Queering the Black Church: A Sociohistorical Exploration of and Prophetic Witness to the Black Church Regarding the Black LGBT Community - Towards Solving the Identity Crisis December 2019

      

Queering the Black Church: A Sociohistorical Exploration of and Prophetic Witness to the Black Church Regarding the Black LGBT Community - Towards Solving the Identity Crisis

December 2019

DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.16219.44324

Authors:

Donnell Anthony McLachlan

Chicago Theological Seminary

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References (19)

Abstract

In this work, I engage the ongoing issue of homophobia in the Black Church. I explore what are the main causes for the vitriol towards the LGBT community in the black church? In many cases why doesn’t thinking around black human rights movements sometimes supported by the black church (such as Black Lives Matter) always include queer lives? What impact did colonialism have on black folks' communal understanding of gender? As I unpack, briefly, my historical and sociological findings regarding these questions I also ponder on what can the black church do to become more queer friendly/affirming/loving and, lastly, what could be the future of the black church if it does not.

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     QUEERING THE BLACK CHURCH: A SOCIOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL EXPLORATION OF AND PROPHETIC WITNESS TO THE BLACK CHURCH REGARDING THE BLACK LGBT COMMUNITY – TOWARDS SOLVING THE IDENTITY CRISIS A Paper Presented to Prof. W. Scott Haldeman Chicago Theological Seminary In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Course TEC 393 by Donnell McLachlan [@donnellwrites] December 2019 

McLachlan 2 QUEERING THE BLACK CHURCH: A SOCIOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL EXPLORATION OF AND PROPHETIC WITNESS TO THE BLACK CHURCH REGARDING THE BLACK LGBT COMMUNITY – TOWARDS SOLVING THE IDENTITY CRISIS It was in the Black Church1 where I first encountered God. No matter where I lived in Chicago—whether it was in Englewood where I was born, Rogers Park where I was raised or Edgewater where I spent my early adulthood—I always came back home. The historic church building on the south side of Chicago was home. Within those walls were my history and the history of my family commemorated by baptisms, funerals, weddings, ordinations. Within those walls held our future, as babies were dedicated to God there and children were trained up in the “way they should go”.2 It was in the black church where I learned and experienced love, sacrifice, community and “black boy joy”. When my grandmother emigrated to the United States from Jamaica, a stranger in a foreign land and unsure of what the future held, she found herself in the black church. When she saved me and my older brother from the system by taking us into her home, she got saved.3 “I said I got my grandkids, I [have to] change my life for you,” she told me. “I remember when I started to go to [the black church]…”4 It is not hyperbole to say that the black church saved my life, and I do not mean here in a salvific sense or figurative sense, but in a quite literal sense. It saved me from self-loathing, saved me from those who sought to shed blood, saved me from the system. It saved my family by keeping us together for longer than anything ever has or likely ever will. It is for these reasons and more why leaving 1 Ebenezer House of Prayer is an Apostolic church on the south side of Chicago. 2 Prov. 22:6 (King James Version) 3 “Saved” here meaning the dedication of one’s life to Christ. 4 Norma Jean McLachlan, interview by the author, Chicago, IL, July 25, 2018. 

McLachlan 3 home was the hardest decision I’ve ever made; and I left in part because while the black church was life-giving to me, it took life from so many people…none more notably so, in my estimation, than black queer5 people. Doing this work of reflection and critical analysis is always challenging where family is involved. The black church’s role in the life of the diasporic African has been immense. It has not just served as a place of worship, but as a place of family, tradition, community, legacy and perhaps most notably identity…if you ask a white American where their people are from they are far more likely to answer with a country of origin. A black American today, on the other hand, may very well tell you what church his family attended. The black church—particularly my home church—is family. My aim here is not to paint my family or the black church in a bad light, but to think intentionally and mindfully of what it could be. I am driven not by hurt or disdain, but by a hope of a more inclusive future, one where all black people may experience the love of God within the black church that I experienced—no matter what they look like, what they wear or who they love. Reverend Horace Griffin acknowledges the tension of being a product of the black church and having to be critical of it. “There may be no greater challenge,” Griffin says, “than to speak against prevailing unjust attitudes of one’s blood family, church family, and primary social community.”6 Yet as I reflect on the harm of the black church to the black queer community in this work, I stand in spirit and power with professor Kelly Brown Douglas: “Because I love [the black church], my heart is broken and my soul is hurt when it acts unlike itself.”7 It is in this spirit and power that I say that the same church that spoke life 5 The term “queer” is used in place of LGBTQIA unless otherwise noted. 6 Horace Griffin, "Their Own Received Them Not: African American Lesbians and Gays in Black Churches," in The Greatest Taboo: Homosexuality in Black Communities, by Delroy Constantine-Simms (Los Angeles, CA: Alyson Publications, 2001), 111. 7 Kelly Brown Douglas, Black Bodies and the Black Church: A Blues Slant (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 183. 

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References (19)

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