the churched black feminist.

I believe that all religion is political. To specify the preceding sentence a bit, I will clarify by saying that the three major monotheistic religions have their origins in political concerns. Before I flesh out this argument a bit, I should note that I consider even every day, ordinary things to be political. I see the political at work in where we live, in the vehicles we drive, in the life partnerships we choose, in the diets we observe, in the way we worship, and in the entertainment we consume. For me, the social and the political are integrally intertwined.

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She Did That! A Women's History Month Series

In honor of women and all the contributions we make to the world, I will highlight four African American women in my blog posts this month who made contributions to American History. I will call this short series “She Did That!” By no means do these women represent all the black women who have made and are making substantial contributions to American history. I understand that this sort of practice of naming “exemplars” of the race and gender still obscures so many women and their stories. The movie (and book) Hidden Figures which chronicles the lives of three black women who worked for NASA during the mid-twentieth century has aptly named the conundrum of womanhood (and black womanhood in particular). That is, the general public does not recognize our valuable contributions, and sometimes they even go unrecognized by our teammates and coworkers. I hope that in many posts to come, I can celebrate so many of these hidden figures of our past and present.

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keep hope alive.

The lectionary Gospel reading on Sunday was the Beatitudes, a part of the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus teaches the ethics of the Kingdom of God. Let us embrace the ethics taught in Matthew 5, let us recognize that we are poor in Spirit that we may inherit the Kingdom, let us mourn the sorrows of this world that we may be comforted by our loving Creator, let us be meek because the Earth belongs to the meek. Let us hunger and thirst for righteousness, trusting God to fill us. Let us be filled with mercy knowing that we will receive mercy in return, let us be pure in heart so that we may see God, and let us be peacemakers because God is peace. We will resist. We will seek God. We will win. So be it. 

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