Specters of Subjugation: A Sociotheological Exploration of Religious and Spiritual Violence within Black Church

The relationship between Black religion and the Black community has to inherently engage the role of white supremacy in the shaping of the church and Black culture and identity. Historically, the Black Church was created as a resource and refuge from white supremacy (Butler, 2014; Fitzgerald & Spohn, 2005; Jabir, 2017; Marshall Turman, 2013, 2020; Warnock, 2014). Historically, the Black Church served as more than just a place to worship. The Black Church provided the community with education, resources, and social support. The performances and definition of blackness, citizenship, and the Black culture have historically been negotiated through the Black Church. For some cisgender African American women and LGBTQ+ folks in the Black Church, their experience within multiple margins leads to a struggle in placing themselves within the Church tradition (Booker, 2022; Covington, 2019; Hartke, 2021; Jeffries IV et al., 2017; Jordan, 2019; Lefevor et al., 2021; Wood & Conley, 2014).  From experiencing racism in mainline Protestant churches to experiencing sexism and/or homophobia within the Black Church, Black gender and sexual minorities are situated in positions that limit their mobility within the Church to serve and be represented in the communal politics of the Black community (Andrews, 2017; Benbow, 2020; BETNetworks, 2015; Gorham, 2013; Hall & Pinn, 2020; Irizarry & Perry, 2018; Jeffries IV et al., 2017).  With spirituality and community engagement being a vital part of the lives of Black people, it is crucial to explore how the role of hegemony can lead to potential harm and trauma within the Black Church and culturally. Looking at how the majority of women and queer folks participate in the Black ecclesiastic life, it is apparent that the institutionalized Black Church has limited how marginalized identities within the Black Church can participate in the empowerment of their community through working in the Church and, subsequently, in society. Within our cultural imaginations as Black people, Black folks are unable to ignore the legacy of the morality and social imagination carved within the Black Church, which often holds back those within the margins of receiving complete liberation and inclusion within the Black community.

For those who study and work at the intersections of faith and social work, there is an ongoing conversation regarding the role of spirituality and religion for individuals and communities. What do spaces of faith offer individuals and communities, and how do they shape our identities and communal imagination? For a Black Queer woman of the South attending predominantly Black Church spaces, these questions are tinged by my own experiences within these spaces. From its inception, the Black Church has served as a site of regulation for the African American community to negotiate one’s identity and societal performance (Griffin, 2006). While most churches attempt to make meaning of the Gospel in light of the social conditions, the unique premise of the Black Church is housed in the fact that it has served as a site of resistance in light of systematic violence and oppression. However, as the Church’s politics shifted and morphed with the imposition of prosperity theology and megachurch evangelicalism, the experiences of the Black Church transformed as well toward this embrace of ontological whiteness through conservative Evangelicalism. Epistemologies of identity and performance are constantly being fused toward white supremacist notions of purity and respectability, crystalized by cis heteropatriarchy.  For faith institutions like the Black Church, there are questions about how its participants (and even those who reject these institutions) are shaped and oriented within the world. 

This paper seeks to explore the implication of theological/religious violence in Black Church spaces on sexual and gender minorities and its impact on their meaning-making and sense of belonging. Despite expanding the theological frameworks of embodiment, sexuality, and incarnation, the reality is that the inner logic of particular Black Church spaces requires or invites communal violence as a conduit to receive the work of God’s action in the world. Stemming from a broader exploration of the impact of exposure to religious violence on African American Millennials and Generation Z in Black Church spaces, this paper attempts to explore the sociopolitical and theological implications of practices of violence within the ecclesiology of the Black Church. Using results from a digital ethnographic analysis of conversations about violence and trauma within the Black Church and interviews from Black gender and sexual minorities who experienced religious violence and trauma within Black Church contexts, this paper seeks to explore how explorations of Black ecclesiology must engage in trauma-informed and healing-centered theoethics to stop the occurrence of religious and spiritual violence within the Black Church spaces.