Joshua Johnson has what he calls a “God-shaped hole” in his heart. The death of Pat Robertson helped put it there.
A journalist, former NPR talk-show host and MSNBC news anchor, Johnson didn’t personally know Robertson, a televangelist who founded “The 700 Club” empire and was an influential figure in conservative Republican politics.
In the spring of 2018, Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley, pastor of Alfred Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, preached a sermon entitled, “The Sins of Sodom.”
“When you limit Sodom and Gomorrah to simply a lesson on homosexuality, you have missed three important things,” he states early in the sermon.
'Tis the season to be jolly. Or depressed. Or overwhelmed. Or just plain over it. For all its reputation as a joyful time, the holiday season can be a serious emotional drain.
Monroe Howard-Shackelford, a D.C.-based licensed psychotherapist, is reframing the way Black queer men view their sexuality through a series of “Sacred Sexuality” virtual workshops and a recent in-person presentation at the 2022 NAESM Conference.
Howard-Shackelford says he never heard anti-gay sermons in the church he grew up in, but the message was clear about how society and the traditional Black church felt about LGBTQ+ people. Any romantic relationship or sexual desire that dared to exist outside of the heterosexual binary of traditional marriage was to be demonized. For many Black queer men, the messages received from the pulpit are often in direct conflict with their truth, making it nearly impossible to experience organized religion without harm being inflicted.
For some LGBTQ+ people who are deeply entrenched in the Black church experience, the concept of queer sexuality being sacred can be jarring, if not completely foreign. Sexuality is sacred on its own, and that includes Black queer sexuality, says Howard-Shackelford.
For nearly 15 years, Olu Brown, Lead Pastor of Impact Church, located in what was once an abandoned warehouse in East Point after small beginnings in the auditorium of Brown Middle School, has quickly become one of the fastest-growing United Methodist Churches in the country by “doing church differently.”
A native Texan, LGBTQ+ ally, and divorced father of two, Brown leads a 21st-century congregation that is diverse and inclusive—two buzzwords that often serve as signals to LGBTQ+ Christians that a house of worship is safe and welcoming. But unlike many African-American ministers who embrace Black liberation theology concerning the oppression of Black people—but take a literal approach to the Biblical condemnation of queer people—Brown is explicit about the evolution of his theological position and why his support for the LGBTQ+ community, along with conversations with conservative clergy about LGBTQ+ issues is not only the right thing to do but is also a social justice issue.
It’s among the most iconic ‘80s film scenes and one that introduced many Black Americans to a long-taboo element of their history: After decades of torment, The Color Purple’s Celie (played by Whoopi Goldberg) blocks her abusive husband mid-blow with three outstretched fingers and the ominous, karma-filled phrase, “Everything you done to me, already done to you.”
Horrified, he stops cold, and Celie rides off into the sunset.
It’s been 14 years since Bishop Dennis Meredith, 68, stood in the pulpit of Tabernacle Baptist Church (TBC), which he has led since 1994, and publicly disclosed that he was bisexual. On any given Sunday, the pews in this 100-year-old church formerly located on Boulevard in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward would be filled, and this Sunday in 2007 was no different. There had been rumblings among members of Meredith’s congregation that the charismatic pastor who was married to former First Lady Lydia Meredith for 27 years and bore three sons, was gay, or at the very least bisexual. But until the words escaped his mouth, no one expected the revered spiritual leader with everything to lose to disclose the truth about his sexuality, including Meredith himself. This moment was the culmination of a progressive shift in membership and theological approach that would spur a mass exodus for some straight and Biblically conservative members while becoming a Genesis for those who identify as LGBTQ+.
Before Lady Gaga released her gay anthem “Born This Way” in 2011, singer Carl Bean, an openly gay Black man signed to Motown Records released the soul-stirring disco gay anthem “I Was Born This Way,” 34 years before it was in vogue to be anything other than heterosexual publicly, or even an LGBTQ+ ally. The gay-affirming single, which cracked the top 20 on the Billboard charts is one of many groundbreaking achievements by Bean—the recording artist turned social justice activist and minister with deep roots in the Black Pentecostal experience, dating back to his childhood at Providence Baptist Church in his native Baltimore, Maryland.
“You know who I am and you know what I am here for. Turn up for Jesus and turn down for nothing!” Those who follow Elder Rahkel Henry, 44, on social media are familiar with this call to action that serves as the intro to several Facebook videos posted by the Atlantic City, New Jersey native to inspire her followers. During a recent conversation she confessed, “I know I’m real talkative, I can’t help it.” This is true, but what Henry doesn’t mention is that when she speaks, she always has a WORD that compels people of faith or no faith at all to sit up and listen, which as an African-American transgender woman in ministry, is a feat of epic proportions.
