“We need black non-theists to gather in one place and say, ‘Look at her or look at him: he looks like me and they’re atheists. And that’s OK,”‘ said Norm Allen, a former Baptist and now the executive director of African Americans for Humanism.

A 2009 study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that African-Americans were more religious on a variety of measures than the U.S. population as a whole, with 87 percent of African-Americans describing themselves as belonging to one religious group or another…

“You renounce your blackness,” said Bey. “You almost denigrate your heritage and history of the people if you claim atheism.”…

Yet the movement is seen by some black leaders as more of a threat than an opportunity. On any given Sunday morning, the Rev. Kenneth Fowlkes’ voice rises in dramatic crescendos from his pulpit at Kingdom Builders Church of God in Christ in Hanover, Md., rousing the congregation to clap, stomp, and dance.

“Humanists are encouraging African Americans to go to hell,” he said in an interview.