The first time my mother felt me kick was in a church called Mercy Seat. Recognizing it as a sign, let her tell it, she knew I was going to be special. When I was born, captured on my first photograph taken by hospital staff, I am sticking up my middle finger. Recognizing it as a sign, let her tell it, my mother knew I was going to be trouble.
But not in a bad way.
My mom had a premonition that I would be a force to be reckoned with. I believed it was constantly reaffirmed every time she got a call from my teachers about my conduct and saw the comments on my report card about my excessive, and sometimes uncontrollable, need to communicate. Whatever helped her recognize she had a special child, she did all she could to place me in environments where my creativity and exuberance could find proper channels of release.
Though she placed me in every beneficial program she could find, none were as important to me as my affiliation with the Church. The Black Church.
After being in school, largely being taught by and learning with people who did not look like me, it was refreshing to go to a place that was culturally my own. From the large women in big hats to the old men in pieced together suits, everything about the Church fascinated me. I gained my confidence to speak and write in front of large crowds through being called to the pulpit to give announcements or an Easter speech- though reciting the "I Have A Dream" speech will always be my favorite. I gained my worth through my engagements and interactions with the Church and knew the same could be done for others. The Church could not just be the place where we came to lay our burdens down. It had to be the place where we left with a great wealth of resources to ensure we never picked anything like them up again.
But with that realization came the sobering acknowledgement that many churches were not that for their communities. They'd become get rich quick schemes for individuals who fake compassion to engage in capitalism. They'd become platforms for personal agendas and not temples of corporate evolution. I'd become angry.
And so I went to school. I became fascinated with scientifically studying the impact of the Black Church. Du Bois. Mays. Nicholson. Lincoln. Mamiya. Cone. Billingsley. McRoberts. Their works became my Bible as I began to understand the social responsibilities that my beloved teacher had to its community. I learned that the Black Church has a moral, legal, ethical, spiritual and common sensical (ha) obligation to meet the needs of all facets of human development for its members and community. It must be the seat in which we couch all opporunties for social change.
And this is why I'm here and you're reading this. The Church needs me to hold her accountable and you need me to say what you've wanted to say but have been afraid to.
I write for the young man who stopped paying tithes because his gas tank stayed on E but his pastor and first lady's didn't.
I write for the young lady who became jaded with church leadership after she was propositioned to go down a less than holy path.
I write for the student who reads scripture with the same intensity they read science and can't seem to understand how the pastor justifies his statements using it.
I write for the scholar who wants their church to be as socially concious as it is technologically advanced.
I write for them because I am them. I have been jaded, disappointed, upset, confused and underwhelmed by many of the antics currently on display. However, I refuse to allow the Church that was a training ground for me to become a battleground for someone else.
So you will find it all here: my political, cultural, spiritual and personal issues with the Church (among other things) and proposed solutions to the problems it faces. Because I couldn't say I loved the Church if I wasn't committed to healing it.
We're in this together.
