In God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007), well-known atheist and anti-theist Christopher Hitchens contended that Christianity in the American civil rights movement merely formed a culturally accepted metaphorical lens through which Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders expressed and implemented humanist moral ideals. More recently, in an autobiographical examination of race titled Between the World and Me (2015), Ta-Nehisi Coates offered a less reductive and more historically grounded appreciation of the fact that the black Christian church has provided many African Americans with a sense of community, comfort, resistance, and dignity in the face of oppression. Coates did so despite his admittedly materialist worldview. Carol Wayne White proffers a unique voice to the discourse on materialist philosophies and African American religion through her argument that the major, life-affirming, community-centered, and liberationist themes of black Christianity can be expressed in a form of religiosity that appeals only to the material world. She calls this “African American religious naturalism.”

White's development of a concept she labels “sacred humanity” is critical to her form of religious naturalism. Rejecting any philosophy that separates the “sacred” realm from the material world – popularly proposed by Mircea Eliade in The Sacred and Profane: The Nature of Religion (1957) – White describes sacred humanity as indicating humans’ biologically inherent relational tendencies. In this vein, she asserts that working towards forming connections with other humans, animals, and the universe at large will inevitably remove the barriers that prevent one from experiencing the power of such connections. She then outlines how the false, historically inherited, structurally embedded, and oft-denied ideology of white supremacy continually serves as an ever-present barrier to cultivating meaningful relationships. Moreover, White maintains that religious naturalism provides the opportunity to continue the vibrant tradition of African American religiosity in a manner that is consistent with contemporary scientific standing and has the wider possibility of enriching the lives of people globally.

White traces the historical development of her ideas regarding religious naturalism through philosopher Anna Julia Cooper, sociologist and writer W. E. B. Du Bois, and writer James Baldwin. By doing so, she convincingly displays that many of the concepts that inform her worldview have precedence within the history of African American written literature. White's broader historiography provides a rich context for both her own viewpoint and those of Cooper, Du Bois, and Baldwin. This historiography includes the literary developments of black liberation theology, the academic study of African American religion, religious and nonreligious naturalism, moral humanism, and many of Cooper, Du Bois, and Baldwin's major philosophical influences. She further advances a penetrating critique of the dangerous and violent propositions of European supremacy that have historically been propagated in Enlightenment discourses, including evolutionary theories.

Much of White's perspective is influenced by Charles Long's contention in Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion (1986) that the complexity and diversity of African American religiosity cannot accurately be reduced to only Christian contexts. So while White provides an extensive detailing of written literary history, continuing research should also take into account a wide range of black religious expression through oral, artistic, and musical traditions, such as preaching, sculpturing, and blues singing. I suspect further research will likewise put African American religious naturalism into the broader context of the African diaspora. This would ideally include continental and diaspora manifestations of African spiritual forms such as the transatlantic Ífa religions. Lastly, I hope subsequent writings by White and others will incorporate explorations of a topic largely absent from White's work but prominent in Baldwin's: the importance of romantic love and sexuality to human biology and relational connection.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with White's particular religious viewpoint, she presents an insightful perspective on how the purposeful, difficult, and transformative choice to pursue authentic relationships allows one to live in a truthful and meaningful manner. In doing so, White prompts her African American readership to continue invoking the black liberationist tradition of affirming one's dignity and humanity. She then encourages all of her readers to respond with a resounding yes to the life-affirming and freeing proposition of authenticity in all of one's relationships. For White, responding affirmatively to this proposition creates the footing to continue working towards dismantling the wider structures of racial hierarchy – a liberating prospect, indeed.