The Bits and Pieces That Make Me

About the Book

In this book, I cite the bits and pieces that explain why I am a humanist, and why I declare that unless humanism becomes an American cultural practice, America will decay from within by way of its self-believing and self-promoting myth of American exceptionalism and its self-defeating racial hypocrisies. As a campaigning humanist, I work at persuading black people to stop their idolatrous “Jesus-worshipping practice,” which in reality is ‘‘white male worshipping,” and I also work at persuading both black and white people to expand and extend their emotional and social comfort zones toward each other. Success in these areas of persuasion takes time. However, I believe that with the work and insistence of many humanists like me, America will present itself to the world, in the next fifty years, as a humanist nation that is genuinely pledged to provide equal justice, economic opportunities, racial fairness, and freedom to all its citizens.

About the Author

Christopher Cleophus Bell Jr. was born to Christopher C. Bell Sr. and Olivia Williams Bell on May 7, 1933, in Campostella, a small Negro suburb of Norfolk, Virginia. He attended the public schools of Norfolk and later, Virginia State College, Petersburg, Virginia, from which he graduated (1954) with a degree in chemistry and a commission as a second lieutenant in the US Army. Chris served twenty years in the army and retired (1974) as a major. His duties took him to France (twice), Germany, Vietnam, Korea (twice), and Ethiopia. He served more than fourteen (14) years overseas during his twenty (20) years of military service.