The Black Church, the Blues, and Black Bodies

“Ooh, Ohh there’s something going all wrong”, Ma Rainey sang. There is indeed something going all wrong in the black church. This church, which is born out of the commitment to safeguard the life and freedom of all black people, has gained a reputation for repudiating if not demonizing certain black bodies, namely LGBT bodies. While there are certainly significant black church leaders who have vigorously defended LGBTQ person’s struggle for justice and equal treatment under the law, including support of marriage equality, those black church voices against LGBTQ rights have been vociferous and unrelenting. They have garnered and welcomed significant attention as they have suggested that LGBTQ sexualities are sinful and a “violation of the law of God” and same-same sex marriage violates Godly marriage, which is marriage between a man and a woman.

Such a stance is striking when one considers the historical black struggle for social equality and the Black Church’s prominent role within that struggle. It appears inconsistent, if not blatantly hypocritical, for the Black church community to be in the forefront of racial justice concerns yet resistant if not repressive when it comes to the rights of LGBTQ persons. It is equally surprising for a people’s who were once denied the right to marry persons of their free choosing to deny such a right to others. Yet, as contradictory as such views appear, the reasons for them are just as complex. The way in which black people’s own bodies and sexuality have been maligned and manipulated by white racist ideology to justify their oppression, especially during the slavocracy, has shaped black people’s responses to various social issues, especially sexual matters.

Caricatures of black women and men as immoral animals driven by abnormal and uncontrollable sexual desires has caused black people to adopt narratives toward sexuality in order to insure that they are not seen as abhorrent or immoral when it comes to sexual matters. Black church people’s vehement responses to LGBTQ sexualities and same-sex marriage reflects a persistent history of racially sexualized oppression. Nevertheless, even while we may appreciate the complexity of black church attitudes toward LGBTQ concerns, these attitudes must be confronted and challenged for such thinking indeed betrays the black faith tradition—a tradition which is predicated on the belief in a God of freedom and justice. It is for this reason that I have found myself singing the blues.

Read the rest here