By Kishara Griffin

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

I’ve heard this scripture frequently spoken in the pulpit as a call to set aside cultural and gender disparities, to collectively strive for equal contributions and oneness as the church reflects God’s vision. Unfortunately, the teachings have often been used to encourage the body of Christ to take on a color-blind identity and accept gender/sex prejudices to conform to an imagined ideal image. Such messages eventually required marginalized people to forfeit more and more aspects of their social identity to conform to Paul’s demands for oneness. Together with this message, pastors highlighted the call to establish an intimate personal relationship with Christ. If you grew up in the Black church or attended services in the late 2000s, I would not be surprised if, like me, you struggled to internalize these messages – and often left church with a sense of inadequacy, humiliation, and alienation from the faith and your creator.   It might even be possible that these messages left you immobilized and apathetic to suffering within our communities and the larger world.  Why: the question then becomes how does one develop personal intimacy with God when they are actively peeling pieces of their identity away to fit within church culture?

In 2013, I embarked on a personal journey to make sense of the disconnect I was experiencing between my relationship with Christ and Sunday preachings. I felt led by the Holy Spirit to quit reading my Bible in isolation, and instead attended services and Bible studies. During that time I invested my time in reading books to explore Black church history- and the relationship between blackness and Christianity. This was the first time I had explored Christianity through a black-centered, historical and social justice perspective, and it opened my eyes to the black church’s positive accomplishments – as well as prompted me to examine its deeply broken institutional and cultural dynamics.

I did, and still do, venerate the Black church as the epicenter of black resilience in the face of slavery, Jim Crow, and the impacts of poverty before, during, and after the crack epidemic. Nonetheless, I saw the black church as the epicenter of anti-blackness, replicating white power systems that promote sexism, racism, homophobia, and capitalism. Knowing that the Black church has served both these roles was the primary reason why it was difficult for a person like me to get closer to Christ. As a black woman, a sexual being, an advocate who rejects the notion of respectability politics, and a person who disagrees with using others as a vehicle for economic advancement, I began seeing church culture as a mirror of all the things I identified as oppressive.  

As police killings of unarmed Black people in the United States became more widespread in 2014, the impacts of racism became more tangible to me. I pledged to be an advocate for change, and I set out to focus on what I believed Christ would do. In the pursuit of anti-racism and justice, I connected with a community of  people of color outside of the church. To navigate this community, I had to grasp the value of collaborating with those whose identities differed from mine. I found myself yearning to demonstrate compassion, knowledge, wisdom, and humility as I organized around issues impacting BIPOC communities. I wanted to reflect Christ without subjecting individuals or groups with oppressed identities to harm or erasure. As I began to move with purpose inside the organizing community, I found I needed to undo the various forms of repressive practices I had acquired in the church.  Being able to have tough conversations with the people I was collaborating with and learning how to show up with care and consideration moved me forward in my commitment to the principles of justice and even closer to God as I leaned on the spirit for direction. Taking a stand against injustices while placing my body and social privileges at risk helped me finally understand what Paul meant in Galatians 3:28. Finally I knew that the people who were placed in my life truly reflected true unity in efforts to promote justice and social change, which more accurately portrayed the Church than any edifice could. For me, moving out of the church was an act of worship—an effort to honor God in spirit, reflect Christ in non-conventional ways, and apply biblical principles to life beyond the mirrored white power structures that reinforce our oppression. I saw it as a pathway to true spiritual growth.

 At the time of moving through this experience, I recognized I wasn’t the only person who felt this way. I noticed Young black Christians like me were looking for something real and seeking spiritual spaces that are free from oppression and spoke to relevant Black struggles. I came to see Paul’s call for unity as a beautiful concept of spiritual oneness within the faith. However, I also noticed how some preachers misused this concept, emphasizing unity while avoiding or ignoring the need to engage with cultural differences and the lived experiences of marginalized communities within the body of Christ. I recognized through my experiences that in order to move towards that unity we must join in the lives of those who are most marginalized, and in doing so, to witness societal change through the demonstration of the biblical fruits of the spirit.  I learned we can not ask our people to strive towards unity and intimacy with Christ without allowing our people to “authentically exist”- PeriodT!