Preaching Black Lives (Matter). Gayle Fisher-Stewart

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—The Rev. Ray Howell ¹

What is it to be Black and Christian; to be Black and Episcopalian; to be Black and a member of a White denomination? To be unapologetically Black and unashamedly Christian; those words greet you on the website of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois. Trinity is a Black church in a White denomination. It is a church that is proud of its roots in the Black religious experience. It is a church that claims its African heritage. It is a church that has clung to the values of the original Black churches in this country: a proud people, steeped in their belief in a Jesus who looks like them and knows their suffering; congregations involved in educating and uplifting their people.²

To be unapologetically Black and unashamedly Christian, that is also the journey on which we join the Rev. Dr. James Cone as he leads us through the twists and turns as he discovers himself, discovers the self that is the Black theologian. In Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody, his memoir finished shortly before his death in April 2018, Cone challenges us, his Black people, to stop hating who we are. It is time to love the reflection of God we see in the mirror. It is time to stop chasing after Whiteness. I write, as Cone commands, for my people, those who are part of a church—the Episcopal Church—whose roots are in the birthing of slavery. For my people who are witnessing their churches, begun because of the racism in the Episcopal Church, wither away because of gentrification and benign neglect by the Episcopal Church. Cone offers, “When you write, you need to know who you are writing for and what message you want to deliver to them and why you feel the need to say what you’ve got to say.”³ And so, I write for my people, my Black siblings who still strive for Whiteness; who shun Black worship, Black religious music; who shun themselves. And I write for my non-Black siblings who see Blackness as less than, something to be feared, something to be avoided at all costs; who believe that to be Episcopalian, we must be like them; like a mold that is all things Anglican; who believe that White theology is the only theology. I also write for my Black siblings who find themselves in other White denominations.

Since the sixteenth century, Christian theology has been implicated in the denial of Black humanity in this country and that denial continues today. Christian theology has defined who was human by exclusion; taking upon itself the power to define who was heathen, who was uncivilized, who was unworthy of God’s grace, by using the measuring rod of Whiteness comingled with theology.⁴ Anti-Black racism is alive and well in the Church, including the Episcopal Church. Regardless of the Church’s claims, our society has never been modeled after the way of Jesus Christ. Rather, as Drew G. I. Hart writes, the White, wealthy, Western male has been the image promoted and adopted. From Constantine, to Thomas Jefferson, to Donald Trump, the White male has been lifted up as the standard against which all people are measured and Jesus has been fashioned into a White man. Hart writes, “With a pseudo-white male Jesus let loose in the church, the boundaries of acceptable theological reflection have neatly aligned with powerful, elite American (white) male interests.”⁵ Just as to be American is to be White, theology is White and all who are not White must find themselves in “Black theology,” “Womanist theology,” “Latin American theology,” “Queer theology,” and others, to be whole, to be who God created us to be, while Whites just have to be White.

It is time to throw off a colonized mind as it relates to being American and Christian, Christian and Episcopalian. Franz Fanon is correct in his assessment that a colonized people participate in their own oppression by emulating and internalizing the culture and ideas of the oppressor.⁶ In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire agrees with Fanon in that he offers that those who are oppressed have been conditioned to fashion themselves after the oppressor, the colonizer.⁷ This is not to say that those who trace their lineage to various tribes and countries in Africa cannot be Christian and Episcopalian (or members of other White denominations); rather, it means we must, as Freire offers, constantly assess the teachings of the church and decide which are favorable to us. We must make being Christian and Episcopalian (or any other White denomination) our own. Why? Because colonization has contributed to racial self-hatred. The colonizing efforts of the Europeans led to the suppression of indigenous religion, customs, and traditions of those who survived the Middle Passage and their heirs. The veneration of ancestors, “holy dancing and shouting, deity possessions, and drumming”⁸ were considered by European colonizers as pagan and savage and were destroyed through torture and other punishments to complete the control over their human chattel. A desire to recover those traditions and customs beaten and bred out of God’s people of ebony grace led Teresa P. Mateus to create the Mystic Soul Project, an organization that creates “space for activism, mysticism, and healing by and for people of color.”⁹ Mateus felt a need to create these spaces for people of color because she didn’t see herself reflected in spiritual practices centered in Whiteness. In these spaces—conferences, retreats—people of color gather and have the freedom where they are able to shake off the shackles of suppression and oppression and celebrate all of themselves.

      For the Church to reflect Jesus, there must be a White metanoia—a White repentance—because the shame of slavery is not ours; it is the sole property of White people. Colonization has taught us to bear the shame of something that was done to us as opposed to putting it squarely in the laps of those who denied us humanity, in and out of the Church. To be Black is not to be deficient, or defective; we are just different. Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud and I want to be me, to see me in whatever Church I may be a member. On occasion, the Episcopal Church will trot out Blackness, usually during Black History Month or other special, read ethnic, occasions.

      On the other hand, it seems we have a church that is more interested in maintaining the institution than it is in taking a chance, risking it all, as Jesus did, and changing this world into what God created it to be. Jesus, God incarnate, came to earth to show how the world could be if God’s people would just get with the program and follow him into the margins where those who have been excluded by a world that commodifies humanness will be found. The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, has stated that we should be challenged to change the world from the nightmare human beings have made it into the dream God wants it to be. That is a rough, a tough pronouncement, certainly not something you want on signboard, that the world, in its current state, is a nightmare. Or perhaps the nightmare should be the truth we proclaim and claim. Perhaps if the truth of what the world has become was on the lips of all who call themselves Christians, the Church could be a place where we come to gird up our loins to get into the battle against the forces that long for a White America and Church.

Since 2017 the Rev. Yolanda Norton¹⁰ has been the inspiration behind the Beyoncé Mass, first held at Christ Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco. In the promo for the mass, the Rev. Jude Harmon says:

I think a lot of the people who show up tonight are people of color, LGBT people, people onto whom other people’s narratives have been projected and just to be honest, the church hasn’t been the best at lifting up those voices. [The service] really began with us saying, how can we actually be the people of God we hope to be in the world. . . . Honestly, I think Beyoncé is a better theologian than many of the pastors and priests in our church today. That is not an exaggeration.¹¹

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