The Reaction of a Black Girl to "Black Boy"

While I'm not sure what chapter we are to have read, I'm at Chapter 8 and one thing has intrigued me overall in the previous couple chapters-Richard's take on religion. Having not grown up in a religious household, he hadn't given it much thought, but when he is forced to live with Granny after his mother takes ill, he's forced into a complete religious routine in which he finds absurd. While I cannot remember exactly what chapter he states his thoughts on this when he was this age (I want to say Chapter 7), an interesting point comes up. He says that religion is nothing but a tribe; nothing but something for people to have in common and be the same with. He said it had nothing to do with saving souls, but just being seen as good in the public eye.
I feel this is not only true for actual religious people, but non-religious too. You need to BELIEVE that what you feel is (or isn't) real is so and while there are many different religions, everyone is telling everyone else that they should (or shouldn't) believe what they do. It's not always about their soul but about having someone believe the same thing you do and, in a sense, reassure yourself that what you believe is actually plausible. Richard's being forced to be religious or being condemned by the family doesn't let him see why religion could be good, but actually the opposite. He doesn't believe in God and his being forced to only pushes him away from said concept. As of now, he hasn't changed his position, but with his family's attitude toward him, I don't see it changing anytime soon.
Another quite interesting point that seems to come up in later chapters is his wondering about his rebellion. He began to see that everything he aspired to do was everything the government in Mississippi tried to keep from him. Everything he has always liked to do was things that he should never have thought and every concept of life he thought toward was things only "Whites" at the time were allowed to really think about. He didn't fit in where he was supposed to; he hated taking orders and knew he wouldn't last long in the white-surrounded world if he continued as he was going now.
While his rebellious attitude in my opinion (from about chapter 5 on) is justified, I believe Richard was merely a pre-revolutionary African American. He wasn't a person to "play by the rules" and act as though he were still on a plantation. While everyone else acted as they were supposed to, he saw no reason for his having to be constricted and contained (which is where the lack of religion could also fall into). He was a post-Martin Luther King man living in a pre-Emancipation Proclamation type world. He was a trendsetter to many who would come up to fight for Civil Rights and while he was still naive in some senses, he was the average teenager living in a world where all teenagers were not equal and could dream the same dream.