[MUSIC PLAYING]
And I'm most of all
grateful today for Monique,
who had no question about
canceling this event.
She was gung-ho, ready to
go, ready to speak to us,
and to bring us the fruit of
her really fascinating research.
So thank you so much for
gathering us here together.
Monique Moultrie is Associate
Professor of Religious Studies
at Georgia State University.
She did her doctorate
at Vanderbilt.
And most important,
her MTS degree
at Harvard Divinity School
in 2002, which many of us
remember fondly.
And we looked forward at
that time to this day.
So I'm really--
I'm really glad it has come.
Monique is the co-editor,
with Mary Hunt and Keisha Ali,
of A Guide for
Women and Religion,
Making Your Way from A to
Z, the Second Edition that
was published in 2014.
As well as the author of
a really important book
published in 2017 by
Duke University Press,
and that is her text, Passionate
and Pious, Religious Media
and Black Women's Sexuality.
And it should not
have surprised us
that Monique had the courage
to come forward and speak to us
today, because her
courage is legendary.
In her research,
she has fearlessly
tread into the study of religion
and black women's sexuality
where no scholar
has gone before.
So I strongly commend
her first book to you.
She is a consultant to
the NIH on issues related
to her research, as well as a
consultant to the Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, and Transgender
Religious Archives Network.
And it is through
that association
that she entered
the research project
that she is going to
speak to us about today.
So, Monique.
Let me first start off
by saying thank you
to each and every one of you
for showing up and braving
all kinds of things to be here.
A personal note of thanks
to my WSRP colleagues,
past and present, who've been
really instrumental in making
this year very impactful.
My feminist friends
and supporters,
Clarissa Atkinson, and
Bernadette Brooten,
who helped me
actualize this year.
Thank you to my
students for my fall
Leadership and Woman
As Moral Traditions
course, which taught me a
whole lot about Divinity School
that I didn't learn
when I was a student.
And thanks to the
generous funders
who supported this project.
As we just mentioned,
LGBTran, the American Academy
of Religion, my home
institution, Georgia State,
and finally, thank you to my
deceased biological mother,
Tommie Crews, for always
shining humor into her stories,
and to Mildred Carter,
the mother who raised me
and who taught me the
significance of listening
to black women.
Last but not least,
thank you goes
to my life partner,
who's over there,
who's here to support me today.
But even when he's not
around, as my daily reminder
of God's love and grace.
So this exercise was not me
practicing for the Oscars,
but actually a womanist praxis
of naming and positionality,
a means of sharing with the
audience when and where I
enter my research.
I started this way to
alert you that this
may feel like a different
kind of academic talk,
because it's going
to be formatted
to amplify the voices of
women who shared their life
stories with me.
This project exists
only because they
were willing to
trust me, largely
a stranger and a heterosexual
ally with their truths.
Because I owe them more
than just a thank you.
As an ethical practice,
you will hear from them
as much as you will from me.
This talk stems from
a new book project
that I'm here working
on that investigates
the religious and
spiritual motivations that
are formed for social
justice activism
in black lesbian
religious leaders' lives.
Ultimately, I'm
writing a book that
presents a womanist model
of ethical leadership
that is explored through
the narratives of 18
black lesbian religious leaders.
Womanism is a social
change perspective
rooted in black women's
everyday experiences.
And my project theorizes answers
for the following questions.
How are black lesbian
religious leaders incubators
for social justice activism?
How does spirituality animate
their social activism?
And how can these
leaders function
as models for ethical leadership
for future generations?
This talk will
specifically focus
on illuminating some
of the ways that
black lesbian religious
leaders incubate social justice
by examining examples
of everyday activism
and collective
organizing that have
spiritual and
religious impetuses.
While the basic methodology of
the talk and even the larger
work is oral history, I'm
going to be utilizing theories
from Patricia Hill Collins,
Rosetta Ross, and Layli
Maparyan to explore black
lesbian religious activism,
which I interpret as
womanist spiritual activism,
a social change
spiritualized movement.
My scholarship explores how
religion, race and sexuality
intersect with gender
prescriptions and normative
claims within
Christian contexts.
In the first book,
I investigated
how black women were targeted
by faith-based sexuality
ministries and exerted
their own sexual agency.
In this current project,
I'm also looking at agency.
I'm looking at how sexual and
religious actors exert agency
in religious spheres,
as I seek to respond
to the erasure of black lesbian
sexual and sacred lives.
I take seriously cultural
critic Tricia Rose's assertion
that sexual stories about
black women are all around us,
but they often
rely on key myths.
So what I want to
do is offer data
that is based on the actual
stories about sexuality
and faith shared by
black lesbian women.
In my discussion today, I'm
going to move reflexively
among terms such as black,
queer, lesbian, and same gender
loving.
When distinctions are
important to my interviewee,
I will note why I've
chosen a specific term.
So this is a screenshot
of the LGBTran web site.
I gathered these
interviews as a consultant
for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transgender, Queer Religious
Archives Network.
They just added
"queer" recently.
Where I identified
and interviewed
black gay and lesbian religious
leaders for the web site's
oral history project.
So I've done five black
gay men interviews.
And eventually,
they'll have all 18.
Right now, they've got
eight of the 18 interviews
that I've done with
black lesbian leaders.
These interviews represented
a group that is quite vast.
For the women that
I interviewed,
these are women of a variety
of demographics and leadership
positions, with most
being Protestant leaders,
although I also interviewed a
spiritualist, a Jewish rabbi,
and a Buddhist
religious practitioner.
All 18 of the women were
cisgender black women.
And my interviewees were at
various levels of leadership.
So I went from everything to
the founder of denominations
to persons who were in--
three persons who were
in smaller spheres
of religious leadership.
All of my interviewees
were actively
integrating their spiritual
and religious beliefs
into their social justice
activism or efforts
to bring about social change.
When it's complete,
I hope the book
will serve as the first
collection of oral histories
of black lesbian
religious leaders,
creating a depository
of oral histories
that will portray the diversity
of black LGBT experiences
in religious communities.
To put us all on
the same page, I'm
going to walk us through
some of the categories that
were important to the
framing of the project.
So we're going to walk through
black church, black women's
religious activism,
and black lesbian,
before we hear from the
interviewees themselves.
So I chose for our
time today to focus
on some of the Protestant
Christian interviewees.
And by this, I'm
focusing on those
familiar with the traditional
black church religiosity.
This project emphasizes the
significance of self identity
and social location as
activism, because self
naming for these women is an
important tool of resistance
and liberation.
I begin by identifying
them as black,
with full acknowledgment
of the problems associated
with treating blackness
as an ontological term,
supposedly referencing
something innate and present
for all community members.
So when discussing black
lesbians and religion,
notions of the historic black
church require some unpacking.
So if you look here on the
slide, the numbers are small,
but what I wanted to
point to is this number
of black evangelical
Protestants,
which is 53% of those that
were polled in this Pew study.
With 14% being represented in
mainline Protestantism, which
I'm going to talk
about in just a minute.
So this is an
overwhelming number
of Christian identifying people.
And from that
subset, we're going
to talk a bit about the
traditional, quote, unquote,
black church.
Which refers to
black Protestantism,
as is widely
understood, to include
the seven major black
Protestant denominations here
on this slide--
the National Baptist Convention,
the National Baptist Convention
of America, the Progressive
National Convention,
the African Methodist Episcopal
Church, the African Methodist
Episcopal Zion Church, the
Christian Methodist Episcopal
Church, and the Church
of God in Christ.
These are the traditions that
the majority of my interviewees
were reared in before moving
into a denomination that
was more welcoming.
So that's where this
slide, again, with the 14%
becomes important.
Those who moved to
mainline denominations--
mainline denominations for Pew
data and for my interviewees
equate to American Baptists,
United Methodists, Lutherans,
Presbyterians, Episcopalians,
Disciples of Christ,
United Church of Christ, the
Reformed Church, Anabaptists,
Quakers, and the Metropolitan
Community Church.
And these are the
groups which encompass
many of the traditions where
my interviewees are now
current members.
So they went from
these on this slide
to those that are represented.
I also want you to
note these views
on same sex marriage
and views on just
gay and lesbian
persons, in general.
Because these groups
don't get along,
don't get together
to agree on anything.
But after the 2015 Supreme
Court decision allowing same sex
marriage, all these groups
got together miraculously
to put out a uniform statement
against same sex marriage,
against it being a part of
their religious beliefs.
And so I don't see
that as an anomaly,
or do I see this as a
particularly persuasive way
of understanding
the black church's
thus then particularly
homophobic.
Because part of what this
data here that you see on this
slide-- that looks at
black church homophobia--
looks at is that while there
are numerous acts of silence
and derision coming from
traditional black church
leadership, I think that
there is actually a much more
nuanced--
actually, in the pews,
in the churches--
happening of what this means.
So while there are public
statements refuting
the acceptance and tolerance
of same gender loving persons,
actually, in religious
spaces, there
is a bit of a passive ignorance
or a passive acceptance
that these statistical
numbers don't show up.
So I counter the view
that the black community
is particularly less
tolerant of gays and lesbians
than other community members.
For one, this is just
statistically inaccurate.
And two, I think it ignores
the nuance and complicated ways
that black religious
persons engage
in a dance between their
identity formations.
As you can then
see on this slide,
the religious profile of LGBT
persons, and particularly as it
relates to people of color.
I think this is
one of the reasons
and one of the larger
factors as to why
black LGBT persons do not leave
their religious identities.
They may leave their
religious denomination,
but they do not leave
their sense of faith.
So if they are Christian
and they were born Baptists,
they may move and become
United Church of Christ,
but they don't leave
the identity formation
in the same numbers as you
see for other racial groups.
And this is true for
millennials, as well as it
is for those of
various age groups.
So I think that the market
trend, where persons,
as you see on this
slide, where persons
go from being a particular
faith tradition to being
not religious or spiritual,
not religious, that does not
hold for African-Americans.
The numbers are
actually quite similar.
They go from 8 to 6%.
So it's not that much of a drop.
Finally, I find it
especially futile
to expend a lot of energy
projecting black Christianity
as more vibrantly homophobic
than white Christianity,
because both sides are pulling
from the same conservative
interpretations of the Bible.
Instead, I posit that
what's missing is--
or what's at mix is
this cultural memory
of the black church as
an all-encompassing,
justice-seeking institution.
And if you hold this
as the memory of what
the black church is, then
watching the opposition
to same gender loving people
actually stands in opposition.
It makes this not a thing.
So the women in
my study, I think,
further complicate this
notion of black lesbian
by a black religious
identity as they
agitate within these
spaces for social change.
Particularly what I'm going to
see here and walk us through
are my concepts of activism and
how this is playing itself out
in my project.
So first of all,
I take as theory
their very act of being
out and religious.
So, not leaving their
religious communities,
serving and serving as leaders
in their religious communities
is courageous when
structures seek
to demand their invisibility
or their erasure.
In this sense, I wish to
expand the notion of activism
beyond the typical
conceptualizations
that we may have of activism as
marches or political reforms.
Instead, what I'm
trying to highlight here
are what black sociologist
Patricia Hill Collins
notes as everyday activism.
And this is the quote
that's on your screen.
"The private decisions to
reject external definitions
of Afro-American womanhood
and black women's
everyday behavior as
a form of activism,
no matter how limited the
sphere of their activism."
End quote.
It is in these private
decisions made public
that these black lesbian
religious leaders' lives become
theory, a theoretical
positioning that
contains within it a
politics of resistance.
Hill Collins was concerned
with ordinary black women--
domestics, teachers,
mothers, preachers--
as she recognized
that scholars needed
to observe more than just those
taking office or participating
in collective movements.
This attention to everyday
acts of self-determination
is one of the markers
of my project,
as these activists can be viewed
as persons who are working
within their everyday lives.
They're just going to work.
They're just being themselves.
And they are taking great
risk and great reward.
I resist cultural invisibility
and religious irrelevancy.
Another factor for my project
is ethicist Rosetta Ross's
witnessing and testifying.
This text explores social
justice activism from slavery
into the civil rights movement.
And in it, she highlights
how black women
have fought to ensure human
dignity through their community
work, through their organizing,
teaching, lecturing,
demonstrating,
suing, and arguing.
All the while utilizing
their belief in God
to motivate them to help produce
the change they want to see.
In fact, she contends that
black religious activists
are examples of persons--
and this is the
quote on your slide--
are "persons who, in the
midst of their ordinary lives,
use critical,
analytical, and reasoning
skills to assess the usefulness
of traditional religious
conceptions, and to construct
new ways of making religion
functional."
End quote.
Thus, my interest in
examining the life stories
of black lesbian
religious leaders
is merely me finding
a way to render
visible these leaders'
analytical and constructive
skills.
In our discussion
today, I'm going
to investigate individuals'
everyday acts of resistance,
as well as their collective
engagement with social justice
movements.
That I will then launch
as a conversation
on spiritual activism, or as
Layli Maparyan points out,
this act of putting
spirituality to work
for positive social change.
So what we see here--
and this is the image
that was on the flyer.
This is an image, a
rendition, of Pauli Murray.
Is the necessity for
querying what we have
as our black religious history.
In the scholarship on
black women's activism
and in black women's
religious history,
there is an absence of
attention to the various models
of black female
modes of activism
that have included queer lives.
And the last 20 years,
in particular, there
has been scholarship on
black LGBT identity that
discusses religion, and even
some recent work that focuses
specifically on black lesbians.
Many of these works are created
by gay male authors, whose
work discerned that
religion does not
hold a significant role
for black lesbian women,
as it does with black gay men.
Performance scholar and oral
historian E Patrick Johnson's
text, Black Queer
Southern Women,
reports his surprise that many
of the women he interviewed
did not enjoy going
to church and did not
find it to be a refuge, as
many of his gay black male
interviewees had experienced.
Johnson's text expressed
disavowal of black churches,
finding that women
sought instead
women-centered
alternative spiritualities
to black church attendance.
My interviewees and
their communities
contradict such studies
by demonstrating
that black lesbian
religious leaders purposely
work within their
religious spaces
and find joy in black
churches, and find within them
spaces to flourish.
While the book manuscript
will unpack the many ways
that I think gay male scholars
miss the point of black lesbian
religious identities,
for our time
now, I want to highlight
black queer religious activism
as an addition to the history of
black women and social justice
activism.
It's outside of the scope
of the time we have together
to offer an exhaustive
discussion of the long history
of black women and
social justice work.
Just as women are currently
at the forefront of the Black
Lives Movement, so, too, every
path towards black liberation
has depended upon the expertise
and labor of black women.
Yet these contemporary queer
leaders' activism has not often
been told as a part of the
long work of liberating black
people, which has led to
the necessity of querying
religious histories.
Princeton University doctoral
candidate Ahmad Greene-Hayes
suggests that this task
requires reimagining religion
as more than a solely
heterosexual and sexist
category.
And he contends that we
should take seriously
how queer people across
genders and sexualities
have actively participated in
African-American religions.
And in my case, in
social justice activism.
Doing this work then calls for
more expansive historiography.
And here, I've just pulled
up some of the people
that I could place in
my markers of queer
religious historiography
for black women.
Looking at the activist work of
Rebecca Cox Jackson or Dr. Mary
Evans or Sister Rosetta
Tharpe, or even Pauli Murray.
These women's
lives and loves are
part of the long arc of
women working towards justice
in the world, and
it's these legacies
that my interviewees
are joining into.
Largely, this is
because they come
to the work claiming
as instrumental
their black lesbian identity.
They understand the
magnitude of oppression
they've had to overcome to break
into the stained glass ceiling
within their religious spaces.
And contrary to my prior
scholarship claims,
my interviewees actually
do find solace in religion
and were deeply invested in
utilizing their racial, sexual,
and gender, and religious
identities in their activism.
In each of these
interviews, I found
that their stories of resistance
and rise to leadership
was dependent upon
each woman making peace
with the various
strands of herself.
I was also
particularly persuaded
by the black lesbian
interviewees who utilized
cooperative leadership models.
And my overall project
is going to examine
why this is appealing.
So while they
really didn't spend
a lot of time answering my
questions regarding their race
and gender, all
of my interviewees
were comfortable with
the term "lesbian"
and talked to me in some great
detail about what context they
use "queer" or what context
they use "same gender loving".
So it was not
surprising, though,
that the majority
of my interviewees
landed on the term "lesbian"
as a catch-all phrase.
And largely, I think this had to
do with many of those subjects
being in their mid-50s.
There was a galvanizing
around this term.
Some of my younger
interviewees, those
who were in their
late 30s, tended
to identify more as queer.
When Audre Lorde writes
about the difficulties
of being an open lesbian
in the black community,
she is speaking of the realities
that some identities are deemed
in conflict with each other.
For example, loyalty
to the black community
has presumed fidelity and
perhaps even submission
to black men.
Thus, activism that does
not privilege male concerns
can cause interracial trauma.
As women who were motivated
by deep religious ideologies,
this is often
deemed antithetical
to their queer identity,
as some see religion
as solely a source for
harm in the LGBT community.
As female leaders
who are not following
heteronormative
leadership structures--
and so, within black
church structures,
these heteronormative
structures tend
to allow women in leadership as
the companions, so the pastor's
wife, the mother who's
associated with a father
figure in the religious space.
That these are typical spaces
that the queer women that I was
interviewing did not inhabit.
Thus, my interest in women who
claimed their authentic voice
to speak from their
particular identities
is also a reflection of my
interest in black women's
self-determination.
This is why I was
led to oral history
as the project's
main methodology.
According to the Oral History
Association, oral history
as a field of study and a
method of gathering, preserving,
and interpreting the voices
and memories of people
and communities.
Why I find it
particularly valuable
is that it centers the
histories of persons
who have been
marginalized and excluded
from dominant
historical records.
It allows a researcher
like me to amplify
the experiences of a
diverse group using
open ended techniques, such as
semi-structured interviews that
focused on their
everyday experiences,
shaped by their race,
class, gender, sexuality,
and religion.
Because I am invested in how
and why these women became
religious leaders, oral
history offered a means
to access their thoughts,
feelings, and activities.
So for the last half of my
talk, I'm going to shift,
and we're going to talk from
the lives of these women.
I want to take up this
task with the theorizing
from the lives of Reverend
Candy Holmes, Reverend Kentina
Washington-Leapheart, Bishop
Yvette Flunder, Reverend Dr.
Pamela Lightsey, and
Reverend Dr. Cari Jackson.
I'm going to offer some
introductory biographies
for each of these women.
And on the slides, you'll just
see some of the longer quotes
that I'm going to read from them
so that you can get a sense.
I was going to play the text.
But that became
really cumbersome,
trying to bring their
actual voices in.
So I'm going to
substitute my voice,
but you're hearing their
words as it was transcribed.
Oh, a pointer.
I have no idea what
to do with this.
But-- there we go.
It is self-explanatory.
All right.
So this is Reverend
Candy Holmes,
who is there in the image.
And this is her here
with President Obama.
Reverend Candy Holmes was the
leader of the Metropolitan
Community Churches.
She served in music
ministry, initially,
in the healing ministries,
and as the planning
chair for the Persons of
African Descent Conference.
Her professional activism
came about through her work
in the federal government
and the Government Accounting
Office.
She recounts doing
one small thing, which
was submitting a
family photograph
of her and her then-partner,
Elder Darlene Garner,
for a photo display during
diversity month in her office.
And how this one action
ultimately led to an invitation
from President Obama, which
is what you see below,
to stand with him when he signed
the presidential memorandum
granting federal
benefits to same sex
domestic partners in 2009.
Following this act, she
gave public testimony
in state legislatures in
support of marriage equality.
And she's continued her
social justice activism
by working with the National
Black Justice Coalition, GLAD,
the Human Rights Campaign, Many
Voices, and LGBTQ Task Force.
After 30 years of ministry
with the Metropolitan Community
Churches, she and
Elder Darlene Garner
resigned from their
leadership roles within MCC,
but she has retained
her MCC clergy's status.
I conducted my interview
with Reverend Candy Holmes
in October 2017.
She was 61 years old.
She described the
integration of her identities
taking place during her time
with the Metropolitan Community
Church.
As a former apostolic
church girl,
she wondered
whether God would be
pleased with her same sex
attraction or her calling
to the ministry.
And after a lengthy
process, she was
able to integrate her
various identities
into one empowered individual.
She learned at a young
age that it's only
right to do right,
which as an adult,
she interpreted as justice.
Even before she had the
language to articulate
the feeling of injustice or
the awareness of the need
for a just world, she told
me, and I'm quoting her,
she "just had this
justice streak.
So I didn't understand why it
is that we do right on Sunday,
but we don't do right on
Monday through Saturday.
And so my response to
that was resistance."
End quote.
Resistance started
with everyday tasks,
like telling the truth
even when it was unpopular,
or recognizing
hypocritical responses
and refusing to
participate in them.
This next vignette
is the moment that
launched her into the
social justice activism
that I've talked about.
But it started with her
one everyday action.
At the time, she was incensed
because Proposition 8 had tried
to determine whether a
group of people like her
could get married.
She said to me,
"With proposition 8,
it was, like, well, you
know, I had to do something.
And I didn't know if it would
jeopardize my work or not"--
because she wasn't out at work--
"but I knew I had
to do something.
And so, at my desk,
I said a prayer.
I said, God, I don't
know what to do,
but if I could just
do one small thing.
And so when I had just
said that prayer--
I remember it like
it was yesterday--
I glanced up at my
computer, and on the screen
was this email about a gay and
lesbian employee association.
They were doing a project
for diversity month.
And this particular
year, they decided
that they wanted to put our
families on display, because
of all the stuff
that was starting
to brew around gay
people and gay people
having families and
wanting to get married.
So they thought this
would be one way
to show that we
do have families,
and that it's important
to acknowledge
that we have families.
After calling
Darlene, I nervously
picked out one of our best
pictures and sent it in.
I was all kinds of
nervous about it,
but I figured, well,
what's a picture?"
From that small
act of resistance,
she went on to become one of
the public faces of DC marriage
equality, not just as a federal
employee but as a faith leader,
because, she notes, "When
the White House called
on the behalf of
then-President Obama,
they asked to speak
with Reverend Holmes."
After her consciousness
raising, she
recognized that her voice was
important in helping herself
and others find freedom.
She said she wanted to
help others find freedom
from oppression, freedom from
things that would bind us,
freedom from things that
will take away our hope.
She often spoke about not
being a seasoned advocate
or activist, but not
letting that limit her,
given that her goal
was freedom for all.
She recounted to me--
and this is a quote
that I have on the screen.
"I had my life.
So I just kept sharing
my life and what
it was like growing
up in the church
and what it was like
not knowing I was gay.
So it wasn't just
one thing that helped
me go from being someone who was
not active to being someone who
was active, but it was like I
progressed as I told my story."
Another story I wanted
to include today
is Reverend Kentina
Washington-Leapheart,
who shared a range of
expressions of activism
that I want us to think
together about what it means
to work for holistic freedom.
Reverend Kentina
Washington-Leapheart
was the former Director of
Programs for Reproductive
Justice and Sexuality Education
at the Religious Institute.
She began her ministerial
career as a chaplain
in both health care and
clinical care settings.
She identifies as a queer woman
as follower of many paths,
including the way of Jesus.
And volunteers her time
in greater Philadelphia
and community
organizations to work
to advance maternal and
child health and faith.
Jointly ordained and married
to the Reverend Naomi
Washington-Leapheart
and parenting
a teenage daughter, she
and her wife's callings
complement each other, as
they work side by side,
though in different
spheres of ministry.
I conducted my interview
with Reverend Kentina
Washington-Leapheart in October
2019 when she was 39 years old.
When I conducted an interview
with Reverend Kentina,
she spoke of herself
as a-- and I'm
quoting her-- "a minister
who is in between calls".
End quote.
As she had recently stepped
down from her position
as director of programs.
And she had just
recently been ordained.
She had prior experience
working as a chaplain,
but at that time when
I interviewed her,
she was taking a break to
figure out how she could next
work for good in the world.
In her chaplaincy
work, she remarked
how the position demanded
she cultivate deep listening
and not run out of the
room when things got tough.
This skill set of deep listening
and being keenly present
translated into her
activism and advocacy work.
This often gets lost
in movement spaces,
she said, where doing takes
precedence over being.
She told of how in
marketing herself
for her last position at
the Religious Institute,
she realized, "It's one thing"--
and I'm quoting her--
"to talk about, for example,
reproductive justice,
sexual health, and all of that,
and the difficult or complex
decision-making that women
and families are doing related
to pregnancy, completing
a pregnancy, or not,
and every kind of
thing in between.
It's one thing to
talk about that
and protest about that
and rail about that.
And it's another
thing to actually
have sat with and spent
time with and walked
through those experiences
with human beings who
are making them, who are
people of faith in many ways.
So I think my chaplaincy
experience uniquely prepared
me.
My pastoral sense was key to
how I showed up in that work."
End quote.
Reverend Kentina also
discovered that justice work
is deeply connected to her own
familial and personal life.
She preferred the term
"advocate" to "activist",
as she said she felt,
and I'm quoting her,
"compelled to act as a voice
or to help amplify voices that
get drowned out by the deluge
of injustice in the world".
End quote.
She uses her privileges,
her experiences,
to be a social justice
leader, yet she shared with me
the need for boundaries from
the all consuming social justice
world.
Which shows her awareness
of how she wants
to live and show her faith.
She said to me, it
was important for her
to be her own best
thing, for herself
and for her wife and child.
She said, "My spouse and I
talk about this all the time.
What good is it if
we're out doing justice
in the world, whatever
that looks like,
when we're not doing that
in our own relationship?
I don't think it has
to be that you're
a brilliant activist
and a terrible spouse,
or a brilliant activist
and a terrible parent.
Or a prolific pastor
and a terrible whatever.
I think there has to
be some intentionality.
I think that
institutions, whether it's
the church or nonprofit
or university,
will own you or treat
you like they own you,
unless you decide to say
that's not going to happen.
And I don't say that
to say it's easy,
but I refuse to be owned."
End quote.
Maintaining boundaries by
advocating first for herself
is how she is able to show
up in the movement spaces
and advocate for others.
I highlight this
version of activism
because so many
of my interviewees
experienced burnout, which
stymied their longevity
in activist work.
The two women I just introduced
exemplify individual activism.
They radiated into
communal advocacy.
I will next introduce
two additional activists
whose participation
is perhaps more
recognizable for its collective
efforts towards social change.
Here we have Bishop Yvette--
Bishop Reverend
Dr. Yvette Flunder
who is founder and senior pastor
of the City of Refuge United
Church of Christ and Presiding
Bishop of The Fellowship,
a multi denominational
fellowship of over 100
primarily African-American
Christian churches
that practice radically
inclusive Christianity.
Flunder earned a master's of
arts degree from Pacific School
of Religion and a Doctor
of Ministry Degree
from San Francisco
Theological Seminary.
One of her church's
main purposes
is unite gospel and
social ministry.
It's particularly well-known
for its work with AIDS
and transgender communities.
Bishop Flunder was one of
my first interviews in 2011,
and I interviewed her
again this past July.
She was 54 years old
in our first interview.
My first interview focused on
Bishop Flunder's early life,
growing up heavily active in
the Church of God in Christ
denomination.
Her early religious
training focused
on staying saved, which was
the opposite of social justice
motivation, because she said
to me, "If you're always
afraid you're going to
lose your salvation,
you can't really concentrate
on the needs of other people,
because every altar is for you."
End quote.
Bishop Flunder had perhaps
earned the most notoriety
for her social justice
activism with prominent honors
like giving the keynote address
for the White House's World
AIDS Day in 2014.
In her initial
interview with me,
she indicated that
she felt she'd always
had a social justice bit.
And in our follow up
interview in July 2019,
she reiterated this
formation, noting
that despite her
upbringing preparing her
for the coming of
Jesus, she made time
for social consciousness,
because, and she told me,
she felt it was
her responsibility,
"not just to get to heaven,
but to bring heaven to earth".
The church that
Bishop Flunder created
is very socially active.
And I question how she was able
to amplify her personal sense
of responsibility to
make it a corporate sense
of responsibility
for her church.
She told me she had a few
goals with founding her church.
And she stated,
"Well, I certainly
wanted to create an
environment where
we could celebrate our
relationships as same gender
loving people.
And I wanted to
create an environment
where we could be very
focused on justice
issues as our primary concern.
But what is really my
passion is for social justice
and human services.
And getting people wrapped
around finding ways
to fight for their own freedom
and for the freedom of anyone
who's been marginalized."
She founded City of Refuge as an
independent religious community
in 1991, and she remembered
that at their founding,
they were in the height
of the AIDS epidemic,
both due to their location
in San Francisco Tenderloin
District and the demographic
that the church served.
Initially, her
church grew as people
came to access the services it
provided, like housing, food,
case management, and
spiritual support
for the LGBT
community-- because this
was a time where family members
would just leave their loved
ones.
And would not even bury them.
She reminisced about how much
stigma there was around HIV
and how many of the
providers of care
were women, who she called
the unseen heroines who
engaged as healers
with their particularly
ostracized community.
By committing to the least
of these in her community,
City of Refuge was linked to
a vision of social justice,
animated by their faith, tasked
with literally taking Jesus
back from those who would try to
use Christianity to marginalize
others.
Here, she gives me the
quote that's on the screen.
They fulfilled their
mission by expanding
into various social
justice movements.
She said to me, "I think
that area grew organically
into the other very easily.
Organically, if you
understand what I'm saying.
It happened organically.
One of them grew into the other.
We started with
the HIV work, which
led us to the housing work,
which of course later, yeah,
got us out there around social
justice work, which moves us
to women's issues, which moves
us to prison reform, which
moves us to border work,
which is what we're doing now.
Once you start
doing justice work,
you begin to see the
intersections of the evil that
oppress us all, and
particularly oppress people
of color and anyone
else marginalized."
End quote.
Next we'll meet Reverend
Pamela Lightsey,
whose life blends the academy,
church, and social justice
activism.
I interviewed her
in October 2017.
Reverend Dr. Pamela
Lightsey considers
herself the first out black
lesbian in the United Methodist
Church.
She is the Vice President of
Academic and Student Affairs
and Associate Professor
of Constructive Theology
at the Meadville Lombard
Theological School.
She formerly served
as the Associate Dean
of Community Life
and Lifelong Learning
at the Boston University
School of Theology.
She is a veteran of the
US Army, a former pastor,
a former civil servant, a social
justice activist, and scholar
whose research includes just
war theory, woman's theology,
and queer theology.
Reverend Dr. Lightsey
expressed deep connections
to the black community and
its ongoing liberation.
She fought sexism in
her Pentecostal church
and is now fighting homophobia
in the United Methodist Church,
while also being an advocate
for the Black Lives Matter
movement.
In her position as
Associate Dean at BU,
she saw the murdered
body of Mike Brown
and felt compelled to act.
She felt that she
was well equipped
to go to the scene to help
as a military veteran,
as someone who had lived through
the civil rights movement,
and as a woman who had
experienced poverty.
So she went to Ferguson as a
representative of her school
and the Reconciling Ministries
Network, a United Methodist
social justice group, as
their communications staff.
She said they went
without a clue
but with a sincere
commitment to justice.
She recorded hours
of footage of day
to day interactions
between the protesters
and the militarized
Ferguson police.
Her interviews with activists
and citizens of Ferguson
illuminated how police
brutality, public policies
like ticketing schemes,
unfairly penalized poor blacks,
and the denial of proper health
care and quality education
were all conditions that the
Black Lives Matter movement
was seeking to alleviate.
She said to me, "I
was also interested
as a woman scholar
about the ways women
were leading in the
movement, compared
to what happened during
the Civil Rights Movement.
So I really wanted to
find the women leaders.
Where were the sisters
who were leading?
Because I didn't want
the story in the future
to be that this
was a movement that
was largely led by men, when
in fact that wasn't the truth.
So I paid particular
attention to the ways
in which women were leading,
serving in leadership capacity
in Ferguson as a woman.
I was also wanting
to know theologically
what the people thought
justice looked like.
What would justice
look like for them?"
She said she left
Ferguson a changed woman,
realizing that protest movements
need scholars and theologians.
And she used this awareness
to write her book, Our Lives
Matter, A Womanist Queer
Theology, a text meant
to be accessible to the
LGBTQ community and activists
in general.
She has equally
then a faith filled
advocate for LGBT inclusion
within the United Methodist
Church, as she,
alongside others,
are challenging the church's
current book of discipline that
states that homosexuality is
incompatible with Christian
teachings and prevents
clergy from being the term
"practicing" homosexuals.
Reverend Dr. Lightsey
is an ordained elder
in the tradition, is
committed to its longevity,
and thus feels obligated
to help it be at its best.
She said, "I'm one
of the few ordained
elders, black ordained elders,
in the United Methodist Church
with a PhD.
Not a demon, but PhD.
So I wanted to use my
achievement, my accomplishments
that had been supported
by the church,
to help make the
very church that
supported my education better.
And I thought it was
important for me to do that.
This is my way of
thanking the church
for being committed
to helping to improve
the lives of its laypeople,
its clergy person.
So what better way
than to help the church
live out the principles
that it articulates?"
She advocates to remind black
people, especially in the UMC,
that homophobia is
illogical, and it's
especially illogical for
persons who have been oppressed.
As I go to conclude,
these examples
are examples from
the entire project
that I hope will
be a work devoted
to exploring womanist activism.
Psychologist Thema Bryant
Davis and Tyonna Adams
contend, "Activism is integral
to womanism because the desire
to fight for the
wholeness of all people
demands intentional acts to
bring about transformation."
They argue that womanist
activism is inherently
based on resisting oppression,
but it's also grounded
in spirituality, as the
spirituality of a womanist
motivates her to act for justice
and to create sustainable
peace.
Their definition relies on
Alice Walker's definition
of womanism, particularly
her description
of a womanist as one
who loves the spirit.
But I conjecture that
womanist activism also
reflects Walker's
characterisation
of a womanist as someone
who loves the struggle.
I believe womanist activism
as a framework helps explain
the longevity of social justice
activism in my interviewees'
lives and how in fact, their
lives and their interactions
with social justice movements
have been intertwined
into their identities.
In this longer project, I
discuss this womanist activism
using psychologist
Layli Maparyan's theory
of womanist spiritual
activism, which
I talked about a bit earlier.
Maparyan's theory is crafted in
a religiously eclectic manner,
reliant on a blending of African
religions, religious science,
Kabbalah, Kemetic tradition,
rather than Christianity.
Given the centrality of
Protestant Christianity
to my interviewees, I'm
aware that this is actually
a mismatch to what
they actually mean
by spirit and spirituality.
And that it equally could
be a misnomer to state
that these religious
leaders would be comfortable
being interpreted as womanists,
since relatively few claimed
this as a personal identity.
Why I am convinced that her
argument is persuasive enough
to use in my interrogation
of these women's lives
is that her understanding of
womanist spiritual activism
centers the experiences
of everyday women
who utilize their religion
to produce social change.
In her text The Womanist Idea,
she defines spiritual activism
as key to womanist
practice, contending
that, "As a social
change method,
it helps one to interrogate
the two basic principles
for creating change.
One, to change yourself,
which is the inner work.
And two, to change
the outer world--
to change the world
which is the outer work."
Three of my interviewees
themselves identified
as spiritual activists, such
as Reverend Candy Holmes, which
we met earlier, who said to
me, as a spiritual activist, "I
express myself now as someone
who is actively pursuing
justice", which she saw as an
outgrowth of her spirituality.
Another person who identified
as a spiritual activist
is Reverend Dr. Cari Jackson.
Reverend Dr. Cari Jackson has
been a pastor, a counselor,
and organizational consultant.
She has a PhD in
Christian ethics
from Drew University, an M. Div.
From Union Theological Seminary,
and a JD from the University
of Maryland.
She currently
serves as Executive
for Religious
Leadership and Advocacy
at the Religious Coalition
for Reproductive Choice.
She is founding director of
Center of Spiritual Light,
a nonprofit providing
spiritual counseling,
and president of
Excellent Way Consulting,
a company specializing
in leadership
and organizational
effectiveness.
Dr. Carey described herself
as a deeply spiritual person
who worked on vastly different
campaigns for justice
as a youth and
young adult, ranging
from voter registration,
environmental justice
campaigns, prisoner reentry
programs, to working
for the United Way.
She considered herself
an outsider in many ways,
seeing her various identities
as social constructs,
while her spirituality was
her only real identity.
She commented on
how she'd always
been involved in
spiritual activism,
saying to me, "I can't
from my perspective
as a spiritual person not
be engaged in justice work.
If spirituality is to
make any difference,
it is to see the
divine in others,
whether it's the
young girl working
in the Children's
Hospital or working
with juvenile offenders.
I see the divine
in other people,
and I seek to create space
where people can see that
within themselves."
End quote.
What I've found useful
about envisioning
Dr. Cari as a
spiritual activist is
that she demonstrated
an awareness
of the connection of
spiritual activism
as individual and collective.
She said to me, "Well,
for me, the spiritual
must always be social.
That was not my teaching from
my earliest religious tradition
within Pentecostalism.
That was very individual.
But spirituality, for me,
is individual and social.
The scripture that really guides
me in terms of social activism
is from the Lord's Prayer.
It says, 'Give us this
day our daily bread.'
It's the communal
aspect of that.
It's not, 'God, give me my bread
and screw what happens to other
people.'
But it's our bread.
And so whatever I
have in my life,
I see it as spirit
gifting me to be a conduit
to help share those
resources with the community.
And I feel that way in terms
of people who I've never met.
I feel a responsibility to them,
because we share our humanity.
And so, it's spiritual.
And it's social for me."
The efforts to see the divine
in others and a connection
to advocate for others
is one of the markers
of womanist spiritual activism
and one of the reasons
their leadership models
are communicable to others.
As I hope you've witnessed
in this presentation,
black lesbian
religious leaders point
towards innovative possibilities
for pursuing justice
in the world.
I was initially drawn
to their stories
because unlike some of the men
that I interviewed initially,
their legacy spread
past institution
building and concern for
assisting those impacted
with HIV and AIDS.
While these women were certainly
involved in empire building,
even sitting at the
pinnacle of denominations,
and they all certainly
made great efforts
in HIV/AIDS advocacy,
their work tended
to be more intersectional,
literally addressing
as Bishop Flunder stated,
"the intersections of evil
that oppress us all".
Our contemporary times
require these types
of activists who are
not one issue oriented,
but instead create coalitions
of intersectional justice.
My goal with highlighting
these few women
has not been to create a
historical, larger-than-life
figure that is a modeling
[INAUDIBLE] but to instead show
what we glean from
listening to their stories.
When Bishop Flunder closed
my initial interview,
she noted that she wanted the
generation to come to know--
and I'm quoting her-- "the
personal costs, but also
the personal joy, that it has
been for us, so that if nothing
else, we can provide a path
through this wilderness
so that their way will not
be nearly as difficult.
Then I'll know that our
living and our working
hasn't been in vain."
End quote.
It's my hope that my research
amplifies their stories,
as I seek to heed womanist
ethicist Katie Cannon's clarion
call, that we--
and I'm quoting her--
"reveal the truth about
oppressed people, their lives
that are lived with
integrity, especially
when they are unheard
but not unvoiced,
unseen but not invisible".
End quote.
Thank you.
Well, thank you for that
wonderful presentation.
I think it was the perfect
talk for this week.
We do have time for questions.
We're-- I know some people
may have to get up for 1
o'clock classes.
But we would love to take
questions and comments
from the audience.
And there is a
standing mic there
if you'd like to go to the mic.
Monique, Bernadette Brooten.
Thank you so much.
This is just spectacular.
I've been able to watch this
project as it's developed.
And it's really wonderful
what you have created here.
I wonder if you could
go in a little more
into the discussion
with E. Patrick Johnson.
And also on the question
of the term "lesbian".
Because one thing that I know
from him, with his new book--
Honey Pot I think it's called--
about black lesbians
in the South,
is that they mostly didn't
identify as lesbian.
And I wonder, is he
getting a different sample?
Is it a matter of age?
What difference
does it make if one
identifies as lesbian
or queer or bull
dagger or some other term?
And then, I'd love to
just hear you expand more
on this question of religion and
why it is that he missed that.
Or was it his sample?
Or the way he advertised
the kind of people, the kind
of women, that he got into it?
Great questions.
Thank you so much.
I'll start with what he missed.
So I love both of his texts.
And to be honest, I was
waiting, like everyone else,
for the texts to show up,
because there have not
been substantive oral histories
done of black lesbian women.
There are lots of
oral histories that
are done in the South of gay
and lesbian persons, transgender
persons, but they seldom
include black women.
They mostly include black
gay men or trans men.
And I don't know
what that is about.
If it's-- I largely think, at
least from my experience doing
oral histories, oral histories
are works that are referent
work.
So someone refers you to
someone who refers you.
And if your social
networks are one gender,
that's sort of what
your pool becomes.
And so, E. Patrick
talks about in his text
having some trepidation about,
how will I find the lesbians?
Will they be willing
to talk with me?
And so, he's really
self-reflective
about his privileging
in being a man
and wanting to get their
stories right, and the burden
of getting these stories.
But he found that
women overwhelmingly
were willing to talk with
him, that it took him
years to get the same
number of interviews
with men that he did
with women that he got
within the first nine months.
So why, then, the women
that he interviewed
were overwhelmingly finding
religion as not positive?
I don't know.
This has been the
curiosity for me
from the beginning of the
project, because time and time
again--
not only with E. Patrick's
work, but you also
have the work of
Horace Griffin, who
talks about black
lesbians passing
within religious
communities, that they
go through these
stages of passing,
that they can't be
out in their churches,
and so they pass in
these various ways.
It's baffling to me, because
churches are primarily
filled with women.
So it just doesn't
make sense that we
would presume that these
would be predominantly
heterosexual women.
It's just that the
numbers don't work.
And then when I think about
those that I went out to find--
so he interviewed, for
example, Dean Emilie Townes.
And in talking
with Dean Townes--
he has-- the segments of his
book are various chapters.
And Dean Townes' doesn't show up
a lot in the religion chapter.
So there's a chapter
devoted to religion,
but that chapter is mostly
persons who have, like,
trauma stories, like, the
church was really bad to me,
and then I found
this Ifá community,
or then I found this
woman-centered community where
we get together and
we have book club,
and that's our spirituality.
We recognize God, and
we see it in ourselves,
and that's our community.
And I thought, well,
this is strange.
You were talking to the
Dean of a Divinity School
that is predominantly women.
Vanderbilt's Divinity School
is predominately women.
I don't understand how there
would be that disconnect here,
of not noticing that there
are people for whom religion
is a nurturing space.
So I do think it has
to do with access,
that that pool of
self-referring then
refers you to other
people who don't also
find religion useful.
Because if you're coming
into an interview,
and you want to
interview on Sundays--
I knew not to do that, because
all of my people were busy.
So I scheduled my interviews
Monday or Tuesday in the week.
But if you come in on a weekend
to do these trips, and you say,
hey, do you have any friends
you would like me to talk with?
They're probably
going to recommend you
to other people
who also don't have
faith commitments on Sundays.
So I think that might have
siloed that experience.
But that doesn't
explain Horace Griffin,
who actually is clergy.
He's Episcopal clergy, and so
he has to know lots of lesbians.
So I don't know why I'm getting
such a different experience,
because primarily, the churches
that these women are leading
are churches that are
predominantly same gender.
And that holds for the most
part, that larger, gay male--
congregations that
are led by gay men
tend to have more gay
men present in them,
and congregations that
are led by lesbian women
tend to have more
lesbians in them.
And so I don't have
a good answer there.
And for the question
about why lesbians
seem to be a catch all term.
When I asked, I just wanted--
it was like demographic data.
I just wanted to see, like, how
should I write it in the book?
And people gave me these
really interesting journeys
of accepting to lesbian.
So I was this, and then I was
that, and then in this context,
I can be this.
But I think just say "lesbian".
That's what I would say if
I was talking to a stranger,
that I'm a lesbian.
And so it becomes a shorthand
that communicates more clearly
to more populations.
I don't think the term itself--
I don't think any one
person said, you know,
when I came to my
lesbian identity,
it was salvific,
like I found home.
Many of them talked about--
one of my interviews
said that she
was a woman who never identified
with male companionship,
but she's like, I can't put
that on a census survey.
So just say I'm a lesbian.
So there were all
these distinctive ways
that people identified.
But lesbian became one that
really fit for the majority.
I also think maybe
because many of them
were cisgender,
that there might be
more comfort with more feminine
expressing women taking
the category of lesbian.
Because for those
who chose more queer,
they tended to be more
masculine expressing.
So that's a gut feeling.
But not one that I
think the data holds.
Dr. Moultrie, thank you for
the brilliant presentation.
J. Williams, pronounce
he, him, his.
Pastor of a historically
black United Methodist Church
in Boston, which is open and
affirming, since about the year
2000.
So very intrigued by your work.
So Reverend Candy Holmes,
your comments about her.
And as she describes, would
God be pleased with her work,
sparked the question
around the intersection
between social activism,
spirituality, and sexuality
in terms of sexual expression.
So in the Lords, the use of
the erotic, erotic as power.
So to what extent
are you examining
that connection
between sexual power
or sexual expression in
the erotic embodiment,
and how that plays
into activism?
Yeah.
Great question.
And this is my pastor,
so Pastor James here.
So excited.
This is a really good
question, because when I first
started doing these interviews,
I was doing them for pay.
I got a gig while as
a doctoral student.
And they were very clear
on the oral histories.
They were trying
to gather stories
that talked about the
longevity of a person's life.
It was in response
to the It Gets
Better Campaign, where teens
were committing suicide.
Gay teens were
committing suicide.
So they wanted to show
this, like, over the scope
of your life, it gets better.
And so they gave me a sense
of the type of questions
they were interested
in, which were more,
like, what were the highs?
What were the lows
in your career,
in your becoming who you are?
And so those first
interviews have very little
to do with, like,
personal stuff.
And even the story, the
interview with Candy Holmes.
I interviewed
Darlene Garner first.
So I interviewed
Darlene in 2011.
No, I interviewed her first.
She was my very first
interview in 2010.
And she talked to me about
breaking up with Candy.
And how traumatic
that was for her.
And how it sort of became,
like, they were frenemies.
And she talked a great deal
about their care and commitment
and love to each other.
But I didn't have a--
I didn't have a matching
sense with other participants
that they really wanted to
talk to me about their most
intimate lives.
And thus, that
then made me, when
I started doing the interviews
in full force for the book,
be intentional about asking
questions and seeing if people
were just not willing.
If there's a self,
part of one's self,
that they're not willing
to share with the public.
Because they knew I was
writing this for the book.
And they knew-- my consent
form also said that they were
sharing--
these all were going to
go on the LGBTran website.
And so, I think when I looked
through the transcripts--
and everyone got to approve
their transcript before it gets
put up on the LGBTrans site or
before I use it in this text--
when I think about what
has been taken out,
what people excised
out, and was,
like, yeah, don't tell that
story, they're more the stories
the deal with their
romantic lives.
Although you have to go back--
so if you go to this site,
go and read-- so this
image that's here.
This is Rene McCoy
in her younger age.
Rene told me the
baudiest stories.
Oh, my God.
They gave me so much life.
She literally said to me--
one of her experiences was
with a woman who she had dated,
and that she saw the woman
maybe 20 years later,
and she was like, I had
to call up and tell her
I learned some things.
That God had blessed me
with the gift of tongues,
and I wanted to share.
And I was like, I don't
know what to do with this.
But she said it straight faced.
And moved on in
much graphic detail.
And when the transcriber
sends me the transcription,
she's like, you know,
lots of ellipses.
And I'm like, no, that's
not what she said.
This is what she said.
And so I sent it
to her and I say,
you know, what do
you want to put up?
Leave it in there.
It's true.
So if you want to read some
of that, it is present.
But I didn't see that--
that was more the
exception than the rule.
So I've been thinking
creatively about how
to include more of the embodied
self, the sensual self,
as I talk about the intimacies
of their lesbian identity,
when it was an information
that many of them
wanted left on record.
Or if they wanted
it left on record,
it was in relationship
to their partner,
their wife at the time.
And so I didn't get a--
I wasn't able to talk about it
over the span that they were--
yeah, don't tell that story.
That story can't stay
in, but this one can.
So my wife will be happy to hear
that she's the joy of my life
and our snuggle time
is what gives me life.
But some of those
earlier stories,
yeah, about cruising,
maybe not so much.
Yeah.
Maybe that's the
next book, right?
Because I mean, it does
seem that to the extent
that your work is around
making oral history as part
of a public record, and then the
complicated nature of consent
and telling one story as it
intersects with another human
being.
But it seems like that in
telling these hidden histories,
there is a silencing, which
then leaves something else
still hidden.
And kind of the personal aspect
of holistic and body itself.
So yeah.
This is amazing.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Great, great, great point.
I think I can
think that through.
Because I have all this
data now that I'm not
sure what to do with, because
as an ethical interviewer,
they said not to use it.
So I can't.
But when I've spoken with them
now that the interviews are up,
some of them, especially
ones I did in 2017, I'm like,
you know what, now
I'm making it a book.
And they're like, oh, you
remember I told you that story,
and then they tell me something
completely off record.
I'm like, that
would be wonderful.
Hi.
Thank you so much for your talk.
I'm Mimi Winick, instructor of
English literature at Virginia
Commonwealth University.
And I wanted to ask
you if you would
speak some more about
this historical dimension
of the project.
And I'm curious about how
the people you spoke with,
do they bring up sort
of a historical sense
of a tradition?
Do they refer to Lord,
to reading, to speaking,
to meeting with
people that for them
are part of a
tradition of this kind
of womanist spiritual activism?
Yeah, no.
So overwhelmingly,
in these questions
that were asked about
how they sort of became
their authentic
self, many of them
become their authentic self
through consciousness raising,
organizing.
So poetry groups, the National
Bi Gay and Lesbian Coalition
was one of the
linchpin organizations
for many of the participants,
where they would go and find
their way.
Metropolitan Community Churches
were big spaces for them.
The Charis Bookstore in
Atlanta was another site,
where lots of people--
like, that was the
go-to spot if you were
going to be out and a lesbian.
Several of them
mentioned bookstores.
I was surprised at bookstores
and book signings and poetry
readings, how
significant a role that
was for their socialization
and their identity formation.
If you think-- someone said in
response to the work last week,
if you think about
the baby gay identity,
where how you get from a
baby gay identity to forming
different forms of
identity, he said--
and I think he's largely talking
about for white community
members--
that white LGBT
members are baby gays,
and then they go to social
justice organizations
to learn how to be gay
and active as a citizen.
And then they break out into
their personal networks.
And that's their friend
groups and their communities.
And that becoming the norm.
That wasn't what I
saw with black people.
They didn't go first to
social organizations.
They were the social
organizations.
They were groups of people who
had met at coffee houses, who
had met at bathhouses, who'd
met at poetry readings, who
got together and
said, did you hear
about sister so-and-so who died,
and nobody came and claimed
her body?
And they would put
together the funeral.
And then they would
create an organization
of mutual aid,
benevolent fund, that
would make sure
that this wouldn't
happen to someone else.
So it was sort of
this reverse pattern.
So I do think that there was a
socialization period that was
really important for all 18.
Thank you, Dr. Moultrie, for
your exciting and cutting edge
work.
I've always been
fascinated by your approach
to woman and womanist
spiritual activism.
My name is Ursula Cargill,
and I'm a ThM student here
in the Divinity School.
And I was wondering,
in your research,
did you see any common threads
among the various women
that you interviewed outside
of race, gender, and sexuality,
that would kind of
highlight or shine
a light on the factors that
led to their marginalization?
Was there anything that
kind of popped out for you?
Thank you.
Thank you.
So I spent a long time looking
for my linking red thread.
What would link all of
these people together?
And in fact, I went and did five
more interviews over the fall,
thinking, if I find five
more, then maybe it'll
show me what I'm missing.
I never found it.
The thing that I think
links the most of them
together is their
commitment to social justice
and their commitment
to intersectional
justice working in the world.
And so that sort of
became what the book
was going to anchor in.
I think regarding
their marginality, just
a lot of life difference.
That many of them had some--
you know, there are lots of
same stories with the church
being a stumbling block.
One of my interviewees,
Tonyia Rawls,
was one of the first bishops in
the Unity Fellowship Movement.
And she talked about how Unity
being a predominantly black gay
and lesbian affirming
denomination.
And how when they
opened up to decide
to allow women to be
bishops, how they thought,
hey, this won't be a thing.
And like, all hell broke loose
when they had their first women
bishops and how unprepared
they were for that.
And so there are lots of these
stories of people thinking,
oh, I failed my safe place.
And then one part of their
identity formation being,
like, what causes
things go to hell.
But even in that, she gave the
example of, in her own church--
because they started out
Unity, she's now UCC.
She left the Unity movement
about three years ago.
And there UCC now,
and she talked
about realizing that the
mode in their own eye
was their trans members.
That they had themselves been
marginalizing to their trans
members and sort of allowing
trans-ness to show up in,
like, oh, girl,
you looking fierce,
but, like, not really dealing
with the day to day realities.
Like, people who are buying
street hormones to transition.
And who are coming from sex
work to the congregation
that same morning.
And how they're
just different life
experiences that they
were washing over.
Saying, oh, yeah, we love
everybody, everybody's welcome.
But they weren't really
getting into the intricacies
of their trans members' lives.
So I think that that's a good
example of some of the ways
in which they are aware of
marginalization on many fronts,
but there's still another front.
That even when
they create spaces
that are as affirming
as they want,
there's still this duplicating
process of marginalization.
And so many of them are
seeking to create a space that
really will be inclusive.
So that radical inclusivity
that Flunder talks about
is what I think all
of them are trying
to enact in their
own specific ways.
I'm Gloria White Hammond,
and I'm resident scholar here
at the Div School in
medicine and spirituality,
and a pastor of a
congregation in Boston.
And that's-- that is one
of those historically black
denominations.
And so, everything everybody
said about how amazing,
how awesome, how well
researched, how well presented,
how exciting this work is and
you are, everything they said.
So I also recognize
that when you
made the point that there are
these official statements that
come from these historically
black denominations,
and that we don't accept and we
don't, and all of that stuff,
that is absolutely true.
But I see that there is a--
as you go from the
bishops on the bench
to the preachers in the pulpit
to the people in the pews,
that there is a growing
sense of inclusion as you
get closer to the pews.
Has anybody looked at that?
And where-- like, how
people are feeling,
where that disconnect is?
And as you scan these
various denominations,
have you picked up any
rumblings that they're
at the pulpit or
the pew level that
is prepared to address
the bit and to begin
to do that important
work of changing
not only the statement,
not only what people say,
but what people do?
Again, from the bench to
the pulpit to the pew.
Thank you for that.
That's a really great question.
I was involved for
several years--
Josef Sorett ran a
project out of Columbia
that was on African-Americans
and black religion
and social and sexual justice.
It's CARSS.
And I don't remember
what the acronym is now.
And they did a bunch
of white papers
that was associated with that,
where they did a bunch of polls
of communities, of
religious spaces,
trying to get actual data.
Arcus Foundation
and Ford Foundation
were some of the
funders for that work.
And so I was in the thinking
tank, the working group,
for that.
And so we had all this
data that just pointed
exactly what you're saying, that
there's this sense from on high
that no, this will
never be allowable.
And then when you poll
the people in the pews,
they're like, of course, you
know, my brother's gay, what
are you talking about?
They just didn't care.
But the on high opinion was, the
people will bolt if we do this,
so we can't do this.
And how do you
cross that divide?
I don't know, because--
I look right now just
within the AME church,
I've been following
Robbie Perry.
He is a professor in Richmond.
No.
He is in DC.
He's teaching.
He's the chair of political
science at Howard now.
And he's brought up
in the DC district
another proposal to
take out of the AME
book of discipline the--
to allow for same sex
marriage, to allow ministers,
to allow clergy, to be able
to perform same sex marriages.
He did this in
October or November.
And he presented it in his
conference-- or district,
I can't remember which.
And they refused to hear it.
They wouldn't even
take it to committee.
But he came with
the full backing
of his religious
community, his pastor.
He had all these signatures.
He followed protocol
of what you have
to do to make it
become an agenda item.
And they refused to
put it on the agenda.
And I don't know
what to do with that,
because this was this October.
So we're talking like three
months ago, four months ago.
So it's not something that--
oh, this was a problem
in 2015 in March,
and we've gotten away from it.
There's still this
point from on high
that no congregation
will be able to sustain
the loss if the church, the
global church, the body,
takes this on.
And within traditions
that are not autonomous,
where there is hierarchy,
I think there's real
consideration of what to do when
you're in spaces where your pew
members are ready for the
church to be affirming,
ready for the church to be open,
but the body itself is afraid
of the splintering that
will occur from spaces
and congregations that aren't.
I'm hopeful that a way
forward are the fact that we
keep doing the work.
That we keep having
the conversations.
That the data that we're
polling that shows,
actually, there are more people
in favor than people against.
That will be persuasive
to the powers that be.
Or that those people
who feel this way
need to either use
the systems within
to elect new people
to represent them.
Or unfortunately, start
something different,
which is unfortunate.
I think that's a great
closing note for us.
I think you've given
us our marching orders,
as well as a really
illuminating presentation.
I learned so much.
Thank you so much.
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