the book represent similar sentiments and thoughts, and praise, of the book. Bridgette Crutchfield of Black Nonbelievers of Detroit said, “Humanists in the Hood is an acute reminder of the struggle we as Black women have and still experience. It has documented in one place, our travels and travails.” Crutchfield makes the concise and insightful point of the amnesiac nature of American memory of the crimes of old wreaking havoc on the lives of the present generations and planting seeds of potential disproportionate despair for the generations who come after us. Humanists can act in such a manner so as to provide a space to air grievances for compassionate understanding, strategize on solutions, organize relevant resources, and mobilize for the better chances of the next generations.

“Humanists in the Hood is a must read for everyone, but especially anyone who considers themselves progressive and supportive of marginalized people,” Mandisa Thomas, Founder and President, Black Nonbelievers, Inc., stated, “With her in-depth analysis, Sikivu has issued yet another challenge — to take a long, hard look historically, institutionally, and, most important, internally, into the often complex world of feminism and how humanist/secular values have and must continue to inform our fight for equality.” Thomas is right. The book represents a fundamental challenge to the humanist community in America, at least, on its various constituencies and the differentiated needs of them, which seems like a good thing because a humanist message is a universalistic message. One in which fundamental principles yield an infinite while bounded variety of potential tools for covering the needs of humanist communities in South L.A., in America, and throughout the humanist diaspora.

“The time is now for Humanists in the Hood. With compassionate, razor-sharp clarity, Sikivu Hutchinson provides a courageously bold Black, feminist, and atheist road map to liberating ourselves, our communities, and U.S. society.” Producer/Director of NO! The Rape Documentary, Aishash Shahidah Simmons, said, “She invites and challenges readers to step outside of comfort zones to consider different possibilities in response to the oppressive systems that silence and annihilate all of us on the margins. Hutchinson’s words are a clarion call for radical, tangible actions for these perilous times.”

The purpose of the book is to provide a challenge to the mainstream humanist community and to provide a “road map” for the construction of institutions devoted to the specified concerns mentioned earlier within the philosophical framework of Humanism. A “razor-sharp clarity” did not happen in a vacuum. Pressure makes diamonds. Why isn’t Hutchinson more prominent and well-known than now? Although, she has been gaining a loyal following and readership. As we know, diamonds take time to find, and tend to remain buried for a long time. Humanists in the Hood divides into five main sections in alignment with Simmons’ aforementioned “atheist road map” with “Introduction: The Stone Cold Here and Now,” “Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Humanist,” “Culturally Relevant Humanism and Economic Justice,” “The Black Humanist Heathen Gaze,” and “Gen Secular and People and Colour.”

In the introduction or “Introduction: The Stone Cold Here and Now,” she opens with a quote from Alice Walker, who said, “In my own work, I write not only what I want to read – understanding fully and indelibly that if I don’t do it, no one else is so vitally interested, or capable of doing it to my satisfaction – I will write all the things I should have been able to read.” Walker’s statement acts as a coda or thematic ground zero for the entirety of the text because, as per the Eulia Love example, Hutchinson lacked the language, the concepts, and the crystallized imagery, not the experience, to describe the happenings of the world as a child or adolescent. Even though, she sensed something was wrong in early years.

Not only for more unheard voices with Black women victims of violence, Hutchinson covers the LGBTQI community in the context of the United States. As the United Nations founded its LGBTI Core Group, an extension of the similar stream of rights activism and thought comes in the initialism ​”LGBTQI​”​ to make “Queer” as an identity more explicit. Hutchinson takes a difficult stance in America and in community. A life and worldview brewed in early “dreary religion classes run by sanctimonious white male teachers” full of “moral hypocrisies” and a sacred text full of “violent woman-hating language.”

The books Hutchinson deserved to read did not exist, by and large, and the only text considered central to community came in the form of ancient mythological collections of sacred texts entitled The Bible. One gathers the sense of a lifelong individual struggle against structures and persons in American society searching for one’s story to be told articulately, honestly, and forthrightly without filter. Out of this, a feeling of the tragic dignity of the work of Hutchinson can set over the reader.

Somebody articulating a clearly wider or more inclusive humanist vision dealing with the problems of the everyday against seemingly overwhelmingly odds with the vitriol from the Black church and the dismissal by the largely White movement atheism of American culture. Professor Anthony Pinn made an important point with the descriptive phrase “people of colour” assuming the otherness of black people, etc., compared to White people with the more appropriate change into “people of a despised colour,” as both inclusive of every person as coloured in some manner and the relative struggles in the burden of greater negative stereotypes.

While, at the same time, the Black church can be a place of refuge and civil rights organizing in one generation. It can become a place of limitations, ostracization, and control and domination and illegitimate hierarchy. However, illegitimate hierarchies prop men to the heights of dizzying unquestioned authority in African American church communities with the expected negative effects on communities, especially with the burdens placed on women of colour in those church communities.

“For years, the rap on feminism among most Black folks was that it was a White woman’s thing. White feminists, from first-wave nineteenth-century White suffragists, to second-wave stalwarts in the postwar ‘feminine mystique’ era, routinely ignored, erased, and misrepresented Black women’s experiences and social history,” Hutchinson wrote, “While white women at the height of the so-called Baby Boom decried their ‘enslavement’ to patriarchy, domesticity, and motherhood in Ozzie and Harriet-style homes, Black women were mopping their floors, washing their laundry, and wiping the butts of their children.”

This is the language of history and the life of the everyday. This is the rooted Black Humanism articulated throughout the text by Hutchinson. Right into the present, the political consciousness of the nation becomes infused with the narrative of god-talk and religion with Senator Kamala Harris during the 2020 presidential race stipulating a “faith in god,” so as to secure proper status as a Black and god-fearing American politician. Without such an endorsement, Harris’ career would have been exploded by a cross-shaped torpedo in the United States political scene. Hutchinson notes Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were mentored by Ernestine Rose. Rose is one who said religions have been built on the backs of women. Hutchinson covers the splits or historical divides between White feminists and Black feminists in America. For example, the Fifteenth Amendment permitting Black men the equality in voting rights or the right to vote. Some White feminists saw this as a hindrance to women’s rights. As has been said before, rights aren’t a pie.

She contrasts the educated middle-class White feminism with the backbreaking working-class feminism of the lives of Black women. Hutchinson delves into or references the Combahee River Collective, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Michele Wallace, Brittney Cooper, Anna Julia Cooper, Fannie Barrier Williams, Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, Angela Davis, bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins), Patricia Hill Collins, Barbara Christian, and, of course, Alice Walker. She remarked on an interview conducted with Thandisizwe Chimurenga, where Chimurenga noted that class differences are a source of a lot of separation between feminisms. This continues right into the current political context of the Trump Administration and the Republicans.

The median wealth rates of White families, Latino families, and Black families in the United States are $147,000, $6,600, and $3,600, respectively. The unemployment rate of Black college graduates under the age of 25 is 15.4% and for White college graduates is 7.9%. There can be a visceral fear around the academic term “White supremacy,” as this seems to imply Euro-Americans with tiki torches and white hoods walking menacingly in lockstep in the dark of night. In the history of America, this has been a physically violent and ideological extreme manifestation of it. Then there are generally applicable principles behind the use of the term in wealth and employment rates, as above. At an intersection with this comes the era of Covid-19 emergent from SARS-CoV-2, these manifestations become worse. In these conditions, one can see the socialist economic orientation of Hutchinson.

Hutchinson describes the Trumpian-Republican backlash against the rights of women while noting African Americans as the most religious population in the United States. Noting how, even though, Ariana Grande and Beyoncé may identify as feminists, most young women struggle with such a label. She provides an alternative to the common notions of feminism. “I argue that Black feminist humanism is a vibrant alternative to the woo-woo spiritualism, Jesus fetishism, and goddess worship that characterizes progressive feminist belief systems that revolve around theism,” Hutchinson writes, “…the stakes for a secularist, feminist, queer, pro-social Justice, and anti-capitalist ethos of American values are perhaps greater than ever before.”

In Chapter 1 or “Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Humanist,” Hutchinson opens, “In 2010, a seven-year-old African American girl named Aiyana Jones was murdered in her sleep by the Detroit police during a military-style raid on her home. In the wake of the shooting, neighbours and loved ones placed stuffed animals in front of the house in memoriam. Rows of stuffed animals stated out from Associated Press photographs of the executions scene in dark-eyed innocence, grieving the barbaric theft of her life and light.”

She reflects on the recency of the murder of Aiyana after her (Hutchinson’s) attendance at the African Americans for Humanism conference. A point of reflection on the separation between mostly European descent or White-dominated movement atheism without much of a voice or place for African descent or Black atheists. Hutchinson brings forth the towering work of Professor Anthony Pinn, the good Methodist who became a better atheist, to argue the indices behind science and reason as taught in the classroom can be (and are) shaped by cultural conditions and subjective categories with the European American or White American students having histories and cultural traditions affirmed throughout the classroom. She uses W.E.B. DuBois’ phrase “wages of whiteness” in this context.

Hutchinson references the execution of Michael Brown, the Youth Justice Coalition, Dignity and Power Now (of Patrisse Cullors Khan), and Black Lives Matter, and Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement as part of various points of contact for social commentary on systemic inequities manifested in livelihood outcomes in American society. Views rooted in a history of slave-era racism and sexism where Black women are “‘unrapeable,’ hypersexual Jezebels” based on the “ideal of pure, virginal, chaste ‘Christian’ white womanhood.” She highlights the lack of people of colour in the leadership positions of leading secular organizations including the American Humanist Association, Center for Inquiry, Foundation Beyond Belief, and the Secular Student Alliance. She highlights the work of Candace Gorham and Karen Garst bringing forth a more pluralized image of people of colour in the secular movements.

There is reflection on the content of the Huffington Post piece entitled “Ten Fierce Atheists: Unapologetically Black Women Beyond Belief” and the legislation of Michigan Congresswoman Ayanna Presley to “end the punitive pushout of girls of color from schools and disrupt the school-to-confinement pathway.” Hutchinson describes how this builds on the work of Monique Morris, author of Pushout. She touches on the sexual violence as portrayed in Surviving R. Kelly, and the helpful text of Iris Jacobs in My Sisters’ Voices in the mentoring of young Black girls. Here, she pivots into her Women’s Leadership Project, and the Black Feminist and Feminist of Color conferences.

Hutchinson remarks on Audre Lorde’s observation of Black women’s self-care as something political because Black women rarely have such an opportunity based on the stressors and communal demands upon them. Michele Wallace and the ‘blasting’ of​ the​ 1965 ​”​Moynihan Report​”​ are part and parcel of critiques set forth here. As Hutchinson continually frames, Black women in America find deaf ears in the White-dominated secular communities and absolute rejection & condemnation, if non-religious, in the Black church community. Thus, Euro-centric individualist Humanism is important, but not does land well with the collective boot on Black women as a category. Principles of solidarity become more dominant rather than the abstracted sovereign individual, how ever important in environments in which other fundamental needs and challenges have been mostly overcome.

It hits the Supreme Court too. Hutchinson describes how the consequential case of Anita Hill gave significance to awareness of sexual violence against Black women in particular and women in general; whereas, at the same time, the exposure of abusers like Roger Ailes and Harvey Weinstein brought forth White women’s voices who deserved to be heard, but were heard without a historical context of earlier prominent cases like Anita Hill. Even in the secular communities, “…American Atheists(AA), the largest nonbeliever advocacy organization in the nation. After former president David Silverman was terminated in April 2018 following sexual assault allegations, the organization had a signal opportunity to make a bold chance in leadership by hiring Mandisa Thomas,” Hutchinson states, “Thomas, who has a solid record of secular organizing, outreach, and management across intersectional communities, would have been the AA’s first woman of color executive and the only Black woman to head a mainstream secular organization. Instead, AA opted for a white male insider…”

Hutchinson highlights some of the work by Amy Davis Roth of SkepChick in 2014 to highlight atheist women who have been stalked and harassed, which effectuated some change. However, the “thrall” with global figures – Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris, and Michael Shermer – of the mainstream secular communities will need reduction for more space and voice for secular Black women and women of colour.

In Chapter 2 or “Culturally Relevant Humanism and Economic Justice,” Hutchinson states, “In my community, churches of every size, architectural style, and denomination sit totemically between daycare centers, liquor stores, dry cleaners, dollar stores, and beauty shops.” ‘Totem,’ what is a totem? Sacred, symbolic objects representative of clan, family, or ancestry. This is important. Not only spatial-geographic waste and economic drags on communities needing it, many African Americans in particular and Black Americans in general feel a connection to Christianity as a whole and its manifestation in the Black Church.

She comments on the work of Paula Giddings and the exploitation of Black women slaves as “breeders,” etc., as Black women in the slave era of America were chattel for the use and abuse by slave owners. She touches on the controversy surrounding Linda Sarsour and her (Sarsour’s) support for Minister Louis Farrakhan, known for anti-Semitic and misogynist views.

Hutchinson roots such injustice in the economic context for Black Americans, as noted earlier about these median wealth disparities and unemployment inequities. The tax-free status of places of worship is a unified concern for Black and White secularists in America. One of the more unique concerns of Black atheists is the reflection of the Jim Crow era and the Great Migration in their connection with the Black church. More generally, she remarks on the inordinate wealth handed to the individual pastors in Africa, Nigeria particularly, and in America with the two most prominent cases in David Oyedepo, in Nigeria, and T.D. Jakes, in America.

How these ultra-wealthy Black male pastors suck the economic lifeblood out of community is a travesty, the ways in which Black women’s labour makes these religious communities possible in the first place too. This is where ideas of social and economic redistribution become inherent in the form of humanist discourse espoused by Hutchinson. She reflects on “How the Humanist Movement Fosters Economic Injustice” by David Hoelscher with reference to Helen Keller and Albert Einstein and some of the fundamental socialistic structures endorsed by them. Even, as Hutchinson states, the first major humanist document published in 1933 was devoted explicitly to racial equality and economic justice.

Indeed, the fourteenth affirmation in the 1933 Humanist Manifesto I stated, “The humanists are firmly convinced that existing acquisitive and profit-motivated society has shown itself to be inadequate and that a radical change in methods, controls, and motives must be instituted. A socialized and cooperative economic order must be established to the end that the equitable distribution of the means of life be possible. The goal of humanism is a free and universal society in which people voluntarily and intelligently cooperate for the common good. Humanists demand a shared life in a shared world.” [Emphasis added.]

Leading humanists Paul Kurtz and Edwin Wilson in the Humanist Manifesto II emphasized addressing economic injustices as core to Humanism and, thus, to humanist discourse. Modern Humanism, Hutchinson correctly observes, fails to deal with these realities affecting more of its non-mainstream communities, where there could be concretized humanist activism at the most fundamental level drawing back to the roots of the philosophical worldview and life stance with addressing economic injustice and social inequities.

As another great boss at The Good Men Project, Councilwoman Emily LaDouceur, has stated, “Never underestimate the power of community leaders speaking out against discrimination, injustice, and harassment… We need city council members who will unapologetically stand up against any policy, procedure, or practice, that may perpetuate bias or discrimination.”

The core of the movements has merely shifted the ratios of its currency into the big basket of combatting “religious attacks on secular freedom.” That’s it. The diversified vision of 1933 has been truncated. One where individuals “who question humanist, atheist, or skeptical orthodoxies are trashed, branded snowflakes, social justice warriors, feminazis, or religious apologists.”

She remarked on the clash between Bakari Chavanu, of Black Humanists and Nonbelievers of Sacramento, and a libertarian, exemplifying a differential vision of “Humanism” as a concept based on the August 2018 piece entitled “Why Five Fierce Humanists.” Concomitant with this, Hutchinson reflects on the “majority of forerunning early-twentieth-century Black freethinkers (with the notable exception of figures like Zora Neale Hurston and Black conservative intellectual George Schuyler) were socialist and communist aligned, and actively condemned the way capitalism and White supremacy harm Black communities.”

She notes the holes in the presentation of Roy Speckhardt, the executive director of the American Humanist Association, about Thomas Jefferson in the book Creating Change Through Humanism. He was a secularist and freethinker. Also, he believed in the inherent inferiority of Blacks and committed an ethical atrocity in the form of a slaveholding empire. Similarly, one can think of the skeptic views of H.L. Mencken while reflecting on the racist views about Blacks and imaginary crimes seen in ‘miscegenation.’ Hutchinson quotes Paul Finkelman in “The Monster of Monticello” to describe the atrocious behaviour of Jefferson. Historian Christopher Deaton reflects much the same withering critique.

Many of these economic realities come in the form of billionaire listings with a White face, Black male ultra-rich pastors bilking Black communities and taking up needed community space, and the policy and legal decisions giving economic privileges to corporations and religious institutions, e.g., the Johnson Amendment and Citizens United, which may be bolstered by appointments of people like Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, or Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. American slavery sapped the economic productivity of Black slaves in America for White Americans’ benefit; thus, in the reference to Thomas Paine and Ernestine Rose by Hutchinson, the “Original Sin” of America was an economic one.

“And even though White abolitionists and deist freethinkers like Thomas Paine and feminist suffragist Ernestine Rose decried the “original sin” of American slavery,” Hutchinson wrote, “the eighteenth-century narrative of colonial bondage to the British continues to reverberate in the toxic myth of American exceptionalism. In many regards, the myth that the United States is fundamentally better and more just or exceptional than any other country in the world is the lie that allows structural inequity to persist.”

Hutchinson speaks more to the 2014 article by James Croft “Beyond Secularism” and Croft’s important focus on a wider vision of the possibilities of Humanism. Something important Hutchinson pivots into this point is Pinn’s emphasis on the everyday little facets and facts of reality, the rooted Humanism of Hutchinson, for the proper knitting together of the grand figures and narratives of mainstream Humanism with the highly neglected communities of colour who deserve a voice at the table and a choice in programs from the wider humanist community. This can be done. Why not?

Hutchinson describes the way in which the material view of the universe does not limit her perspective on the operations of consciousness. She does not believe in the spirit or soul. Hutchinson affirms the conscious and unconscious connected to thoughts and feelings from a material brain. She looks at the indefinite nature of the findings of the scientific method’s actual discovery of the natural world. The fundamental issue is one affirming the freedom of individual choice.

She also spoke about how Stacey Abrams in the 2018 Georgia ​gubernatorial statement said “faith, service, education, responsibility” set forth the values for Abrams. This was similar to the Kamala Harris statement before. In that, if you state a non-religious and non-faith-based view of the world, and if you state that you do not adhere to a deity, then you have committed political suicide. In a manner of speaking, African Americans as highly religious constituents only feel comfortable and encouraged by religious male hierarchs to vote for politicians who are firm in faith in order to be seen as properly Black, or to have any semblance of a moral compass or an ethical system guiding one’s life, which harkens back to the Steve Harvey commentary earlier.

“Before Humanism can be concretely relevant to the everyday lives of Black women and women of color steeped in faith and religious practice there must be space for them to exist in discomfort of the unknown.” In many ways, Hutchinson’s every day realities rooted Humanism aligns deeply with the depictions described by Hutchinson in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

Hutchinson talked about the rape of Desiree Washington by Mike Tyson. Washington was Miss Black America in 1991. Farrakhan condemned Washington, essentially, as a Jezebel. An experience common in many communities with rape survivors tossed to the lions by community leaders, including religious leaders, as was the case with Farrakhan. Occasionally, there’s justice, as with sexual assaulters Daniel Holtzclaw, Bill Cosby, and R. Kelly. All this is simply marginal justice for raped Black American women, not even taking into account LGBTQI members of communities. Voices rarely heard. Victims barely sought.

Even institutionally, Hutchinson puts the Southern Baptist Convention on blast over its illustrative compiled crimes. Yet, with the spotty coverage of rapes and sexual violence, the violence of bullying and harassment can acquire coverage, especially around teen suicides, if a White face. This can be impacted by portrayals and commentary intended as jokes by some of the most prominent comedians of the day, e.g., Kevin Hart. Hutchinson reflects in some cultural positives in the cases of Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, or in the deconstructionist Other People’s Children by Lisa Delpit, or the essay “What’s Home Got to do With It? Unsheltered Queer Youth” by Reed Christian and Anjali Mukarji-Connoly.

Hutchinson reported on Center for American Progress’ work by Aisha Moodle-Mills and Jerome Hunt about the great risks to life and livelihood of LGBTQI youth, whether teen pregnancy, school dropout, homelessness, drug abuse, stress, and more. A rooted Humanism, or a more radical Humanism compared to the present (not as much to the 1933 vision), has a moral stake in this wider fight for equality and justice.

In Chapter 3 or “The Black Humanist Heathen Gaze,” Hutchinson describes not seeing herself in the media of Judy Blume and others presented to her. As per the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, 3,700 books published in 2017 featured mostly White protagonists. Even Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Charlie Bucket was intended as a Black protagonist, but became White in the final production. It’s the same for non-religious film and television. There has been a decline in Christian movie audiences. However, it’s still garnering a significant pull and has an audience.

She notes the only real secular studies professor in academia as Professor Phil Zuckerman with only two major exceptions who focus on Black secular Humanism in particular, who build an academic series of works devoted to critical consciousness: Dr. Christopher Cameron at the University of North Carolina and Dr. Anthony Pinn at Rice University. Hutchinson is the only one to have developed a course about humanist women of colour in the world through the Humanist Institute entitled “Women of Color Beyond Faith.” Her interest in Black humanist cultural production is seminal as well. Maureen Mahoney and Jeffrey Othello are “among the few in the White-dominated field of rock and roll musicology and music history.” Critical works by White writers have been Jack Hamilton and Gayle Wald. While, at the same time, August Wilson notes the operation​s​ of Black Americans exists​ within a preconfigured cultural structure by White Americans. It all feeds into cultural tropes of “Tyler Perry-esque evangelicalism” condemned by a smug atheist, etc.

When Hutchinson reviewed lists of secular films challenging religion, it was mostly White secular driven film and television making direct attacks. Black Americans in religious enclaves have to trade in a different and hidden-from-popular-culture currency. There is some questioning of faith in Black media productions, as in August Wilson, James Baldwin, and Lorraine Hansberry with further “radical aesthetic and ideological possibility” seen in the works of Richard Wright and Nella Larsen. Hutchinson’s own White Nights, Black Paradise “features perhaps the first narrative film portrayal of a Black atheist lesbian protagonist.” There is a yearning for a magical return to some long-gone past state apart from the hellish nature of many Black American lives now relative to many White and other Americans, which may come in the form of “a sentiment reflected in both the Great Migration and the Back to Africa movements.” A commentary of the state of idolatry found in Black Americans becoming involved in Jonestown in hypocritical worship of the Marxist atheist, Jim Jones, as a Christian god.

As per usual in many contexts, and in the environs of Jonestown, Black women were the pseudo-chattel of subservience and obeisance to Jones as “ever-faithful, self-sacrificing” servants, as if without autonomy of conscience and self-determination of body, i.e., as subhuman. Black women suffering from Stockholm Syndrome in identification with Jones. To quote late humanist Kurt Vonnegut, “So it goes.”

In Chapter 4 or “Gen Secular and People and Colour,” Hutchinson remarks on the treatment of children with atheist and humanist parents. They (Hutchinson’s nonbinary 11-year-old daughter), earlier in life, had to hear in second grade, “You’re going to hell and to the devil, because you don’t go to church.” This is the context for a not-insignificant number of nonbelievers in the United States. We can see this in White professional class women of tenure in self-identified Liberal Theology and progressive churches in Canada under the banner of the United Church of Canada with Rev. Gretta Vosper who was raked through the coals in national media for several years.

In South L.A. where Sikivu and they live, in 1965, there was the Watts Rebellion resulting in White “flight” from the neighbourhoods. Now, with changes in economic disparities in the ultra-wealthy and the stagnation and decline for much of the rest of the United States, Hutchinson notes the ironic return of White Americans and the subsequent gentrification following from this. “God’s plan” is an empty cliché taken as an aphorism of wisdom and assumed as a framework for comprehension of the world and relative misery around African American religious communities. She speaks to the historian Ibram Kendi’s call to recognize 1 in 4 Black American households have zero wealth compared to 1 in 10 White Americans, which builds on the work of Ta Nehisi-Coates.

These thoughts and movements aren’t new. Hutchinson brings back the historical memory of the pioneering and first Black freethinker who defied both White slavers and the “Black faith police,” where she quotes, particularly in response to censure by Black Methodist ministers, Frederick Douglass, “I bow to no priests, either of faith or unfaith, I claim as against all sorts of people, simply perfect freedom of thought.” Maria Stewart and Sojourner Truth would have experienced far more backlash if they spoke so directly and forthrightly against established dogma’s guardians. They may make it pinch and sting with a Black man; however, they will make it cut in the case of a Black woman.

Clashes exist in the current incarnations of the American freethought movements, as we see in the history with Ernestine Rose, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. Nonetheless, we live in a globalizing world and the ex-Muslim movement is a unique one. It is working to detach religious identity from ethnic heritage. As well, it is bringing forth the concerns of the men and the women who have left Islam and endured severe censure, ostracism, abuse, and even death threats. Sadia Hameed, a spokesperson for the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, and Zara Kay, the founder of Faithless Hijabi, writer Hibah Ch, and Taslima Nasreen, Bangladeshi activist, author, and physician, are all referenced as important examples in this work.

Heina Dadabhoy is given space to make the point about coming out as an atheist for her. In that, when she renounced Islam, her parents described the action as Dadabhoy wanting to be like White people. Freethought in some contexts is seen as a White cultural phenomenon, i.e., the god concept becomes self-imposed mental prison as a form of community identity and inverse ethnic identification (as in not being White, thus making the false linkage, in another manner, between ethnicity and religion). There is a change in the landscape, though.

Millennials, and younger generations, continue to lose religion as a core identity, even in connection with perceptions of some amorphous, invisible unity between belief in the god concept and actuality of morality. Moral movements, including Black Lives Matter of Patrisse Cullors Khan, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza, are manifestations of this in some ways. Three Black queer women who founded a movement different than the historical civil rights movement of Martin Luther King, Jr. and others steeped in “heterosexist, homophobic, patriarchal Black-church traditions [that] stifled any semblance of affirmation of queer voices (much less nonbelieving ones).” A. Philip Randolph, Hutchinson notes, was “frequently gay-baited and forced to suppress his identity in the movement.”

A Humanism embracing more gender fluid notions while rejecting gods and the supernatural can match more of the universalistic sensibilities espoused since the 1933 Humanist Manifesto I and remove false dichotomies between feeling and thinking with the feelings as feminine, etc., as Hutchinson notes in quoting Soraya Chemaly from Rage Becomes Her. One theoretical work or hypothesis Hutchinson describes is Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS) from Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (PTSS) (2005) by Joy DeGruy, which is a hypothesis about intergenerational stressors passed from one cohort to the next as a result of slavery and its aftereffects. This then leads into the concluding statements of the text.

Hutchinson remarks on the Black Skeptics Los Angeles First in the Family Humanist youth recipients as profiled in the Humanist magazine and the Huffington Post. One touching story is Mike Grimes who established firm humanist roots after the death of a father to a car crash. Grimes did not rely on the gods or the supernatural. In trying to get a settlement from the trucking company with “so-called Christian family values on its website,” the experience was hellish. This is America, for humanists – so stand tall. Hutchinson concludes with a quote from Audre Lorde on self-determination of Black women and women of colour in the humanist movements. Hutchinson adds, “Lorde’s words are a testament to the enduring power of self-representation as art, agency, and self-determination. They resonate deeply as we move further into a century where secular Black feminist and feminist of color resistance will be definitive in shaping humanist politics and consciousness.” She’s right.

If humanist institutions do not cover the wider range of the concerns of its broad base of communities or constituencies, then the humanist movement will, in part, become obsolete to the needs of its communities and constituencies, i.e., human beings enacting humanist values and searching for humanist organizations and media speaking to their human concerns. As Hutchinson observes, “If humanism is reframed as working through struggle; being silent in one’s body; being alone in one’s body; being partnered; being skeptical; being engaged in art, literature, music, and the full scope of Black creativity in the sublime and the every day – then it would have more relevance to traditions of Black women’s resistance.”

In this sense, to become “obsolete” means to lose sight of the human needs of Black humanists’ Humanism, in a manner of speaking, it becomes revolutionary to the historical trends in American society with the view of people of colour, African Americans, or Black citizens of the United States as sub-human (and Black women as not really women), because the personhood, dignity, and autonomy of each individual human being​​ get​s​ affirmed in Humanism. That’s the fundamental revolutionary act at this time, causa mentale: a revolution in how we see ourselves and how we see one another, as members of the same species with the same inherent dignity and value. That’s the “acute reminder” or, rather, “challenge” with “razor-sharp clarity” one finds in Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical. To this “must read” book, I will conclude on a favourite Black feminist poet of Hutchinson, Lucille Clifton, who is an icon to Hutchinson. Clifton wrote “won’t you celebrate with me” from Book of Light (1993):

won’t you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.​​

(Cropped) Image Credit: Center for Inquiry/Sikivu Hutchinson/
BDEngler (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

Touching Base, Resources, and Extension of Critique

There were some interesting and thoughtful responses to “Cases of Abuse and Cults – William Branham.” Based on the feedback, some of the article has been updated on May 27, 2020. Other factors will be covered here. Future pieces will cover the Casting Pearls Project of Jennifer Hamilton and the William Branham Historical Research of John Collins in more depth in individual pieces with the interviews provided by the two of them with me, as well as building networks for women to acquire help and how to identify abuse in a church setting. Altogether, these can provide a sufficient resource for individual members of The Message.

You can find many other writings on the formerly or the non-religious at Canadian Atheist[1] with insightful and thoughtful content from Derek Gray, Diane Bruce, Ian Bushfield, Indi or Mark A. Gibbs, Heidi Loney, or Shawn the Humanist, or external voices brought in to build an internationalist sensibility or more varied national sense of the freethought community with the “Ask” series, whether Melissa Story, Reverend Gretta Vosper, Autumn Reinhardt-Simpson, Professor Jeffrey S. Rosenthal, and Joyce Arthur from Canada, Takudzwa Mazwienduna, Alton Mungani, and Shingai Rukwata Ndoro from Zimbabwe, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Herb Silverman, Mandisa Thomas, Faye Girsh, Terry Waslow, Dr. David L. Orenstein/Dave Orenstein/David Orenstein, Rob Boston, Kim Newton, M.Litt., Shirley Rivera, Minister Amanda Poppei, and Justin Scott from the United States of America, Omar Shakir (in Jordan) on Israel and Palestine, Mubarak Bala and Dr. Leo Igwe from Nigeria, Jani Schoeman, Rick Raubenheimer, and Wynand Meijer from South Africa, Nsajigwa I Mwasokwa (Nsajigwa Nsa’sam) from Tanzania, and Kwabena “Michael” Osei-Assibey from Ghana.

Other great Canadian content, as noted in “And now, a word from our sponsors…,” can be seen in orbiting critical voices, including Eiynah or Eiynah Mohammed-Smith of “Polite Conversations” and Nice Mangoes (Facebook and Twitter), Laurence A. Moran of Sandwalk, the Brainstorm Podcast (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube), Left at the Valley (Facebook and Twitter), Ashlyn Noble Gem Newman, Ian James, Lauren Bailey, and Laura Creek Newman at Life, the Universe & Everything Else (Facebook), Cristina “JUNO and Platinum award winning music publicist” Roach, Adam “fighting evil by moonlight” Gardner, Darren “crash from Krypton” McKee, and “the engine that keeps TRC going” Producer Pat of The Reality Check (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram), and Bad Science Watch (Facebook and Twitter), British Columbia Humanist Association (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and MeetUp), and more.

The series of articles on William Branham emerge in the context of letters sent to me (from believers – even a deacon and a police chaplain). I took the liberty of parsing some of the contents and contexts into some digestable segmentations for the purposes of critical examination in a wider series of considerations of The Message theology of the late William Branham while connecting these concerns with responses provided by modern reason, rights, and science considerations. These will separate into Positive Life Experiences, Eyewitness Accounts, Opinions of Others, Women’s Rights, and Science. The coverage will proceed in that ordering.

Positive Life Experiences

One of the themes in the letters sent as a reaction to “Cases of Abuse and Cults – William Branham” was the sense of a life or a period after conversion of perpetual or mostly positive experiences within The Message churches and, therefore, reflective of the moral rightness of Branham and the correctness/inerrancy of both the Bible and the verbal delivery of Branham. This is a claim and, in a sense, a tight argument, which is good. Its framework seems relatively well-defined and made as a subjective claim appearing as if objective as to the transcendental truths of Branham and the Bible. One of the simpler ideas can come in the form of fantasy ideas accepted as fantasy by most adults in a North American sociocultural context while handed to children as a truism in the figure of Santa Claus in a full white beard, diabetes-inducing belly, rosy cheeks, pale North Pole face, red hat and suit edged by fuzzy white poofs and a big black belt. All equipped with flying reindeer (wings not necessary), a sleigh, and an infinitely bottomed present sac with the Christmas gifts made by the loyal elves of the North Pole factories. One hopes they get a living wage.

A fantasy idea in the lives of many North American children with associations of family, parents, maybe siblings, presents, candy, and more. All for a young child’s fantasy surprise. However, as we know, Santa Claus, if claimed as real, and if believed, can lead to an individual holding false beliefs and harbouring false knowledge about the world while having mostly positive experiences as a result. Even though, these bring positive experiences to the lives of the child. In no way does this substantiate the claim, thus, on the basic claim of a positive life experience under the theology of Branham, this fails to support the strength of the claim. Otherwise, one would have the ability to claim the same about the Santa Claus in a fantasy example as opposed to a non-fantasy example in the case of William Branham. This amounts to an argument against positive experiences leading to truth claims about a worldview rather than truth claims about the positive experience. To the positive experiences expressed by members of The Message community to me, I believe the claims wholeheartedly; however, I cannot extend the truth of positive experiences for some select individual members of the community into the illegitimate extrapolation to truth claims about the Bible or The Message from the late William Branham.

Eyewitness Accounts

On eyewitness accounts of the individuals within The Message, this can be a trickier or murkier subject matter for members within The Message diaspora around the world or under the banner of a common theology of Branham’s interpretation of the Bible because science can be seen as something of the devil and science of eyewitness testimony, i.e., the psychological science of individual observation, advanced to a sufficient point to make eyewitness claims extremely uncertain at best, unreliable at a minimum. In that, Drs. Daniel M. Bernstein/Daniel Bernstein, Cristina Atance, Geoffrey R. Loftus, Andrew Meltzoff, and generations of others have been influenced in the cognitive sciences by the pioneering and sociopolitically consequential work of Professor Elizabeth Loftus at the University of California, Irvine on research into eyewitness testimony. Professor Elizabeth Loftus showed a lot of ways in which eyewitness testimony can be (and is) unreliable because human beings cannot process information in an adequate manner. We evolved; thus, we’re good enough for some ancestral environment for the passing of genes into the next generation, not to maximize intelligence, fidelity and comprehensiveness of memory.

Any examination of the list of cognitive biases can provide an insight into the evolved biases in human thought.[2] Quite naturally, any evolved trait will have subsequent limits to provide some new capacity – can do some things and not other things. In this new capacity, we come to the functionality for some tasks. If cognitive tasks, then this becomes a limitation in cognition as a result, which leads to all sorts of strange phenomena. With some research, you can see some of the fascinating work on Hindsight Bias by Dr. Daniel Bernstein/Dr. Daniel Bernstein at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, especially Auditory Hindsight Bias. More to the point, and based on the expert association statements on eyewitness testimony, it is unreliable. Any claims of miracles, of performances, of claimed historical events and the like, can be taken within the light of modern psychological science on eyewitness testimony.

Duly note, if the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and other books or sacred texts comprising the Bible or the biblical accounts rely on eyewitness testimony, and if this became the basis for theology, hermeneutics, biblical exegesis, or some base textual analysis of the purported eyewitness accounts or statements recorded in a script for future generations to read, then these would become empirical questions bound by the modern psychological science of eyewitness testimony. This fact (and argument) should be getting far more attention. It is a freethought view on the biblical accounts. Individuals like Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou have been in the public eye in a similar way, especially in Europe, as a prominent freethinker voice for Bible scholars. Because she is a Bible scholar who loves the text, in and of itself, while taking a rational and empirical approach to the claims within the Bible.[3] Anyhow, more to the central point of eyewitness testimony and psychological science, the associations devoted to psychological science have been highly critical of the colloquial claims about eyewitness testimony, as noted in several statements by leading organizations or publications, even a bibliography is on board. Psychological Science states:

Memory doesn’t record our experiences like a video camera. It creates stories based on those experiences. The stories are sometimes uncannily accurate, sometimes completely fictional, and often a mixture of the two; and they can change to suit the situation. Eyewitness testimony is a potent form of evidence for convicting the accused, but it is subject to unconscious memory distortions and biases even among the most confident of witnesses. So memory can be remarkably accurate or remarkably inaccurate. Without objective evidence, the two are indistinguishable.

Scientific American states:

The uncritical acceptance of eyewitness accounts may stem from a popular misconception of how memory works. Many people believe that human memory works like a video recorder: the mind records events and then, on cue, plays back an exact replica of them. On the contrary, psychologists have found that memories are reconstructed rather than played back each time we recall them. The act of remembering, says eminent memory researcher and psychologist Elizabeth F. Loftus of the University of California, Irvine, is “more akin to putting puzzle pieces together than retrieving a video recording.” Even questioning by a lawyer can alter the witness’s testimony because fragments of the memory may unknowingly be combined with information provided by the questioner, leading to inaccurate recall.

American Psychological Association states:

Iowa State University experimental social psychologist Gary Wells, PhD, a member of a 1999 U.S. Department of Justice panel that published the first-ever national guidelines on gathering eyewitness testimony, says Loftus’s model suggests that crime investigators need to think about eyewitness evidence in the same way that they think about trace evidence.

“Like trace evidence, eyewitness evidence can be contaminated, lost, destroyed or otherwise made to produce results that can lead to an incorrect reconstruction of the crime,” he says. Investigators who employ a scientific model to collect, analyze and interpret eyewitness evidence may avoid incidents like Olson’s potentially flawed identification of the Fairbanks suspects, he notes.

In fact, Wells says that other evidence techniques, such as police lineups, are similar to scientific experiments. In lineups, the police have a hypothesis, they provide instructions, collect responses and interpret the results. As such, the same factors that can bias the results of an experiment can bias an eyewitness’s performance in picking suspects out of a lineup, he says.

Oxford Bibliographies states:

Eyewitness testimony is critically important to the justice system. Indeed, it is necessary in all criminal trials to reconstruct facts from past events, and eyewitnesses are commonly very important to this effort. Psychological scientists, however, have challenged many of the assumptions of the legal system and the general public regarding the accuracy of eyewitness accounts. Particularly dominant in the psychological science literature are the views that memory reports are malleable (i.e., changed by suggestive questioning), that witnesses can be made to be extremely confident in inaccurate memories, and that police lineups should follow a careful protocol in order to avoid high rates of mistaken identification. The principal methods used by psychological scientists for examining the accuracy of eyewitnesses involve creating events that unsuspecting people witness and then collecting their reports about what they saw. Because the events were created by the researchers, these reports can be scored for their accuracy and completeness. In this way, researchers can systematically manipulate various factors (such as stress, view, the use of misleading questions, the instructions given prior to a lineup) to determine what variables influence accuracy and completeness. This body of research has its programmatic origins in the mid- to late 1970s, but it received a large boost to its credibility in the 1990s, when forensic DNA testing began to uncover convictions of innocent people. Over 75 percent of these exonerations are cases involving mistaken eyewitness identification. The discovery of these mistaken identifications and resulting wrongful convictions has been a jarring event for the legal system and threatens public faith in the criminal justice system. Accordingly, eyewitness research today is having a larger impact on the legal system as the legal system recognizes that eyewitness errors are leading to faulty trial outcomes. 

With these statements, since the 1970s and due to the beginning (and ongoing) work of Professor Elizabeth Loftus, we will see, and continue to see, the erosion of the eyewitness as a high standard in courtrooms, in other legal settings, and in the psychological science, in particular cognitive science, literature. In short, the claim of William Branham as a mortal, though a Prophet, or a mortal and a fraud, make the same claim as an individual who lives, breathes, poops, pees, and yells at crowds about the blessings of Christ and of the heavenly rewards of the righteous. A man with oratory skills and a man of his time, who spoke in the manner of the culture, of his constituency, of the ordinary American fundamentalist believer. We cannot trust eyewitness accounts in the case of Branham or others purporting to witness other miracles as a rule of psychological science, modern cognitive science, with the basis in human beings as the metric, and humans stink at measurement; we’re unreliable, hence why eyewitness testimony is unreliable.

Opinions of Others

There were some other points about the personal opinion or the opinion of others about Branham, even on a surface level. Individuals who have left The Message theology due to abuse realize the nature of an ordinary man proclaiming himself as God. Others who do not leave The Message theology can see the man as one of the time, of the era. Message believers in the churches throughout the world consider this man the last Prophet of God Almighty who shall bring forth righteous unto God (The Message believers).

However, if we examine the simple nature of individual beliefs inside of the structure of The Message, and outside of The Message, there are some important considerations about character analysis, as reflected through a prism of The Message believers and those without this belief structure. These, simply and fundamentally, come back down to the basis of opining or personal opinion giving in which individual opinions do not change the fact of the matter, whether prominent religious believers or not. Indeed, many Christians do not accept The Message of William Branham, which becomes an aspect of this entire endeavour.

As a small point, in my country of Canada, whether Cloverdale Bibleway, Edmonton Living Word Assembly, Grace And Truth Message Tabernacle, Bible Believer’s Fellowship, Manifested Word Fellowship, or the End Time Message Tabernacle, one can be certain of the high praise of Branham within those churches, fellowships, or tabernacles. Even with these opinions, they would not change the facts of the matter about a large number of things, including eyewitness testimony, positive life experiences, or the science (incoming). (This isn’t a larger claim here, but this is a smaller claim oriented around unified theology, differentiation in practice, and opinions as an insufficient basis for substantiation of theology, including all the various testimonies.)

Women’s Rights

Women’s rights remain foundational to the entire endeavour to the secular movements around the world and the instantiation of a more just and equitable world around us. When the framing of human rights naturally incorporates women’s rights, as women are humans (as Margaret Atwood notes or strongly cautions against any separation), the developments for further equality in the modern world found themselves on human rights and humanitarian law rather than transcendental law espoused by particular religions. The former, human rights and humanitarian law, incorporates the freedom to believe for the secular and the religious on equal footing while the latter, transcendental law espoused by religions, permits the rights for the “righteous” (the right religion religious) and not for the non-religious.

Any secular advancement and equality for all religions will be developed through the international institutions developed since the end of the Second World War, as noted by individuals as luminous as Albert Einstein noted some of these ideas when speaking of a “supranational” authority. Something akin to this idea would involve an international set of institutions developed for the inclusion of every actor, minor or major, with rules for everyone, as created in the international human rights and humanitarian law frameworks guiding the international systems today. These are the rules of the game. When it comes to rights, women’s rights have a particular stature. I have been going through many of the relevant documents for rights today at The Good Men Project under the stellar leadership of Lisa Hickey, Lisa Blacker, and Wilhelm Cortez. You can find the stipulations or buttresses on many aspects of the international community devoted to women’s rights here:

Documents

• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
• Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
• The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3, Article 7, and Article 13.
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
• Some general declarations (not individual Declaration or set of them but announcement) included the UN Decade for Women (1976-1985).
• Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979) and the Optional Protocol (1999).
• Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).
• The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and the optional protocol (1993).
• Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
• United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), 2242 (2015), and 2467 (2019).
• Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
• The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
• Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention (2011) Article 38 and Article 39.
• UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021

Strategic Aims

• 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, emphasis on the entirety of the goals with a strong focus on Goal 5
• 2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.
• The Spotlight Initiative as another important piece of work, as a joint venture between the European Union and the United Nations.

Celebratory Days

• February 6, International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation is observed.
• February 11, International Day of Women and Girls in Science is observed.
• June 19, Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict is observed.
• June 23, is International Widows’ Day is observed.
• October 11, International Day of the Girl Child is observed.
• October 15, International Day of Rural Women is observed.
• November 25, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is observed.

Guidelines and Campaigns

• Gender Inclusive Guidelines, Toolbox, & United Nations System-wide Strategy on Gender Parity.
• Say No, UNiTE, UNiTE to End Violence against Women, Orange the World: #HearMeToo (2018), and the 16 days of activism.

All these stipulate an ongoing and several decades-long formal (and longer informal) effort to provide some level of equality for women, naturally, with men. All of the stipulations cover either general or particular aspects of equality for women with men, whether by age so girls with boys or women with men, by war status so non-combatants murdered disproportionately by combatants and being mostly women and children, by economics and social status and so SES equality or parity with men based on different definitions, and so on. One member of The Message community stated Branham supported women’s rights in a number of ways. However, when I reviewed the idea of “rights” within The Message, it, in matter of fact, reflected the opposite of the rights stipulated in even the most basic documents or ideas celebrated in the events and days devoted to them. Take, for example, “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2),” as the listed document and parts of the foundational United Nations rights text, there are clear statements of universality, as follows:

Preamble

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world…

…human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people…

…human rights should be protected by the rule of law…

…Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom…

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms…

…Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples… to the end that every individual and every organ of society… shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction…

Article 16.

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 25.

(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Each part above in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2), take seriously the idea of the equality of women with men in an environment in which women have not had equal access to opportunities, resources, leisure, or education and work, while this remains a continually improving facet of global culture and ethics. In Canadian society, we see a wide range of organizations taking different ideological stances while standing firm on the fundamentals of women’s equality including the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, CARE Canada, REAL Women of Canada, Canadian Women’s Foundation, Manitoba Political Equality League, Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter, Canadian Women’s Press Club, Vancouver Women’s Caucus, Local Council of Women of Halifax, Canadian Federation of University Women, the Almas Jiwani Foundation (formerly UN Women Canada), Dominion Women’s Enfranchisement Association, Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, Fédération des femmes du Québec, National Council of Women of Canada, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, Canadian Women’s Suffrage Association, Oxfam Canada, The MATCH International Women’s Fund, Nobel Women’s Initiative, Equal Voice, LEAF, Department for Women and Gender Equality, Royal Commission on the Status of Women, National Action Committee on the Status of Women, and Pauktuutit.

Yet, even with this external sense, whether national organizations or international rights documents, of women’s rights, the internal to The Message sense of rights become highly peculiar. For example, William Branham, the ‘Prophet’ himself, viewed women as “human garbage,” “the lowest of all animals that God put on the Earth,” “the very lowest creature on the Earth,” “filthy,” some women should be shot, women can’t drive, women should stay in the home, and that Satan or the devil made women, and more. Please see below for some remarks from the late Mr. William Marion Branham, the Founder of The Message:

• Excuse this, young ladies. She is nothing but a human garbage can, a sex exposal. That’s all she is, an immoral woman, is a human sexual garbage can, a pollution, where filthy, dirty, ornery, low-down filth is disposed by her. What is she made this way for? For deception. Every sin that ever was on the earth was caused by a woman.
• When, in God’s sight, the Word, she is the lowest of all animals that God put on the earth.
• This was my remark then, “They’re not worth a good clean bullet to kill them with it.” That’s right. And I hated women. That’s right. And I just have to watch every move now, to keep from still thinking the same thing.
• When I was a little, bitty, ol’ boy, up there, I’d see them women come up there on the road, and their… know their husband was out working, them up there with some guy, drunk; on the side of the road, and they’d walk them up and down the road, sober them up enough to get them home, cook their husband’s supper. I said they ain’t worth a clean bullet to go through them. That’s right. I said they’re lower than animals, would do a thing like that. And I… When I was seventeen, eighteen years old, I’d see a—a girl coming down the street, I’d cross over on the other side, I said, “That stinking viper.” See? And I would have been a real hater, but when I received God in my heart, God let me know that He’s got some jewels out there, He’s got some real ladies. They’ll not all defile themselves like that; thank God for that.
• Now, you can take some of these little two-by-fours if you want to, but that’s what God said. That’s what Christ said. Now, that’s the truth. Oh, God be merciful. What must the great Holy Spirit think when He comes before the Father? You say, “Why you picking on us women?” All right, men, here you are. Any man that’ll let his wife smoke cigarettes and wear them kind of clothes, shows what he’s made out of. He’s not very much of a man. That’s exactly right. True. He don’t love her or he’d take a board and blister her with it. You know that’s the truth. Now, I don’t say that to be smart. I’m telling you the truth. That’s right.
• Women, there was only one woman in the Bible that ever painted her face, and that was Jezebel. And God fed her to the dogs. So if you see a woman wearing that, you can say, “How do you do, Miss Dogmeat?” That’s exactly what God called her. He fed her to the dogs. Exactly right.
• You may question me about Satan being her designer, but that’s the Truth.
• That’s what they were doing in Sodom and Gomorrah. The natural use our bodies… The men become so plain to women today, there’s not even respect. They’ll hardly take off their hat, men will in front of women, and they have no respect for them at all. What did it? The women done it theirself. And you all talking about juvenile delinquency and things. I think it’s parent delinquency. Some of you let your girls go out and run around all night with a cigarette-smoking, cocktail-drinking party. Come in the next morning with her clothes half off her, old make-up all over her face and that, And you call the Kentucky mothers ignorant. Write her patch down with those Dogpatch, Lil’ Abner, and make fun of the Kentucky mothers. That’s some of my people up in there. Let one of them girls…?… it up there and, brother, I’ll tell you, she wouldn’t get out of bed for six months. She’d take a hickory limb and beat what clothes she had left on her off. And if you had something like that back in the church today, you’d have better. Amen. God give us the old time mothers. I’ve got two girls coming. I don’t know what they’ll be.
• And I’ve see them laying out on the beaches half naked before man stretching themselves out there, say they get a sun-tanning. Brother, I — I may not live. But if God lets me live and keep my right mind, if one of mine does it, she’ll get a son-tanning. It’ll be Mr. Branham’s son with a barrel slat behind her. She’ll be tanned all right. She’ll know where it come from too. Yes, sir.
• And now, some of you talk about the illiteracy of the hillbillies up in Kentucky there. But how the old grandmas with their long bonnets and things on… You know what? They could teach some of you city people how to behave yourself. That’s right. Your little Martha Ann come in of a nighttime, and mess-up all over her face, and half drunk, and smoking a cigarette, and blowing it through her nose, and the stomp her foot, and scream at you. Let her do that to one of them old Kentucky mammys one time. She’d top a hickory, boy, or take something, or a barrel slat. When she got through, she’d know who was mammy around there. If you’d do that, you wouldn’t have so many wrong men, and boys and girls in the world tonight. Let one of them strip theirselves in some these old dirty clothes like you let your kids wear out here, little old shorts, and ever what they call them. And let them one time. Uh-huh. You would find out how illiterate they were. She’d beat her till she’d be so full of welts, you couldn’t get the clothes over the top of them. That’s what needs to be done tonight. That’s right.
• And we, not knowing it, turns right straight back to heathen worship again, to Women, the very lowest creature on the earth.
• Well, the other day some crazy woman driver drove right in front of me, come pretty near killing two of my children. I said, “Lady.” She said, “Now, you shut your mouth; I’m the one that’s driving.” And before I got back, twenty-six women driver’s almost caused us to be killed. We kept count of it. They made a mistake when they give her a driver’s license. They put her out here to voting. They put her out here to these public works. And during the time of the war, right in New York City, more illegitimate children was born in the city of New York, of prostitute women, and their husbands overseas, than there was soldiers killed in the four years of war.
• Notice, there is nothing designed to stoop so low, or be filthy, but a woman. A dog can’t do it, a hog can’t do it, a bird can’t do it. No animal is immoral, nor it can be, for it is not designed so it can be. A female hog can’t be immoral, a female dog can’t be immoral, a female bird can’t be immoral. A woman is the only thing can do it.
• I predicted that women would keep demoralizing and the nation would keep falling, and they’d keep hanging to mother, or like mother like that, till they become, a woman become an idol. And after a while, that America would be ruled by a woman. Mark it and see if it’s not right. A woman will take the place of a President or something, of great, some high power in America. When… I say this with respect, ladies. When a woman gets out of the kitchen, she’s out of her place. That’s right. That’s where she belongs. Outside of that, she has no place. And now, I’m not hard on them, but I just tell what’s the Truth and what the Bible. Used to be the man was the head of the house, but that was in Bible days. He isn’t no more. He’s the puppet, or he’s the—or the babysitter or something. And now… No, they want to take care of a dog, practice birth control, and pack a little old dog around in their arms all the time, so you can run around all night.
• Today, women is so brassy! Every… Their husband can’t even talk. They got to stick right out there, a cigarette in their hand, a pair of shorts on, doing all the talking. How a perverted race of people, she’s got to be chief cook and bottle washer, everything else! When she leaves the kitchen, she leaves her place of duty, right, as a mother. Now we find out, women then stayed back and behaved theirself, acted like ladies, their head was the one who did the decisions and things.

Please sit and reflect on the nature of the quotations and the ways in which the man compared to gentle Jesus meek and mild makes violent statements and extensive commentary one can deem as gender inegalitarianism external to The Message, while, to some who sent sincere letters to me, the espousal inside of The Message would deem these as gender equal statements.

Commonly, as in the Beijing Declaration or in the United Nations/World Health Organization, the main forms of violence against women taken into account are physical, sexual, and psychological (including emotional). In a minimal comparison, I would argue many of these statements would fall in the line with some of them. Even a glance at “lowest of all animals that God put on the earth” or as “human garbage” seems unequal to men to me, if we take this in a strictly Christian theological logic sense, this seems consistent as inequality. Unless, the men are the co-equal lowest of all animals that God put on the earth, which would be logically untenable as human beings, in Christian theology, stand above the rest of Creation as the pinnacle of God’s excellence as a crafter of mud/dirt and rib. If Mr. Branham harboured women’s rights defender status within The Message, then his stature would exist completely at odds with most or all meanings accepted as “women’s rights” outside of The Message established in an international context and taken as a consensus. Do women deserve living under such a theology proclaimed as building lives of equality of women with said assertions of “women’s rights” while in opposition to widely accepted standards at odds with the proclamations of the international community, or even with other denominations of Christianity with liberal theological leanings? The churches may function independently; although, if they didn’t function under The Message theology, then they would not exist as The Message churches.

There are a number of confirmed cases through reportage by the Casting Pearls Project. I would hope members and leaders in The Message would commend the bravery and the honesty of these women coming forward rather than shunning or denying them, i.e., churches in North America should praise the work of the Casting Pearls Project and give explicit positive coverage to it, whether in media, on church websites, in public statements, local news, or elsewhere. If not, then they’d merely confirm the tentative diagnosis of a destructive cult.[4] I would hope to see that in church and ministry videos and writing in Canada and elsewhere in the future. Perhaps, you, individual believer, can encourage this in the relevant locale. I leave this section with the final word to women who reported stories in the Casting Pearls Project:

Anna-Lisa A. in “Turning Pain Into Power”:

If you are reading this and have questions or doubts about leaving this cult that has you bound, do NOT let those fears hinder you from accepting your truth. Ask questions. Research. Never stop finding your truth. You know what your truth is, and only you can make that first step. I won’t lie to you. It is very scary having the entire foundation of your belief/relationship with God crumble before your very eyes. But I promise you, if you just hold on to the truth that you deserve so much more, it WILL be worth it.

You are a queen, a survivor, a warrior. You possess strength that you haven’t even tapped into yet. I want you to know that in a sea of doubters, haters, and unfortunately, family and friends who will make you their enemy, I believe in you. Darling, just make that first step towards your truth, and watch your life become everything you have ever desired it to be. This is not the end.

This is your comeback.

Christine H. in “Breaking The Chains”:

I married at a very young age (barely 17). It was expected that we marry young and not risk making “mistakes” before marriage. I went from being in a very controlling home, to being married and becoming a submissive wife. I was always raised with the idea that a man was to have the say in the home and that my place was to make him happy (in my mind, at all costs). This wasn’t how my childhood home worked, but it was what I was taught. I already had “pleaser” type of personality. This came from trying to please everyone in hopes of them being proud of me, and the dire need to be good enough. Both sides of the family were very controlling; my family would try to control what I wore and what I did even as a married woman. I never dreamed my life would turn out the way it did. It wasn’t long before the stress of life grabbed our young home, and I found myself in an abusive marriage. After almost 11 years and two children, we ended in a divorce. I felt destroyed, knowing I was committing the forbidden sin. Once again, more hurt and abuse by people that were supposed to love me the most. The pain felt unbearable. Why was I so unlovable? Why could people physically and mentally hurt me, knowing they were causing me pain, but still say they loved me?

The spiral began. My family could only see that their daughter was now divorced and how that was going to look to everyone in the “Message”. I was told I had no rights, but no one wanted to know my story. 

Joyce A. Lefler in “From Miracle to Murder”:

Branham taught that women are Satan’s partners in bringing down the morality of all men. He preached sexual discrimination, belittling, and sexual objectification of women. He believed women were “nothing but a garbage can” and “dog meat.” Branham admonished men to beat their wives “with oak slats until their clothes and skin peeled off” for the transgression of sunbathing. Men had permission to divorce their wives if they cut their hair. Instead of being treated as a precious jewel and partner in life, a woman was to be treated as a slave – good for breeding and for maintaining a home but nothing else. Education was now of the devil, especially for a woman. I graduated salutatorian of my high school class, but my dream of becoming a physician was broken. I was forced to say NO to scholarships that would have allowed me to attend college and eventually support myself.

Dating led to sin, so very young girls and boys were told to marry. Wives were expected to shut up, obey their husbands, and have babies. They had no right to ask for more. I became engaged without going on a single date. Within two weeks of marriage, my “Message” husband humiliated, cursed, raped, and beat me. His behavior became a habit. I often had bruises on my face, arms, and legs. Even with the modest cover-up clothes I wore, the bruises were not easy to ignore. When I cried out for help to my “Message” parents and my “Message” pastor and church, they ignored the bruises, turned their backs on me, and advised me to obey my husband. I was told to stop being stubborn so he wouldn’t have to beat me. 

Science

On science, this becomes a slightly easier item to tackle in the queue because of the robust nature of the findings of modern science now. Fundamentalist communities all over the world have cosmogonies and philosophies of life. One from The Message appears to differ with the expert consensus of modern cosmology. One individual, in a letter, stated Branham supported science. I disagree for some reasons. If we take the fundamental view of the biological world given by evolution via natural selection, then evolution via natural selection is a given, whether for the biological sciences or the medical sciences.

Let’s conclude on a straightforward example, we have the presentation of a real historical Adam and Eve. No evidence for this theological hypothesis has ever come forward, insofar as I know, with wide acceptance amongst the individuals most qualified to make the assessment, i.e., the scientific communities with relevant training and academic background. Now, this extends into the doctrine entitled the Serpent Seed Doctrine. In the basic idea, Branham claimed the offspring of Cain, rather than Abel, resulted from intercourse between a snake/serpent and a human female, Eve. This is anti-scientific. Cain’s descendants known as “a big religious bunch of illegitimate bastard children.” This means a “serpent” claimed as the gap between chimpanzee and man. Chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and homo sapiens are cousins with a common ancestry, common descent, not human beings coming from chimpanzees. Even on this fundamental doctrine to The Message theology, the claims fail to stack up.

He misunderstood science. Branham made outrageous claims on basic principles of evolutionary theory, and science. He would assert infallible visions. However, in a matter of fact, this stance stands in precise opposition to the attitude, spirit, and process of science. An attitude of skepticism, a spirit of empiricism, and a process of hypothesizing, testing, tentative confirmation/failed confirmation, followed by more testing/re-hypothesizing, and repeat. Indeed, if science is of the devil (“Knowledge, science, Education, is the greatest hindrance that God ever had. It is of the devil,” “…knowledge and science, and Christianity, has no fellowship at all. One is of the devil, and the other one is of God,” or “Education, science and civilization, is of the devil. That’s right. It isn’t of God. It is of the devil.”), and if Mr. Branham supported science as per some supporters of him, then Mr. Branham, the man of God, in fact roundly supports that which he claims was of the devil. Is Mr. Branham supportive of God, in his theology, or of that process of science, which he deemed the work of the devil? He rejected foundations of science, claimed occasional infallible visions, and called science the work of the Devil. He was anti-science.

Oh, and I don’t much care or don’t take seriously claims of the supernatural for the photograph with the ‘halo,’ either, but that’s another story.

[1] Other listed organizations at the end of each article in Canadian Atheist circa May 27, 2020:

Canadian Atheist Associates: Godless Mom, Nice Mangoes, Sandwalk, Brainstorm Podcast, Left at the Valley, Life, the Universe & Everything Else, The Reality Check, Bad Science Watch, British Columbia Humanist Association, Dying With Dignity Canada, Canadian Secular Alliance, Centre for Inquiry Canada, Kelowna Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists Association.

—

Other National/Local Resources: Association humaniste du Québec, Atheist Freethinkers, Central Ontario Humanist Association, Comox Valley Humanists, Grey Bruce Humanists, Halton-Peel Humanist Community, Hamilton Humanists, Humanist Association of London, Humanist Association of Ottawa, Humanist Association of Toronto, Humanists, Atheists and Agnostics of Manitoba, Ontario Humanist Society, Secular Connextions Seculaire, Secular Humanists in Calgary, Society of Free Thinkers (Kitchener-Waterloo/Cambridge/Guelph), Thunder Bay Humanists, Toronto Oasis, Victoria Secular Humanist Association.

—

Other International/Outside Canada Resources: Allianz vun Humanisten, Atheisten an Agnostiker, American Atheists, American Humanist Association, Associação Brasileira de Ateus e AgnósticoséééBrazilian Association of Atheists and Agnostics, Atheist Alliance International, Atheist Alliance of America, Atheist Centre, Atheist Foundation of Australia, The Brights Movement, Center for Inquiry (including Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science), Atheist Ireland, Camp Quest, Inc., Council for Secular Humanism, De Vrije Gedachte, European Humanist Federation, Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations, Foundation Beyond Belief, Freedom From Religion Foundation, Humanist Association of Ireland, Humanist International, Humanist Association of Germany, Humanist Association of Ireland, Humanist Society of Scotland, Humanists UK, Humanisterna/Humanists Sweden, Internet Infidels, International League of Non-Religious and Atheists, James Randi Educational Foundation, League of Militant Atheists, Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, National Secular Society, Rationalist International, Recovering From Religion, Religion News Service, Secular Coalition for America, Secular Student Alliance, The Clergy Project, The Rational Response Squad, The Satanic Temple, The Sunday Assembly, United Coalition of Reason, Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics.

[2] A school of philosophical thought exists called Scientific Realism. Prominent thinkers in the line of scientific realism, with the mind as a product of evolution as the brain in operation through time, include Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, Steven Pinker, and Dr. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein/Professor Rebecca Goldstein, who when I last talked in 2016 with her was visiting Professor of Philosophy and English at New York University and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the New College of the Humanities. It posits an affirmation of the world as described by the observed and inferred-and-unobserved discovered in the various domains of the sciences. One subdiscipline, if you will, of the endeavour of Scientific Realism is the application of the science of evolution via natural selection to the human organism in body and brain, so as to discover truths about the species in a naturalistic manner for a knowledge of the universal aspects of the species in a deep and superficial sense. Thus, the mind, or the conscious output of the brain in operation through time, becomes subject to natural laws, nature, and the processes of evolution, as a product of said, including the types of systems of perception and memory involved in the construction and reconstruction of memories for eventual eyewitness reports. This research on eyewitness testimony will revolutionize any religious claims and textual analysis including eyewitness testimonies attempting to make historical, factual claims from them.

[3] If you may recall with the Chief Skugaid & Immanuel Velikovsky (June 10, 1895, Vitebsk, Russia to Nov. 17, 1979, New Jersey, United States) example, as an instructive and educational moment, there was an important reflection with the Velikovsky Cosmology. This becomes an important example in the demarcation between science and non-science, and the prevention of both critical thought and scientific methodology from intervening in one’s comprehension of the cosmos, where biblical mythology and world mythology become reified into claims of objective fact grounded in catastrophist views. As stated by Encyclopedia Britannica:

After examining legends of the ancient Jews and other eastern Mediterranean peoples, he concluded that some tales described actual occurrences and were not mere myths or allegories. In the United States from 1939, he expanded the geographic scope of his study of ancient documents. In his first book, Worlds in Collision (1950), he hypothesized that in historical times an electromagnetic derangement of the solar system caused Venus and Mars to approach the Earth closely, disturbing its rotation, axis inclination, and magnetic field. His later works are Ages in Chaos (1952), revising the chronology of the pre-Christian Middle East; Earth in Upheaval (1955), adducing geologic and paleontological evidence supporting his belief that catastrophes have overwhelmed the Earth; Oedipus and Akhnaton (1960), linking Egyptian history with Greek mythology; and Peoples of the Sea (1977), identifying Ramses III with Nectanebo, pharaohs otherwise dated 800 years apart.

The animosity of the American scientific community toward Worlds in Collision caused the original publisher, threatened with a boycott of its scientific-textbook division, to turn Velikovsky’s work over to a firm not involved in textbook publishing.

Obviously, the attempts of some of the American scientific community to boycott, silence, and ban Velikovsky was academically and morally wrong, as this goes against the spirit of science, but existed within a journalistic culture in the United States based, often, on anti-intellectualism and tabloid-ism; however, this does not then provide a basis to consider the contents of the mythos and the arguments as true based on a controversy. Indeed, if a truth was preceded by a controversy in every case, then the fear of demons, ghosts, Uri Geller, and Chuckie would be true too. Every new controversial idea flushed down the toilet could have the sailor on the way down screeching “persecution!” all the while swirling in ever-tighter circles into oblivion.

Another part of the issue is the extensive scientific ignorance of the American public, then and now, and the ease with which creative and incorrect theories can be taken as fact in a rapid manner. We can imagine the cases of theistic evolutionists, progressive creationists, Intelligent Design advocates, young earth creationists, and old earth creationists seen in a variety of manifestations at Trinity Western University in the Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada, under President Mark Husbands, or Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, United States under President Jerry Falwell, Jr. You may recall some international news about the Township of Langley with the Council – Mayor Jack Froese and Cllrs. Petrina Arnason, David Davis, Steve Ferguson, Margaret Kunst, Bob Long, Kim Richter, Blair Whitmarsh, and Eric Woodward – having to deal with the case of Jessica Yaniv (formerly Jonathan Yaniv) or “a male individual who identifies as a woman, filed complaints with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal,” as reported in Uncommon Ground Media. It’s that Township of Langley.

Most of the private universities in Canada are Christian and the creationist strands (at least the five mentioned above) amount to theological frameworks asserted as science, while only one scientific theory gets taken seriously by over 95% or more of practicing, professional biologists today: evolution via natural selection. Darwin was right. If Columbia Bible College, Heritage College & Seminary, Horizon College & Seminary, Prairie, Providence University College, Redeemer University College, Rocky Mountain College, St. Stephen’s University, Trinity Western University, Tyndale University College, Tyndale University College & Seminary, and Vanguard College as a whole, or individual members of faculty, staff, and administration, do not accept the theory of evolution, then the problem exists with the theology, not the science. The response of the American scientific community, not a bloc as Velikovskyan mythologist-cosmologists do not amount to a bloc, probably came from an acknowledgement of most Americans believing scientifically dubious and unsupportable ideas about the natural world, whether in the core sciences or in areas of medicine with health.

In this, the purpose was similar to a doctor preventing bad treatments and ideas being sent off into the public space, as we see in the important and pioneering work of Professor Gordon Guyatt at McMaster University with Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) or in the lesser-known skeptic community adaptations in Science-Based Medicine (SBM) as espoused by Steven Novella, M.D., David H. Gorski, M.D, Ph.D., Kimball C. Atwood IV, M.D., and Harriet Hall, M.D. Some select members of the public have been appropriately trained in medicine; most of the public has not been properly trained in medicine. Hence, the attempt to provide counters to misinformation in the areas of health becomes particularly consequential for the individuals within the general public because health remains at risk there. Similarly with correct, i.e., modern and scientifically accurate, theoretical frameworks of the world, the public deserves better information, so as to better arm themselves against creative psychiatrist pseudoscientists one can find in Velikovsky. With Velikovsky, it has become the last in the line of failed catastrophist hypotheses about the world, and ended, more or less, as a catastrophe to this day, where RationalWiki stated, “Meanwhile academic consensus remained firm in almost unilaterally rejecting Velikovsky’s work as impossible woo,” especially to a mono-vorous biblical American public looking for any justification of the Old Testament mythology as a literal history of the world.

[4] Once more, I recommend Robert Jay Lifton, Steven Hassan, and Rick Alan Ross, and the late Margaret Singer.  

Photo by Stefano Zocca on Unsplash

Daniel Lomax is an Editor for Topical Magazine. Here we talk about some of the contexts, history, and aims of it.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Topical Magazine has been slowly developing for a couple of years. What are its origins?

Daniel Lomax: Topical Magazine was founded by Benjamin David, whose previous project, Conatus News, branched out in two directions. Others ran with political activism while Topical Magazine emphasizes philosophical reflection. As the name of the magazine implies, we turn the microscope on contemporary events. But we look through it from the other side, aiming to put these issues into a wider historical and intellectual context.

Jacobsen: With academics, activists, and commentators as part of the team, there will be a wide range of views in addition to style of commentary. I have contributed to the publication too. Let’s take a shift into some discussion on the story for you, how did you become involved in Topical Magazine?

Lomax: The gift of nepotism brought me here. Benjamin, our editor-in-chief and founder, is an old friend of mine. He was looking for some fresh input for the magazine and so he got in touch, perhaps on account of my tendency to get into debates online (sorry/not sorry – I am one of those people).

As a contributing editor I think it’s important to allow each writer their own voice. A good editor is often a hands-off one. The magazine has a broadly left-libertarian perspective but the wide range of approaches is our virtue. It’s important for a magazine to be a magazine and not a church.

Jacobsen: What has been the writing and intellectual background for you, e.g., the influences and formal education?

Lomax: My formal education is actually in music and sound technology. During those years, I found my interests turning to philosophy, and returned to my childhood aspiration to write. I’ve run a lively philosophy forum online for some years and spent more time engaging with philosophy, politics and literature than with my formal area of study.

But my real education was a brief spell of homelessness followed by years of poverty. As a pure intellectual it can be difficult to make your mind up – Marx (for example) is persuasive, and so is Hayek. But with these sorts of experiences you go through the looking glass. For better and for worse you get a real glimpse of society, and individuals, and the government, and the economy, and yourself: and at the end of it you find you’ve developed a new clarity and confidence in your values and principles. If this sounds like I’m saying I studied at the University of Life, shoot me.

Jacobsen: The current team includes Benjamin David (Senior Editor), Daniel Lomax (Editor), Raghen Lucy (Editor), Tom Adamson, Ian Bellis, Jude Bernard, Ryan Faulkner-Hogg, Bryce Harper, Race Huchdorf, Dino Jelčić, Khadija Khan Eleanor Paisley, Benjamin Studebaker, Jeremiah Tabb, Emile Yusupoff, and myself. When we look at the team, what is the first thing that comes to mind for you?

Lomax: We have a strong international team of independent thinkers and fierce intellectuals, each with different areas of interest and different approaches to writing and analysis. It’s always interesting to see the different takes these contributors give on an issue, and they’re a pleasure to work with. We’re always open for further recruitment of course, and we hope to continue to grow and build on our foundations.

Jacobsen: What is the importance of the individuals at the helm now? Those who take particular editorial stances, orient themselves within a specific frame, and provide coverage on a variety of topics for the readership.

Lomax: Benjamin’s a gifted promoter, organizer and people-manager, with a good work rate, and he’s sort of the spine that holds the pages together. Raghen’s a strikingly intelligent young editor with a keen eye for detail. I’m extremely awkward and pedantic which, I like to think, keeps the others on their toes. The importance of that can’t be underestimated, of course.

Jacobsen: Knowing the social and intellectual circles, and networks, many publications arose in a similar manner with different emphases and orientation while having some core values around “Freedom of Speech”/freedom of expression. For example, the team at Areo Magazine began under Malhar Mali in November, 2016 (until June, 2018) with the current editorial team as Helen Pluckrose (Editor), Iona Italia (Sub-Editor), and Gauri Hopkins (Administrator), and some others who I know stipulating particular positions for themselves within the publication. They have expanded into LetterWiki. However, I remain unsure as to the current full roster. Quillette only a short time before in 2015 without much notoriety, except in the last, maybe, two or two-and-a-half years. Its team consists of Claire Lehmann (Editor-in-Chief), Jamie Palmer (Senior Editor), Paulina Neuding (European Editor), Jonathan Kay (Canadian Editor), Toby Young (Associate Editor), Andy Ngo (Sub-Editor), Greg Ellis (Voice of Quillette Narrated), Asher Honickman (Legal Advisor), Carol Horton, Jeffrey Taylor, Matthew Blackwell, Debra W. Soh, Michael Shellenberger, Spencer Case, Terry Newman, Chloe Valdary, Imran Shamsunahar, Bradley Campbell, Brad Cran, Coleman Hughes, Bo Winegard, Jonathan Anomaly, Rosalind Arden, John R. Wood, Jr., Neema Parvini, Clay Routledge, Helen Dale, and Sumantra Maitra. So, each covering some different facets of modern culture and emergent within a couple of years of one another. There are others. What is the importance of publications like these?

Lomax: We’re not the first publication to have noted with concern that freedom of expression has declined as a value among “Western” society. I’m accustomed by now to seeing and hearing historically ignorant arguments for this new authoritarianism, posed by people who should know better. Our demand is not just to protect a thing which is valuable in itself – although it is – but to preserve the liberty upon which all other liberties are built.

Jacobsen: Following from the previous question, how has Topical Magazine filled out a niche for itself?

Lomax: It’s edifying to watch the growing resistance to the authoritarian trend, but it risks being monopolized by people who obsess over gender and Islam. The civil rights movement in the US couldn’t have happened without the First Amendment and the Ottoman Empire’s ban on the printing press is one of the reasons most of the region is strangulated by hierarchical and reactionary regimes. Our position is that a seat must be kept warm for free speech on the political Left of the house.

Jacobsen: What are the goals of Topical Magazine?

Lomax: We hope to inform, educate and reason – and in an age in which so many disenfranchised people think of politics as Something For Other People, associating it with dispatches from boring men in anoraks, standing in the rain looking dour outside the halls of Westminster or sitting in a bland studio offering dry, meaningless PowerPoint infographics on “the economy”: make it interesting.

Jacobsen: What is the ethos of Topical Magazine?

Lomax: We write with clarity so as not to exclude. Integrity and strictness about the facts are not negotiable: the public’s trust in the journalistic profession is at a low point, and it’s incumbent on every writer to take some responsibility for that. With that said: don’t believe this piffle about “unbiased journalism.” Bias is ineradicable. The key thing is that your readers know from the outset what your biases are. We treat our readership like grown-ups.

Jacobsen: What are some of the main topics covered in Topical Magazine?

Lomax: We’ve written repeatedly about freedom of speech issues and technology (both of which topics you’ve made insightful contributions to yourself). We have pieces on the environment, nuclear energy, political rifts, feminism, mental health, combat sports, social media and much more. There isn’t a topic we’re afraid to touch.

Thanks for having me, Scott.

Jacobsen: You’re very welcome, Daniel.

Photo by Rhema Kallianpur on Unsplash