• Privacy Policy
  • Contact Us
  • Shop
  • Newsletter
Faithfully Magazine
Thursday, June 8, 2023
  • About
    • Staff and Advisors
    • Advertise With Us
    • Submissions
  • Q&As
    John Blake photo by John Nowak for CNN

    CNN Reporter Talks Race, Faith and Reconciliation in Powerful Memoir ‘More Than I Imagined’

    Brown Baby Jesus author Dorena Williamson

    Author Celebrates Jesus’ Messy, Multiethnic Family Tree in ‘Brown Baby Jesus’

    KevOnStage and MrsKevOnStage in an interview with Faithfully Magazine.

    Interview: KevOnStage and MrsKevOnStage Talk Sex, Therapy, and Why ‘Marriage Be Hard’ (Video)

    Christina Edmondson and Ekemini Uwan on Truth's Table book

    ‘Truth’s Table’ Authors Talk Early Beginnings, Centering Black Women, and Inspiring One Another

  • Exclusives
    Karen Abercrombie

    After Award-Winning Role in Top-Grossing Christian Movie, Karen Abercrombie Is Leading Change From Within

    black women group

    ‘Righteous and Ratchet’ Black Women of Faith Embraced on Jemele Hill’s ‘Sanctified’ Podcast

    Josh McDowell

    Apologist Josh McDowell Backtracks After Claiming Black Families Don’t Value Education

    Christian author and preacher Dr. Voddie Baucham

    ‘Fault Lines’ Author Voddie Baucham Confused or Making Things Up, Richard Delgado Says in Response to Misquote on ‘Righteous Actions’ of Whites

  • Profiled
    Chris Broussard

    Sports Analyst Chris Broussard Uses Hoops and Christianity to Address Needs of Young Men

    Bishop Noel Jones

    Bishop Noel Jones: Engagement, Life, Family and Ministry (Profiled)

    nadine raphael

    From Prison to the Pulpit: Nadine Raphael on God’s ‘Greater Plan’ for Her Life (Profiled)

    lisa sharon harper

    Lisa Sharon Harper Is Her ‘Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams’ (Profiled)

  • Remember
    Rev. Dr. William Hiram Bentley

    Black Evangelicalism and the Reforming Influence of William H. Bentley

    Marie Bassili Assaad and Mother Irene

    Knitting Together the Community of Love: Lessons From Marie Bassili Assaad and Mother Irene

    Rev. Sutton E. Griggs

    The Complex Legacy of Sutton E. Griggs: From Respected Leader to Race Traitor?

    fannie lou hamer

    Fannie Lou Hamer: Forerunner of Faith-Driven, Pro-Life Democrats (Remember)

  • Opinion & Analysis
    migrants

    When Faith Says to Help Migrants — and the Law Says Don’t

    couple with child

    Missionary System That Brought US Man Accused of Abusing African ‘Orphans’ Was Always Deeply Flawed

    Civil Rights March 1963

    The Women Who Stood With Martin Luther King Jr. and Sustained a Movement for Social Change

    pile of books

    In New Jersey, School Segregation Didn’t End; It Evolved

  • Specials
    • All
    • Growing a Green Church
    clean energy

    Can Money-Making Microgrids Empower Black Churches to Close the Clean Energy Gap?

    laudato trees earthbeat

    Laudato Trees Planting Program Enlists Catholic Properties to Help Increase DC’s Canopy

SUBSCRIBE
  • Login
  • Register
No Result
View All Result
Faithfully Magazine
No Result
View All Result

Faith and Spirituality and the Black Lives Matter Movement

FM Editors by FM Editors
September 14, 2020
Reading Time: 7 mins read
black lives matter protester
ShareTweetPin It

By Hebah H. Farrag and Ann Gleig

Black Lives Matters (BLM) has been portrayed by its detractors as many things: Marxist, radical, anti-American. Added to this growing list of charges is that it is either irreligious or doing religion wrong.

In late July, for instance, conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan tweeted that BLM was “incompatible” with Christianity.

He isn’t alone in that belief. Despite receiving the backing of diverse faith leaders and groups, BLM has been attacked by sections of the religious right. One evangelical institution felt compelled to issue a statement warning Christians about the movement’s “Godless agenda.” Other evangelicals have gone further, accusing BLM founders of being “witches” and “operating in the demonic realm.”

Joining conservative Christians are some self-proclaimed liberals and atheists who have also denounced BLM as a social movement that functions like a
“cult” or “pseudo” religion.

As scholars of religion, we believe such views fail to acknowledge – let alone engage with – the rich spiritual and religious pluralism of Black Lives Matter. For the past few years, we have been observing the way the movement and affiliated organizations express faith and spirituality.

RELATED POSTS

TBN President Wants T.D. Jakes to Start Right-Wing ‘Black Love Matters’ Movement as Alternative to Black Lives Matter

Korean-American ‘Ajumma’ Talks Korean Solidarity With Black Lives (Video)

Joel Osteen Joins George Floyd’s Family in Black Lives Matter Protest

Since 2015 we have interviewed BLM leaders and organizers as well as Buddhist leaders inspired by the movement. What we found was that BLM was not only a movement seeking radical political reform, but a spiritual movement seeking to heal and empower while
inspiring other religious allies seeking inclusivity.

A love letter

Black Lives Matter was born from a love letter.

On July 13, 2013 – the day of the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who had killed an unarmed black teenage named Trayvon Martin – soon-to-be BLM co-founder Alicia Garza, posted “A Love Letter to Black People” on Facebook. She declared:

“We don’t deserve to be killed with impunity. We need to love ourselves and fight for a world where black lives matter. Black people, I love you. I love us. We matter. Our lives matter.”

Since its inception, BLM organizers have expressed their founding spirit of love through an emphasis on spiritual healing, principles, and practices in their racial justice work.

BLM leaders, such as co-founder Patrisse Cullors, are deeply committed to incorporating spiritual leadership. Cullors grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness, and later became ordained in Ifà, a west African Yoruba religion. Drawing on Native American, Buddhist and mindfulness traditions, her syncretic spiritual practice is fundamental to her work. As Cullors explained to us, “The fight to save your life is a spiritual fight.”

Theologian Tricia Hersey, known as the “Nap Bishop,” a nod to her Divinity degree and her work advocating for rest as a form of resistance, founded the BLM affiliated organization, The Nap Ministry in 2016.

In an interview with Cullors, Hersey said she considers human bodies as “sites of liberation” that connect Black Americans to the “creator, ancestors, and universe.” She describes rest as a spiritual practice for community healing and resistance and naps as “healing portals.” Hersey connects this belief to her upbringing in the Black Pentecostal Church of God in Christ, where, she explained, “I was able to see the body being a vehicle for spirit.”

The movement is committed to spiritual principles, such as “healing justice” – which uses a range of holistic approaches to address trauma and oppression by centering emotional and spiritual well-being – and “transformative justice” which assists with creating processes to repair harm without violence.

Transformative justice, central to the beliefs of many in the BLM movement, is a philosophic approach to peacemaking. With roots in the Quaker tradition, it approaches harms committed as an opportunity for education. Crime is taken to be a community problem to be solved through mutual understanding, as often seen in work to decriminalize sex work and drug addiction.

BLM affiliated organizer Cara Page, who coined the term “healing justice,” did so in response to watching decades of activists commit themselves completely to social justice causes to the detriment of their physical and mental health. She advocates that “movements themselves have to be healing, or there’s no point to them.”

black lives matter photo

‘Without healing, no justice’

BLM-affiliated organizations utilize spiritual tools such as meditation, reiki, acupuncture, plant medicine, chanting, and prayer, along with other African and Indigenous spiritualities to connect and care for those directly impacted by state violence and white supremacy.

For instance, Dignity and Power Now or DPN, an organization founded by Cullors in Los Angeles in 2012, hosts almost weekly wellness clinics on Sundays, often referred to as “church” by attendees.

On July 26, 2020, they held a virtual event called Calm-Unity, to remind people that “without healing there is no justice.” Classes included yoga, meditation, African dance, Chinese medicine, and altar making.

In interviews, movement leaders described honoring their body, mind and soul as an act of resilience. They see themselves as inheritors of the spiritual duty to fight for racial justice, following in the footsteps of freedom fighters like abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

BLM leaders often invoke the names of abolitionist ancestors in a ceremony used at the beginning of protests. In fact, protests often contain many spiritual purification, protection and healing practices including the burning of sage, the practice of wearing white and the creation of sacred sites and altars at locations of mourning.

‘More religion, not less’

BLM’s rich spiritual expressions have also inspired and transformed many American faith leaders. Black evangelical leader Barbara Salter McNeil credits BLM activists in Ferguson as changing the Christian church by showing racism must be tackled structurally and not just as individual sin.

U.S. Buddhist leaders presented a statement on racial justice to the White House in which they shared they were “inspired by the courage and leadership” of Black Lives Matter. Jewish, Muslim and many other religious organizations, have incorporated BLM principles to make their communities more inclusive and justice oriented.

As University of Arizona scholar Erika Gault observes, “The Black church is not the only religious well from which Black movements have historically drawn,” and with Black Lives Matter, “We are actually seeing more religion, not less.”

Religious pluralism

Attempts to erase the rich religious landscape of Black Lives Matter by both conservative and liberal voices continues a long history of denouncing Black spirituality as inauthentic and threatening.

The history of white supremacy, often enacted within institutional Christianity, has often vilified and criminalized Indigenous and African beliefs, promoted the idea that Black people are divinely destined to servitude, and subjected communities to forced conversions.

As Cullors said to us in response to current attacks against BLM as demonic, “For centuries, the way we are allowed to commune with the divine has been policed; in the movement for Black lives, we believe that all connections to the creator are sacred and essential.”The Conversation

Editor’s note: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.


Hebah H. Farrag, Assistant Director of Research, Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and Ann Gleig, Associate Professor of Religion, University of Central Florida

Photo by Fibonacci Blue


Share This Post

Share via

Share This Post

  • Digg
  • Tumblr
  • Flipboard
  • SMS
More
  • Report
ShareTweetPin It
Tags: Black Lives Matter
FM Editors

FM Editors

Faithfully Magazine is a fresh, bold and exciting news and culture publication that covers issues, conversations and events impacting Christian communities of color.

Related Posts

police
Opinion

NJ Faith Leaders Want Community-Led Solutions Not Police-Led Responses

June 2, 2023
A business at 314 Broad Street in Leland, Mississippi, as seen on January 1, 1939
Opinion

The Real ‘Great Replacement’: When Resentful Whites Recruited Foreigners to Undermine Black Progress

June 1, 2022

Recommended Stories

Brenda Salter McNeil Faithfully Magazine

Q&A: Brenda Salter McNeil on Her Journey Into Ministry, Reconciliation Risks, and Becoming Brave Like Esther

August 17, 2020
blakc woman holds a i cant breathe sign

Why I Hear ‘Please, Consider Genocide’ When Christians Say ‘Don’t Get Political’

October 13, 2020
Chinese depiction of Jesus and the rich man (Mark 10), 1879, Beijing.

How Asia Remade the Historical Jesus

June 17, 2018

Popular Stories

  • stream movies laptop

    Free Christian Movies: How and Where to Watch Free Christian Movies Online

    465 shares
    Share 186 Tweet 116
  • Are Jesus and John the Baptist Cousins or Related in Anyway?

    418 shares
    Share 167 Tweet 104
  • Paige Hilken, Wife of North Coast Church Pastor Christopher Hilken, Dies by Suicide

    408 shares
    Share 163 Tweet 102
  • After 20 Years, Bishop Noel Jones Says He’s Finally Ready to Marry Partner Loretta Jones

    365 shares
    Share 146 Tweet 91
  • NYC Megachurch Pastor A.R. Bernard’s Son Dies After Losing Battle With Alcoholism

    286 shares
    Share 114 Tweet 71

Copyright © 2023 Faithfully Media, LLC. This website participates in affiliate programs.

No Result
View All Result
  • About
    • Staff and Advisors
    • Advertise With Us
    • Submissions
  • Q&As
  • Exclusives
  • Profiled
  • Remember
  • Opinion & Analysis
  • Specials

Copyright © 2023 Faithfully Media, LLC. This website participates in affiliate programs.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms bellow to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
Share via

Share This Post

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Copy Link
  • Tumblr
  • Digg
  • Flipboard
  • SMS

Add New Playlist

Add to Collection

  • Public collection title

  • Private collection title

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.

Are you sure want to unlock this post?
Unlock left : 0
Are you sure want to cancel subscription?
Send this to a friend