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
As the Rev. Yolanda Norton offers, using the music of Beyoncé enabled her to have conversations about Black women, their worship, and their spirituality.12 All too often, particularly in mainstream, dominant culture denominations, the worship culture is White and overseen by men. Those who enter are expected to leave their religious culture(s) at the door and assimilate to the proper way of worship. And while Black women (and men) serve in all capacities in the Episcopal Church, that does not mean that the stained glass ceiling has been forever cracked or dismantled in other denominations. It does not mean that our Black churches, historically and otherwise, and Black denominations, created and maintained by racism, are thriving. Nor does it mean that non-Whites and our LGBTQIA+ siblings have found recognition and freedom of worship at all levels of the Church at large.
This book announces from the very top of the mountain that Black people (and others) are created by and in the image of a loving God and the contributors are willing to speak their truth to change the world and the Church. The contributors have the ability to see the great multitude pictured in Revelation 7:9:
After this I looked, and there a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. . . .
Life has gotten better for African Americans since the 1950s when our schools were legally segregated, when I watched my cousin’s father who looked White go into a country store to purchase ice for our outing after my father had been denied because of his skin color. Things have changed, even from the 1970s, as I patrolled the streets of Washington, DC, as a police officer.