Love Fuels the Fight w/ Michelle Higgins

Can you imagine standing up against white supremacy, enduring the aftermath of such a brave act and then coming out of it with a renewed commitment to justice and truth? Join us for a profound conversation with Michelle Higgins, a senior pastor and co-founder of Action St Louis and Faith for Justice. Michelle takes us through her inspiring journey, reflecting on her powerful 2015 Urbana speech and the journey that followed. Her respect for stalwarts like Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer lights the way as we confront the complexities of faith and black radicalism.

The conversation takes a deeper turn as we navigate the uneasy intersection of blackness, queerness, and Christianity. We delve into the troubling reality of how the church has been infiltrated by the evils born from an identity of massacre - whiteness. Edie Smith's personal journey of rejection and acceptance paves a path to understanding the connection between blackness, queerness, and Jesus. Our discussion with Reverend Tracy Blackman further emphasizes the need to dismantle arrogance and pride, revealing the importance of humility and righteousness on our anti-racism journey.

As we wrap up our spirited dialogue, we accentuate the essence of queer liberation and the supportive environment necessary to traverse this journey. We invite you to lean into your doubts and questions, embracing the divine presence through it all. We end our session instilling the power of love as a tool and weapon, encouraging listeners to be rooted in faith, hope, and love. Let's remember the love that flows through our ancestors and descendants as we continue the fight for justice. Tune in, be challenged, be inspired, and above all, be encouraged.

Chapters

• 0:01 Discussing Faith, Black Radicalism, Truth
• 12:52 Blackness, Queerness, and Christianity's Disconnect
• 26:01 Dismantling Whiteness and Anti-Racism Journey
• 39:55 Queer Liberation
• 46:29 Love as a Weapon and Tool

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

What's up everybody. Welcome back to this episode of Life. After Levin, I'm your host to me, spencer Helms, and my guest today needs no introduction, but for those of y'all who are sleep, I want you to meet Michelle Higgins. I'm going to have Michelle introduce herself and tell us a little about who she is and what she does and where you live.

Speaker 2: 0:19

Yeah, hey everybody. Oh, I'm so grateful to be here. My name is Michelle I use her pronouns. I'm the senior pastor at St John's Church, the beloved community on the north side of St Louis City, and I'm very proud of that, in no small part because St John's is the place where Action St Louis was born. Action St Louis is the largest black radical political power home in the state of Missouri, and being co-founder there is a real source of pride and joy for me.

Speaker 2: 0:54

I'm also a co-founder of Faith for Justice, which is a Christian advocacy organization that travels around and does a lot of work in the state and also nationally, and probably most folks will remember or know me from having spoken at Urbana in 2015. And it's not something I ever want or need to live down, but I really appreciate all of the opportunities that have come from that. Some podcast history, a former co-host of Truth's Table but now living squarely in the midst of working with the movement for Black Lives, mostly in electoral justice, but generally working through those interfaith dimensions at the intersections of faith and black radicalism and how do we really see power for people without apology, without shame and with a lot of joy.

Speaker 1: 1:53

So let me just jump in because I have to lay some groundwork here. I'm a little I'm fangirling again this week, but there's a little bit of a backstory in a context to why I wanted to have you on the show. Because you were very instrumental in the very beginning of my process of coming out as queer and coming out to well being outed and owning that basically. But what.

Speaker 1: 2:15

I wanted to talk to you about was so in the book I wrote. So the podcast is named after my book, faith Unleavened, and in the book I talk about when you spoke I don't name you, but for those who have the book, this is the person who was speaking on the stage and I tell the story about how I was in the. I was actually in the intercession space at Urbana and got hit with travail like really hard and, needless to say, it was right at the moment where you called out white supremacy and I got hit with travail because I felt like the organization itself was not going to respond the way a lot of the black staff would have hoped they would have responded. And so you know it ends up happening and we're getting text messages. You know pray, we're losing donors. You know they lost million dollar donors and all that kind of stuff, which was the first time I realized, oh, this whiteness is up and through everything.

Speaker 1: 3:12

So it was very for it to be in Ferguson or for it to be in St Louis and for us to not so far away from Ferguson, right about a year after Mike Brown, for the organization to respond that way was really shocking for a lot of us and for me. I think that that marked the beginning of an end for me in terms of the trust I had in the leaven that exists in some organizations. And so fast forward. I knew who you were, I followed you to truth table and then, in adversity, released their paper on humans, on sexuality. And that was the last kind of straw for me, because it felt to me like a very much a concession that, because they had gotten in trouble for talking about whiteness, the concession was we'll come out against the gaze. You know a little bit of a reciprocity there.

Speaker 1: 4:05

And so I wanted to talk through. Talk through some of those things. What was going on for you at the Urbana conference? Was it something that God kind of dropped on you, or had you planned to speak that way?

Speaker 2: 4:19

I knew from being asked. First of all, I think it's not a secret amongst planners, folks who have been with adversity, it's not a secret that I was sort of their d list ask, because it's just really hard to say yes to something like that and also a number of our really esteemed group that we call furkets and clergy. A number of them were, like you know, in. Adversity has never been a space where blackness connects with power in a way that's spoken of. You know they were still heard about Tom Skinner and that makes sense to me. Right, he was the Paul Robison of Urbana conference, you know, just driven to places where it really was the example of we really kill and cannibalize around our own and that history had not left our people. And a number of our burkets and clergy are in the denomination that I now serve, the United Church of Christ.

Speaker 2: 5:22

And they weren't going to touch on adversity, not within all. The black people in them said no, okay. I was working with an evangelical church and organization at the time and I felt particularly called to be culturally bilingual.

Speaker 2: 5:40

And I also felt the power of bringing a scalpel to some, assas to others, and I felt very proud that I had the opportunity to to be more of a nobody, which is the preference of Ella Baker, who I organize after she's the ancestral name that that I call in my organizing work, fannie Lou Hamer, who was first and foremost a worshiper, first and foremost a prayer warrior, and people that I have no, no problem calling their names and remembering their work, because it is their work, it is their dedication that meant more to them and also their willingness to say hard things.

Speaker 2: 6:24

Right. Ella Baker said hard things to Dr King, fannie Lou Hamer said hard things to the president at the time and I felt called to do that and I knew I was being asked to speak because I had done work with organizations that were born out of the fires of Ferguson, so I knew it was going to be about white supremacy. I knew it was. I was being asked to to kind of help make things feel better for black staff, and I wanted the black staff to know I wasn't going to come in and make the organization leads feel better. I wanted to come and to comfort and to minister to them, to the black folks in the crowd, just like the Bible is saying always about y'all, but truth is for all, and I think that's that's part of my task. So yeah, the original speech was much harsher.

Speaker 1: 7:22

Oh, wow, okay.

Speaker 2: 7:23

Edited back a couple times.

Speaker 1: 7:25

Oh, my goodness, so. So I know in situations like that, they they typically will have you submit your your sermon ahead of time and they'll edit it and things like that. But I just have to tell you that, like you stand as a hero for me, I think that I didn't expect to get emotional, but I think what I saw because I went back and watch it. Obviously I was in the prayer room during the talk. I went back and watched it and thought I want to be like that, like I want to be able to be so Grounded in who I am, in the legacy I come from, a prophetic legacy that I come from, with my ancestors Standing in God, standing in Jesus and going. I will not bend to Empire. I will say what needs to be said and I just felt like I watched you do it. You were glowing, it was just such a. The moment is hard to explain because I saw two things at work. I saw a witness and I saw Empire even in the thing that I was kind of involved in. And so when they go and Say, you know, if you're affirming, you have to leave staff, there was this, this real Um experience for me, a fear around provision, and so you know you have to sign this thing and say, you know I'm going to like be non affirming and call this sin and all of those things. And then turns out I'm gay, so I get, I was married. Oddly enough, I met the guy I married at that Urbana conference and by the time, by the time I came out, I was divorced. And so I was thinking through the realities that happened, where the, the agenda that they say is out here, in the way that they kind of posited themselves as Folks who are on the defensive. I'm realizing that a lot of these orgs, that whiteness itself is always on the offensive and that the agenda that exists Doesn't belong to the queer community. They just want to live and let live.

Speaker 1: 9:29

And so I reached out to you right after that and I said, hey, I'm struggling. You said, sis, I am absolutely affirming, you are made in the image of God. And it was like because of I had, because of what I saw when you spoke, and wanting to kind of be that type of a person that, no matter what, speaks truth. If you to say that over me says it was a, it was a very galvanizing moment for me personally and and it really kind of Removes any types of questions. It's almost like a one-and-done like okay, I'm not having conversations with anybody else about whether or not I can be queer and Christian. Yeah, I wouldn't say now, now we're having conversations about Christianity with. That's another podcast, right. So I want to talk a little bit about how. Where did that come from? Was that a tradition that you grew up in? Was it always affirming, or was it a decision you made?

Speaker 2: 10:28

Yeah, interestingly, I grew up in the church of God and Christ and we have a song that unchanged it now, girl, but the song used to be you can't join it, you have to be born in it, coach. It was just very locked down but it was a don't ask, don't tell culture. And I, I'm a worship leader, been a worship leader almost all my life and I learned how to harmonize. I learned every Gospel lick and ad lib and roll and trill that I know from queer people, my play uncles, my play aunties and people who were Gender expansive before gender expansive was really a phrase in the 80s. I Know and love Gospel music, even the music that is sung by bigots.

Speaker 1: 11:19

I.

Speaker 2: 11:20

Still know and love it because of queer people. And During the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, I would tell my mom and dad, who were both Kojic preachers, I would say we got to go to the hospital and sit with Uncle Jerry and sit with you Know so and so and folks that were perishing, who were dying of AIDS, and the church was nowhere to be found and I'll never forget it. But I was six years old, maybe seven, when we lost people who were very precious to me, people who we knew were queer and people who had chosen to sign on the dotted line, much in the ways that you're saying University was making folks to do. And yet they, they loved who they loved, they lived how they lived. Our brother Bayard Rustin, our sibling Polly Murray, they, they mean everything to me because I watched their direct descendants go through, descendants in the faith, go through things and sing Zion songs, presence of people who claim to be friends and can and actually were opposition and maybe even enemies, folks that did not care that they were perishing.

Speaker 2: 12:33

So I've been radical about the intersections of blackness and queerness since I was seven years old and I watched last breath and I tended to lesions and I Stayed up weeping and crying all night in ways that nobody cared the pastors. It was shocking to me that a church born out of Black struggle, born out of black joy, born out of hush harbor experiences, didn't care about a whole group of people within. And I you know I sit here and I'm a stop after this, but you know my preacher so I Know I'm on with it I think about Jesus opening the scroll at his hometown church and Saying today, right here, this message to you, this prophecy is being fulfilled. We're people in black churches and I have to shout out my brothers, don and Calvin, at Pride in the pews, who are working to see the eight all black, historic black denominations come to bear with the fact that there are already queer people in your denominations. Why do you stop them out loud? So, yeah, I highly recommend Pride in the pews for anybody that's listening and wondering what do I do next?

Speaker 2: 13:50

But I was a little girl Thinking about Jesus opening the scroll at his hometown church and speaking a word about the captive, about the oppressed, to a people who were oppressed, and they got that. If that ain't blackness and queerness, I don't know what is wow. And queer people are leading worship and they're singing and they're writing songs the song titles I could give you that I know gay people wrote. You wouldn't believe. And yet when queer people speak the gospel and live the gospel, it's rejected, almost as if the same folks at Jesus hometown that wanted to stone him and drove him to a cliff. I have been radicalized Section from my whole.

Speaker 1: 14:41

You. Just I'm blown away with this idea that that, the idea that blackness and queerness is like Jesus telling in a press group of people and the Responses to that. I just watched Truth be told. It was a documentary and it just came out about queerness in the church and Edie Smith it was on there, I think in Georgia, and he said something to the fact of. I mean, it was just so precious the way he talked about his own journey, which was I had a minister, a deacon, in my church who had been there years and years and years. His son came to drop something off and he says I never met this son and the deacon says well, it's cuz he's gay. So you know, I just didn't tell anybody about him and that was the moment he was like, wait a minute, what? Like you, you don't have a relationship with your own son because of Queerness, and so that was his journey.

Speaker 1: 15:36

And I think for a lot of people, what we're seeing right now is lived Experience, is shifting people's theology, because the people that you're saying are drinking poison and all of those things. They're not. They're not dying for many poison, they're happy and they're thriving and they're thriving in a faith walk like they're thriving in the midst of Discipleship, whereas there are some folks and I want a question about this because I'm finding that a lot of white folks when they go on this deconstruction journey that that kind of adds in the queerness aspect, the trajectory is typically away from faith. Um, but for me I'm still wrestling with whether or not Christianity is the right kind of title for me, but I do.

Speaker 1: 16:23

I can't imagine giving up Jesus and I'm trying to figure out whether that you think that that comes from maybe our history, or like, where does that come from, this idea that black folks are really tethered to the spiritual? I mean, the more I've come into queerness, the more I've come into ancestry, the more I've come into all kinds of indigenous practice that have made me feel so much more connected to Jesus than I ever thought. I mean, the white church did not give that to me. The way that I am encountering the Lord right now with these practices where I invite my ancestors and I, you know, we light incense and we sage and we do all of the things and we do it in the name of Jesus, and you know, and we do these experiences, we come and we go in the name of Jesus. What's the missing piece do you think for folks who are white and progressive, who typically tend away from faith? Do you have a thought about that?

Speaker 2: 17:23

Yeah, the interesting thing about any discussion on whiteness is going to be I am biased concerning the definitions of whiteness and blackness. Obviously, I'm more of a bald winnie in, as they say. Then I believe that whiteness had to force itself to exist and because people descended from Europe refused to be the global minority, and it is simply facts that culturally they are. Blackness made itself out of struggle and power and realization that we have always been united. But whiteness is forced. We wouldn't have Italians versus Irish people and then, all of a sudden, they're all white and united, and spiritually I believe that whiteness is obsolete and it is one of the things that in the eschatological future right, they're already not.

Speaker 2: 18:20

Yet. White folks are experiencing tensions because they live in the midst of something that God is, in the great renewal, going to cast out, and all of a sudden, all of the blandness and shame and confusion and terrible truths of the past and history of whiteness, they'll be able to come face to face with them and be proud that they are no longer clinging to an identity that was made from massacre, and so that's the problem there. Anytime a church loves whiteness, they're Ichabod, as the Old Testament says.

Speaker 1: 19:03

Glory to the heart.

Speaker 2: 19:05

Yeah, ain't no glory in nothing. There's no glory in nothing. I don't care if you mainline progressive as anything and have Pride month, rainbow face painting in your Sunday school class, I don't care. Whiteness will destroy you. Because whiteness is the easiest way for that old devil who looks a lot like a conservative voter dressing up, coming in the church Because you look docile and you know, I think through a lot of the things that Carol and Bryant, who was the reason that, emmett Till, all that happened. And then Sarah I can't remember the white girl's name that was the main complainant before the massacre in Oklahoma, greenwood kind of started off, kicked off, yes, years of tension, but it really kicked off because a white lady got in an elevator with a black man.

Speaker 2: 20:02

And what does it look like when those white folk go to church? Who were the white folks screaming at the little rock? Nine, who were desegregating schools? They're grandparents, they're great grandparents. What are they teaching?

Speaker 2: 20:16

And the thing that they don't want to let go of, the thing that they feel can be redeemed, is actually something that God is calling a source of harm. It's obsolete. So that may be the biggest issue with as white folks deconstruct, they think of their memories in church growing up and there is nothing redeemable about them. They are not wrong. They're not wrong. The great departure, the great, you know, move, leaving out loud. What is it? Just getting rid of church and getting rid of Christianity and calling the gospel detrimental to their spiritual health. They're not wrong because their churches probably taught more whiteness than the witness of Christ, and so one of the reasons that your experience is different is maybe similar to mine, where I saw my queer siblings and queer elders love the truth, love the story of Jesus, a man who did not have to bind himself to a woman in order to call himself worthy. Look at the original pastor, the original prophet, not needing a pastor's wife. Look at the original prophet spending time with women, letting women wash his feet and, you know, not getting in trouble with them.

Speaker 2: 21:33

Not a person in ministry without a scandal. We've never heard of that, but Jesus did it. And Jesus did it without exalting marriage, without exalting heteronormativity and, for goodness sake, how he didn't exalt capitalism. It's confusing If you're an American Christian, how is that possible? But we saw it because blackness came to Christ. In a way that kind of proves that we might have brought it with us a little bit.

Speaker 2: 22:07

Why do those rituals bring you closer to Jesus? I think because Jesus was on the boat, in the bottom of the boat with us during the message. Jesus gave a home meter, made amazing grace, famous and rhoded. That drifted up from the songs and moans of our people. Everything good, every possible good gift that came from anything any white person did in the church in the United States came from a person of color, and that is simply the core truth that is able to show us that our ancestral practices connect us to our common creator and they don't disconnect us from any story we could call wrong, except that they disconnect us from carceral Christianity, from Confederate Christianity and from capitalist Christianity. And since those are the only three things that are taught in whiteness loving churches, once white folks or even black people who grew up right in these whiteness loving churches, once they disconnect from carceral, confederate or capitalist Christianity, they are disconnecting from the only thing they have known about Christianity itself. And we're not. We've always known more.

Speaker 1: 23:32

So I always say by now, people who are listening know that when something hits me, I just let it hang for a minute before I move, because I just wanna acknowledge and say I say when I feel wisdom. So thank you for that. I'm trying to navigate, wanting to ask you my questions for my own sanity, but I want to ask you we have listeners, because the listeners I think are folks who are. I think we have a couple of people we have. We obviously have trolls, but we have folks who are deciding enough is enough. Like I've been in this too long and I like how you mentioned before of being a. I think you said a cross cultural when you talked to speaking to two audiences. How did you frame that?

Speaker 2: 24:24

Yeah, like being bilingual. Yeah, absolutely bilingual.

Speaker 1: 24:28

Yes, I feel that I feel some bit of that in my own work, and so when I hear, when I'm having conversations like this, I'm trying to model what it means to receive wisdom instead of extorting right or like having a quick sound bite. I'm wondering now about what to do about Christianity. So I'm just asking my questions because, even though the season is about queerness, I'm queer, so it counts Always. How do we even I've been going around saying I'm wearing a light jacket called Christianity there are people who are like I want nothing to do with it. There are other people who are like no, we need to reclaim it, and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 25:19

And I think about what I'm wrestling with is I don't know if the Christianity I was given can be redeemed, like you're saying. I don't know if being called a Christian is counterintuitive or not, because it just doesn't look anything like Jesus. Nothing that I was given in the name of Christianity looks like Jesus reminds me of Jesus and Jesus wasn't Christian. But at the same time thinking Is there benefit in some adjacency there? How are you navigating that?

Speaker 2: 25:55

I think this is an excellent question and so crucial for someone in the pastorate. I'm a solo pastor. I have a very strong network of leaders that I connect with, people that I trust and mentor by, and I have wonderful leaders in the local church, but many of the people that we love and people that are members, they're wrestling with this. I obviously could call this part of the progressive Christian movement, so the wrestling is out loud and the wrestling is across the dining room table. I have always clung to the gospel of Jesus. I hold a view of necessary atonement.

Speaker 2: 26:36

It may not be substitutionary, but I am viewed as very conservative in my atonement theology and I'm fine with that. I believe atonement was necessary. However, I really appreciate the struggles and the wrestling and the questions that drive us to a core of the theology of humility and that is generally my answer when I'm in discussions like this to say the major thing that you are dismantling has to be arrogance, has to be pride, has to be worship of a fragile God. The Reverend Tracy Blackman is a beloved mentor of mine and she has said multiple times why do we think God is so fragile that they have to be named a particular name, that they have to be identified by a particular relationship with a country, by a particular relationship with a particular religion? Jesus is all the world to me, but Jesus may not be all the world to other folks.

Speaker 2: 27:53

And that does not mean that I don't worship a Jesus to whom everyone means all the world, and that's more important than me claiming, proclaiming and even making sure I am aligned with those who agree with me and not aligned with those who disagree. I would say working in the movement has maybe been a bit more impactful for ministry than seminary was Don't tell anybody. But working in the movement has made ministry more meaningful versus a lot of the theological work and things that I presumed I was being prepared for, because what I really needed to be prepared for, what every ministry leader needs to be prepared for, is to answer the questions of those who are doubting without saying well, the first thing you need to deal with is your doubt, because, from where I say, the first thing that we all need to deal with is our arrogance. How is the dismantling and the deconstructing humbling you and what scriptures are you wrestling with that you say ain't no way.

Speaker 2: 29:07

I think that God is it this way? You're striking people down like that man. What and how do we feel emboldened to question, and where are the spaces that will not shame us because we can't sing the same thing or we don't want to jump and run around and we don't shout no more. And these are the places where I think even our black beloved our family. We say, well, we're not in the spirit anymore and people just aren't saved and we're not seeking righteousness. But if we're seeking humility and harm reduction and a re-centering, a re-grounding in love, is that not righteous? Or are we really dismantling all of the things, all of the boxes that we were called to take off? We were told? This is righteousness, because the first thing that I believe is happening, maybe in your life and perhaps in the lives of many others, is that not only are you saying I cannot be part of a culture that says you may not live as God made you, because God made you queer.

Speaker 1: 30:21

The.

Speaker 2: 30:21

Lord willed that you would be beautifully, fearfully and wonderfully made as a queer person, and if you're in a culture that says you can't do that, you can't live this way, then you have every right to question the spirituality of a culture that tells you what righteousness is and doesn't invite you to get in touch with and crawl up into the bosom of the God who is righteousness.

Speaker 1: 30:52

Oh, ok, I am wondering about this multilingual thing and I have come into contact with lots of progressives that it does seem like none of that stuff. They took all of the whiteness with them and just left the doctrines. And I think for me that arrogance piece, that piece of coming out swinging, has been a little bit bothersome and I haven't known how to name that. And in these spaces, because of the book, getting into some of these white spaces, progressive spaces, and really feeling inspired by you, really feeling the challenge to call out whiteness, like ha ha, kiki, yes, we're all gay, but whiteness has to go, and I think a lot of it. You know, as I'm conversating with these folks, it's like, you know, I do think it is a sense of like who will I be? Because, right, whiteness isn't rooted, it's not rooted in anything.

Speaker 1: 31:59

So what would be your word to a white person who's like Okay, I want to divest, I don't know where to go from here? Like, what do I do when I know whiteness is bad? And here I am? My whole family I mean the people I've been talking to has given me a lot of compassion, I mean homeschool families and you know, it goes off like a bomb in the family, like. So there are costs, I think, to people divesting, white people divesting, or people who have been raised white divesting of that whiteness. What would be a word for them if they're listening.

Speaker 2: 32:36

Yeah, I always, always lean more towards congratulations versus gratitude, and that may be just my radicalism, but I'm not going to tell no white person who decided to be anti racist. Oh, thank you, because we're gonna get free whether or not you convert to the truth. But what I can do is congratulate you Honestly, to sincerely say congratulations, you have. You have moved out of the matrix and, yeah, life is harder out here and maybe I, maybe the matrix is the reference is too old now because I don't know how many people even seen the first one, the first movie. But congratulations is due.

Speaker 2: 33:32

And this, this reconstruction of knowing your worth without having to prove to anyone that you can carry the weight of the world, is probably one of their biggest conversion experiences that there is. You know, white folk unfortunately have the burden of acting like I'm subhuman. I'm so humble, but really what they're doing is proving that they're superhuman, and this is the same cycle that they put black folk through. We are either subhuman or superhuman, and if, if, we do not need white people, that makes us the greatest enemy. And so I think that to offer congratulations to our white cousins and friends and new community members is more than an order what they've lost and what they might suffer is.

Speaker 2: 34:28

It is, in many ways, going to teach them and those wounds are precious to God, but their place in movement, their place in moving towards that ultimate anti racism journey, which is to finally realize that it is whiteness itself you may be fighting against, is to really lean into what they feel their spiritual practice ought to be. Have you rejected Jesus because you're mad at your Sunday School teacher? Are you abolishing different parts of relationships that are actually helpful for you just because you mad? And to ask the question is your queerness, your identity or your weapon, just to put your family off the Thanksgiving? Because that's not life, that's not love? Now, if you, if you're living and your family's mad, that's one thing, but I'm going to tell you right now that who we are is not your little trivia question. So just tell someone how dumb they are. Don't use all the struggle I've been through to make you feel better about telling a bigot about themselves. Use your own testimony. Dare to speak about your own change, because that is what's required of you.

Speaker 2: 35:59

And it makes me. You know many more than just white folk are going through that. They want to feel validated, they want to feel appreciated, but congratulations has to be the thing that they appreciate most, because we don't. We don't have time to offer them gratitude, and the truth is that God is proud of them and that has never satisfied any white Christian that I know. For some odd reason, they can't be satisfied by God being proud of them because it's not tangible, it's not in their faces and it doesn't make them any money.

Speaker 2: 36:38

Who want to be anti racist? I would dare them to. To become anti capitalist? I would dare them to see the abolitionist God. And then then you're starting to move towards what black people have done that would still that still live under capitalism. They still can't be totally capitalist because capitalism hates us.

Speaker 2: 37:01

But, in short, I would ask our community members who are white to find the testimonies and the struggles and the advisement from people that are also white. I would ask them to Google it and not bother like you or me, and I would ask them how they are coming humbly, to sit and to learn, and how they are looking at the generation coming behind them, not raise another generation of oops. I didn't know I was racist. How are they raising a generation that it looks very different from oops? Is that bigoted? How are they refusing to leave their family behind? Build your boundaries as you have to, but what is your role in being an ally and how are you gathering your people in the same way that Jesus gathered his people? The examples are all there and I don't I really don't think that you have to expect black people to do all the work, even in advisement.

Speaker 1: 38:14

Indeed. Oh, my goodness, kind of. You're already kind of heading towards the final question, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna see if I can't ask you these kind of consecutively person who is a person of color, a queer person of color who, for me, during that, that time that I was hearing you, had no idea that it was okay to be queer and love God and be loved by God. I had no idea. I did know I was very pissed off about whiteness and about black lives and I knew that there was something in me that needed to be said. I felt something in me that that needed to come out, to come forth.

Speaker 1: 38:59

So for for folks who are listening, who are in their late 20s, early 30s, who feel like there's something in them, you were very much for me a person that goes that I saw I was like that's what I want to do, that's what I want to be Truthful, honest, no matter what. What would you say to a person who feels like, yeah, there's something stirring in me as well. I don't know how to identify it. I haven't maybe tapped into it yet, but what would your word be to people of color, young leaders of color, who are navigating all of this?

Speaker 2: 39:34

Yeah, oh, my city is very loud today. I'm sorry it's a hoot. Listen, the sirens are going off and somebody's soul, right. You know you got to turn everything into a sermon.

Speaker 1: 39:48

Thank you for the lights going off. That's right.

Speaker 2: 39:50

That's right Now listen if your alarm bells are also ringing. They say. They tell me trust your gut, and I think it is OK to freely go and question and to learn the way the same thing that you did. Our siblings need to do that too. They need to reach out to someone. Is there someone that you're looking at that you trust? Is there someone that you think who? I want to at least try this and talk to them. Whether or not that person gives you good advice, you will feel something, you will be led to something, because if the spirit is speaking to you, the spirit can use even the worst, most dastardly person in your life to say here's what you run from. And the spirit can also use a wonderful pastoral presence in your life to say here's what you run to. So I would encourage our siblings don't do this alone.

Speaker 2: 40:52

You have probably been thinking and meddling and wrestling and really just sitting in this for a long time by yourself longer than you think and one of the things that I believe God themselves does is everything coordinated together. I believe God is three people, and so why in the world would God want you to go through this kind of journey alone If there are organizations around you that really spearhead the work of queer liberation, especially as it pertains to people of color, black people especially then those are the spaces you want to go to in terms of really seeking out and living in your identity. If you're having any doubt issues spiritually, sit in that doubt, ask those questions and hear me when I say that God is joining you in your doubt. God is with you in that doubt and God will not forsake you, even if you decide that you can't hang out with God right now. God is never going to leave you and you can receive that from an ordained preacher who had lost people because they decided they can't hang out with God. But a good church, a good pastor, a good friend, a good family member will only love you more for being honest with them, and that is what God will do. They will only love you more for being honest about what God already knew about.

Speaker 2: 42:26

Now, if you are going through doubt and you feel you're going to come out in need of a space, that's where things can get tricky, because any church you go to may have a bigoted undertone that turns into an overtone Then you may be the lesson that a particular church or ministry space goes through to decide oh, we are going to put out a statement whether a sister, beloved, so-and-so was here and we didn't think we needed a statement on queerness before, but now they showed up. Prepare your heart for trouble and find a space. Like I recommended Pride and the Pews already, I recommend that people reach out to me directly. You never know who folks might know, in whatever state, whatever city, and I truly want to encourage our siblings that, while they must not go through this alone, they absolutely have to realize that this path will be lonely.

Speaker 2: 43:22

This is why we still have hangouts, conferences, chat rooms and you know chats, because if you are also called to leadership on the other side of this, then it will be you that is preparing their testimony. I like in my call to the call of Ezekiel, where the Lord told the prophet now I'm going to take you out of the church and I'm going to put you out among the people and I'm going to give you a message that is the truth, and you will speak the truth and people will hate you. But if you concentrate on the hatred of the people who hate the truth, and if that hatred causes you to stop speaking, then when I show up and I tear these folks up, that blood will be on your hands, because you knew the truth but you were so terrified of being hated. Anyone that knows and feels the truth has to still speak it, because the only person, the only person that you owe any explanation to, is the God that put the truth within you. It's okay to be afraid, but it is not okay to be empowered or disempowered by people's hate and fear.

Speaker 2: 44:48

Lean into the stories of Pauly Baird. Lean into the story of Jimmy James. Baldwin hated the church, but everything could be a churchy. I mean the cross of Christ, redemption fire next to come on. Everything he did was churchy. Lean on in and in the words of our brother James Baldwin. Please remember, please remember the words that Baldwin actually got from the Apostle Paul with his misogynist behind. The crown is bought and paid for. Your name tag says Saint and not sinner. Your crown is bought and paid for. Reach up, reach up, reach through all of the mess, pull it down on your head, grow into it and wear it.

Speaker 1: 45:38

I'm just gonna end it there. There's nothing else I can't. Would you, Santurin or Dane pastor, would you give us a benediction?

Speaker 2: 45:49

for this episode.

Speaker 2: 45:51

Yes, yes, oh, wow, well beloved our our good anthropologist sister, zora Neale Hurston, who really wanted nothing to do with God, religion or people who needed religion to survive. Right, she still gave us wisdom and she said there are so many years that ask questions and years that bring answers. And she also encouraged us to bring a, a very carefully placed tool, with us everywhere we go. And I want us to look ahead. I want us to look ahead to the future, where all of our weapons will be turned in to tools of building. Everything that you have had to use to defend yourself, to defend people you love, every weapon you have had to use to bust through the mess, the muck and the mire, every weapon that you're now arming yourself with, as you are discovering, you didn't know you were in a closet, you didn't know you were in a cave, but now you're walking towards a particular kind of light.

Speaker 2: 47:07

Everything that you fear and know you will have to fight with, those are the same things that God is going to turn into tools that will build the house that your designs, your blueprints.

Speaker 2: 47:23

God is planting them in you and soon, and very soon, you will become a builder, just like the Creator, and so my blessing for us is this that you would be rooted in the God who was far ahead of you, that you remember that faith, hope and love are the great seeds that God plants within us. Someday, soon, faith will become sight, your hopes will be fulfilled and you won't need faith and hope anymore. But love, love will never change the future. Perfection, renewal, the eschatological gift that is ahead of us All of you have an experience right now is the same love that came from your ancestors, who loved you before they knew you, and it flows through your descendants, who you love without knowing them. So the future is in your heart right now, because you possess the very love that is a weapon to protect yourself and those that you love, and it is also the tool that will build the house where you can finally finally study war no more.

Speaker 1: 48:50

Thank you, sis. I am so appreciative of you. It's been amazing to have a conversation with someone I consider a hero, a person of. I'm reading books right now. I'm reading a book called Love and Rage and it talks about acknowledging lineage and people who are ancestors, who speak wisdom and truth to you, that their words are like a text, a wisdom text, and I just have to say it to your face that you have been for me, a forerunner in the pursuit of freedom. I feel like, even just watching you in the way that you glow, which I know that you deal with profound. It is very costly to do what you do, but I just need you to know that it has been so life giving for so many of us and I'm grateful to you. I look up to you, I admire you, and thanks for being on the show.

Speaker 2: 49:48

I'm so glad, I'm so, so grateful, truly, truly. And you know I tell you every time we know quick text. I'm praying for you. You are in my heart and I am very, very proud of the path that you were forging and the path that you've been very proud.

Speaker 1: 50:07

Thank you so much I'm going to pause this or end this.