Audrey Simmons is an organiser with the Association of Black Humanists, a group that supports African-Caribbean people who have left, or are thinking of leaving religion. She is also a Humanist UK Celebrant, creating non-religious weddings and partnership ceremonies.
What was the aim of the Association of Black Humanists when it started in 2012?
So ABH was started up – not by me, I joined a little later on – but by Lola Tinubu and Clive Aruede, who are main members as well, and there were a few others involved at the time. It was set up in response to the fact that there was a humanist community out there (at the time it was British Humanists, but Humanist UK and various other groups) but there were very few black people. And it was just thinking about, why that was? Where are the black humanists?
So at the time we were called London Black Atheists. The aim really was to find a space for black people – people from Africa, from the Caribbean, allies – who would actually understand the experience of being from those countries, in a world where religion plays a huge part in the politics, in the daily life, where religion plays a major part in every aspect of your life.
Watching some of the memorials for famous people in recent years, for Aretha [Franklin] and Whitney [Houston], I listened to the commentaries and they're always surprised at how long these [ceremonies] are ... in black religion it's an all day, all week, life-consuming thing. When you decide to remove yourself, you're not just removing yourself from going to church on a Sunday, you’re removing yourself from family, community ... you're losing a lot.
What are the particular challenges faced by African and African Caribbean atheists in Britain?
When I started being involved in the humanist community, I met people who had never been to church, who had never had any contact with religion in any way and couldn't understand why people were involved in it. And I found that shocking. I found that a really strange place to be, to have grown up in an environment where religion played no part. I myself was raised as a Seventh-day Adventist, I went to a Church of England school – so my Saturdays were taken up going to church. As Seventh-day Adventists follow the Old Testament, it's akin to some of the Jewish faith rituals, sunset to sundown no work, we didn't eat pork, shellfish, cheese, all those kinds of things. But because I went to a Church of England school, I also had to go to church on a Sunday to be part of that community.
It becomes part of the everyday thinking. If you're not religious, you are then something odd. My family think I've got into bad company, being part of the Association of Black Humanists – that's how they view me, like I've got into a bad crowd [laughs] like I'm a teenager.
If we look at how religion came to black people, we're looking at colonialism and slavery. Those are the foundations, part of the black experience. And also if we're looking at African history, it was the non-conformist churches that actually helped to save black people from slavery – Quakers, Baptists, the Morovians and those kinds of churches – they were actually a huge support. It was the missionaries that were going out there to support, teach, set up hospitals. When you're looking at that experience, it's not just about God, whether you believe or not, it's where you went for your education – the best schools were run by missionaries, by the church.
So the church within the African diaspora, it plays a much bigger and more important role in everything that you do. It’s not just removing yourself from going to church on a Sunday. And even now in Africa, many charities are religious-run; even now when you go to hospital, doctors will pray over you – and I find that disconcerting and quite worrying. When you're coming from that lifestyle, when you move to Britain, that's what comes with you. The black churches that are here are coming from that mindset. It's about your everyday life, it infiltrates everything that you do. And I don't think that aspect is really part of the [non-black] British psyche – unless you're in a religion like the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons, or if you're coming from Islam or more conservative communities.
You’re talking about black history and how it relates to religion. Is there enough awareness of this history?
There needs to be more awareness, because if you reject religion, you’re also challenging that supportive history. As a Jamaican, I'm challenging the Baptist War – the uprisings with ex-slaves and slaves fighting colonial masters and slave masters. So if you’re thinking about rejecting that religious idea, you're also casting aspersions on your own history. People do look at you, like “it was religion that saved us, that got us through those dark times” … Also women played a huge part in raising families – men were always the ones who had to go to find work, black people have always had to travel to find work – so households were built on community, and that community was also part of religion. My own mother left my brother in Jamaica, to come to England, in lots of families children were left behind in the Windrush era ... so when you're looking at the family structure, part of that would have been the church sisters and community supporting you … you rely on that religious community.
It’s vital that you understand those aspects, and to say: ‘that community still stands, that support still is important, but it’s not the only way’. We can always find community. Community is just about people. We've seen it in a range of things that have happened. Looking at Grenfell, that wasn't about religion, that was about people. So it's trying to change that mindset – that actually, this was less about religion, more about ordinary people recognising the circumstances and situations and coming forwards to help.
But when you get that enmeshed with the church, with pastors having so much power ... they interfere in your marriage, how you raise your children, what kind of work you should be doing ... the pastor has a lot of power within the family, so when you want something solved you tend not to go to a lawyer but to a pastor. So it's changing that kind of mindset. Support can still be there, but the belief in god doesn't have to be there.
You’re also a Humanist UK Celebrant. How do you help couples to navigate creating their own ceremonies?
Usually when the couple has decided to have a humanist wedding, they're on the same page. The challenge is usually about family. It's usually about ‘Auntie Marie’ or grandparents used to seeing things in a particular way ... how are we going to make sure that ‘Auntie Marie’ doesn't keel over because it's not what she expected … it's usually trying to deal with wider family dynamics and cultural dynamics. Marrying someone from a Christian background with someone from a Muslim background – you then have to think about, how are you going to present this new 21st century stuff to people who are deeply committed to thousands-year-old rituals and religions? How are we going to make sure that it's a positive experience, that nobody feels excluded? You might include a cultural aspect, or it could be in the wording you choose ... recognising that everybody has a different perspective.
As human beings, we like rituals, we like to be part of a pack, we still want to mark our occasions like weddings. The fact that the church has infiltrated human experiences of two people coming together, of raising children, doesn't mean those rituals don't stand without the church. We just need to work out how we're going to do them. Creating those weddings with a couple … you really have to look at people and build that connection. That's one of the things I like about humanism. You're not deflecting or deferring or trying to bring in something that has very little meaning, You're having to face and deal with people: they're emotions, mindset, needs and wants. That means you have to adjust yourself to accommodate those kinds of things. We need to look at how we as black people can be part of that story, part of that creative process that's happening right now.
Part of the mission of the Association of Black Humanists is to support those who are questioning religion, but may not have yet left the faith. How is this handled?
What we tend to do is give people space to talk. People need to vent, be heard, or have their experiences acknowledge. Also they're usually looking for information and knowledge. We have a range of topics we cover. At the moment, we're looking at African history, to build a sense of self, to build self-esteem and give people a space in which they can speak. Many of the people that come to us are thinking, they’re unsure, but in their own spaces they can't voice any wavering in their religion. Sometimes they come for one session because they have a question, or to work out where they are on their journey. They might say: ‘I'm not non-religious, I'm spiritual’. We have people who still go to church who come to us.
We have meetings on Saturday, because most people in African church go on Sunday. So they come to us for breathing space, to be able to be non-religious for a day. We've had people who've come to us and we've said to them, ‘don't leave yet, this isn't the time’ ... because they're going to be homeless, jobless. We have one member who works with his entire family, his father, his brother, they run a business together – so until he be financially independent, he has to stay. Those are the kinds of things people are struggling with. We have one member who was a Caribbean Muslim and was thrown out of his home, only some members of his family still talk to him. You can lose everything.
We have to guide and be a support to people, we need to look at what's good for their mental health. People are usually balancing. We have members who are out and open and fine; we have members that when we take photos they hide; we had an active member who went to live in Nigeria and had to delete every post, because he said that if they find his name associated [with us], he would lose his business.
What can the wider humanist community do to be more inclusive towards black people?
The issue is that at the moment humanism is presented by people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, all of those kinds of faces. Because black people, famous people high up, aren't ready to say that they're non-believers. So the biggest problem we have, as ABH, is trying to find black people who are prepared to say 'I'm black and I'm a non-believer'. That’s what we're trying to do, so that humanism loses that white middle-class reputation, that it has garnered through no fault of its own, but we're trying to change that brand so that we can say that everyone has access to being a humanist.
It needs to get more grassroots in the community. We need to move onto the idea that it's an everyday thing. How do we do community projects, where ordinary people can see humanism as something that is for them? There are a lot of people who are non-religious who don't see themselves as humanist, even though if you lined up what it is, and who they are, they would match and tick a lot of boxes. But they don't use those words; there is a branding issue. South London Humanists go to Nunhead Cemetry (I know that sounds weird, but it has a long history) they have an open day every year and some of us go along and hand out forms – ‘Are you humanist? How humanist are you?’ – we hand them out to ordinary people, and they go 'ooh, actually… I didn't know! Is that what I am? Am I a humanist?' So we need to get to that kind of ordinary person, people living in the community who don't relate to that idea of a god or gods. They're out there, we just haven't worked out how to get to them all yet.
