by Nyah Levone Molineaux 

No, your religious beliefs do not give you the freedom to discriminate.

Religious freedom in the United States particularly of the Christian variety mostly is engrained, respected, and often unquestioned. The government allows for the free expression of religion under the first amendment. Church finances are not taxed and audited. Movies like War Room, Miracles from Heaven, and Tyler Perry’s The Passion have been praised and very profitable. Black people take part in this freedom every week by being one of the highest church attending groups in the United States.


When religious freedom can negatively affect the lives of marginalized people, where does the unquestionable respect stop and the critical inquiry begin? There is a law in North Carolina that bans cities from enacting anti-LGBT discrimination laws and reduces the humanity of transgender people by not allowing them to use the restroom that aligns with their identity. There is a law in Mississippi that gives government, businesses, and individuals the right to deny LGBT people housing, employment, and other services if it is for religious reasons. Then there is a law that was signed by Tennessee's governor just last week that allows therapists to deny potentially life-saving counseling services to LGBT people under religious beliefs. As a queer person, I would have committed suicide if I was denied valuable coping skills and insight from therapists and counselors
We have to collectively stop and realize a few verses in a religious text, in this case the large source of it being the bible in the United States, can not always guide us in how we should treat a person who may be different. Furthermore, we have to let go or revise certain religious beliefs in order to have peace in a diverse society.

We need to face the reality that the bible, which is the inspiration behind these religious freedom laws, is not a completely moral book. For many, it is the “Word of God” and inspired men of God wrote it. Since men are fallible, their creations are fallible.

by Kiara Morgan

I cannot count the number of times I have been at a Black social gathering and
someone has said:

"Let us pray Jesus bless us with your mercy and spirit" because it's assumed that if you’re African American, then you must be listening to Kirk Franklin while stomping your feet and saying hallelujah. And even the least practicing Black Christian celebrates Christmas and goes to church on Easter. After all, the Black church was the safe space for Black people during the time of slavery. The time to escape the whips of slave masters and rest their weary souls in God's house--while praying for eternal salvation. It was also the focal point of the Civil Rights movement, where Black people planned marches and sang for Jesus's protection under white oppression. Even now some African Americans ease their conscience and calm their souls, while clapping hands of glory to the beat of soulful songs. It is where many have come for advice from their pastors, and have built life long friendships. The Black church is where Black mothers prepared church dinners and bake sales. It is the reason for families gathering and passing platters of collard greens, black eyed peas and corn bread.
The Black church has a history in the Black community--but we are not all Christians. I am not and have never been. Oddly, because I’m Black, people expect it of me, before they even get to know me. I once met my friend’s grandmother and she immediately asked me what church I attended. I just stood there staring at her until the subject was changed. People even felt that it was okay to try to convert me because my religion wasn’t a real religion to them. To them, I was practicing a pagan religion that sacrificed chickens. Few people believed that me or my parents were born here. Most people thought my parents were from Africa. The people in school had no idea what Islam was. I cannot forget the time when a boy in my Social Studies class blurted out:

“Ain’t Islam and Buddhism the same thing?”

It was typical to hear such ignorant comments. I was even accustomed to rudeness. Black people didn’t think twice to tell me things like:

“Mohammad came from the cursed and evil line of Abraham.”

I was use to people telling me it was a “devil’s religion” because their friend had told them. I remember that in second grade a boy told me that I was “going to go to hell” because I wasn’t a Christian. Many around me felt that Christianity was the prototype for all African Americans, and anyone who was not practicing it must be doing something wrong. The minute I mentioned that I didn’t eat pork they would say:

“What are you Muslamic?”

Then they’d go about listing things they couldn’t do if they were Muslim--not eating pork being one of them. Christianity and being black are so tied together a White guy in college once told me that I learned to sing from singing in church. This irritated me because the Black church is seen through the white gaze as a place of stereotype. This pushed me further and further from Christianity because Black churches are mocked. To many non-Black people, it is a place where old women lose all inhibitions, as if drugged with the hallucinogen called the holy ghost. They foam at the mouth, sweat and scream out:

"Thank you Jesus!" and lose their language in foreign tongues.

It is depicted as the place where large black women lead choirs in boastful tones, and pastors speak with raspy voices and spend one minute repeating the same sentence and say things like:
​
"Let the church say amen. I said. Let the church say amen! Jesus! Jesus!"

No matter where I went, I couldn’t escape being labeled Christian because I wasn’t covering my hair and I wasn’t very religious. Christianity was always being forced on me. People would always invite me to church or offer to teach me about the bible. A friend in school use to call me a “Christian-Muslim”. She said it as a joke which I didn’t take seriously nor when a boy in high school called me an “infidel”--which he continued to call me for the rest of the year. It wasn’t just me being the bud of every joke, but also my little brother. He would sometimes come home from school and tell me stories about what the boys said to him in school. One of his classmates playfully told him they would slip pork bacon into his food and that Allah shouldn’t be worshipped because his name sounded like:

“I lie”
He told me that he would stop telling people he was Muslim in order to escape ridicule. This was some time ago, and he is out of school and has outgrown this way of thinking. I have also, come to terms with all my experiences growing up and accept my uniqueness. I like how I was raised it taught me to question different ideologies and to seek the truth on my own. I try to avoid making ridiculous statements based upon hearsay. I have read many parts of the Bible and just feel Christianity is not for me. I hope that people will start to take note of the intolerance of Black Muslims, and Muslims in general. I also, want to emphasize that black people are not one dimensional. We do not think the same, dress the same or pray to the same god. I don’t know anything about motherboards or the difference between a reverend, pastor, minister or a deacon. I don't fit into the storyline of most African Americans. I want other people including our media to stop speaking of the black experience, while ignoring the variety of experiences. I urge many people to stop thinking that all Black people are living the same lifestyle as the actors they see in movies. I'm not your average Black Christian, because I'm not a Christian at all. I'm Black and an individual who is not a cookie cutter image, so don't depict me as one.
​
Kiara Morgan is a writer who enjoys discussing issues in the African American community.
You can follow her here. 

In 2009, the Reverend Dr. Leslie D. Callahan was called to be the 5th and first female pastor of the historic 119-year-old St. Paul’s Baptist Church in Philadelphia. Callahan, who was once faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, leads her congregation with a focus on advocacy and community activism and a womanist slant.

It is back-to-school season. I have my classes set and all my books are on the way from Amazon. When I tell people that I’m pursuing an M.Div., they look at me like they’re confused. To be honest, I’m confused too! I don’t know how I got here, how I learned this was the path I wanted to explore, or why I left a full-time teaching job with benefits and brilliant children for part-time hustles and french toast dinners. And with two parents who are wonderful pastors, I find myself side-eyeing… myself. I knew better. I knew I was signing myself up for some difficult conversations with friends and angry early morning prayers with God. Yet here I am. A second year seminary student.

By Anna Gibson

In recent news, county clerk Kim Davis has been under fire for refusing to carry out her duty in providing a marriage license to a same-sex couple. This has caused an uproar on both sides with many calling her a “martyr” for her actions and others calling her a bigot. While I won’t disparage her character like some who oppose her actions, it can’t be denied that standing up for your religion has nothing to do with following the law. Church and state are separated for a reason.

by Shannen Dee Williams, Ph.D.

The following is reprinted with permission from Religion Dispatches. Follow RD on Facebook or Twitter for daily updates.

When news of Disney’s plan to reboot its wildly successful Sister Act franchise broke last week, media and fan reactions were as swift as they were predictable.

From TIME to The Guardian, divinely inspired headlines cheered the impending reincarnation of America’s favorite black Catholic nun and choir director on the silver screen. Some even began speculating about who among today’s leading black actresses might replace Oscar-winner Whoopi Goldberg, who starred in the first two Sister Act films and produced its Tony-award winning musical incarnation.

However, not all are excited about the forthcoming addition to Disney’s platinum brand.

On Twitter, diehard Sister Act fans have vehemently objected to the remake, calling it “a mistake” and “pure sacrilege.”
Matt Stopera over at Buzzfeed went even further. In an article titled, “Why the ‘Sister Act’ Films are the Most Important Films of Our Times,” Stopera called plans for the remake a “sin” and credited the 1992 smash hit original and its 1993 sequel with making him “a better Catholic.”

Why, you ask? “[Because] they just felt like real nuns,” Stopera wrote.

Now to preface, I am a cradle Catholic and a huge fan of the Sister Act films. I have also spent the last nine years researching the history of black female religious life and interviewing scores of elderly black women who desegregated the nation’s historically white Catholic sisterhoods in the 20th century.

If Sister Mary Clarence and her soulful band of singing white nuns are testaments to any historical truth of U.S. Catholic female religious life, then I am the Queen of England, the President of the People’s Republic of China, and the lost ruler of Zamunda rolled all into one.

While angry reactions to remade classic films are understandable, the notion that Sister Act ever should be taken as anything more serious than Hollywood entertainment is downright ludicrous. It also cannot go unchallenged, not only for the sake of sanity, but also out of respect to the long and fiercely-contested history of black Catholic nuns in the Atlantic world.

Since the 1st century, thousands upon thousands of black women and girls have professed the sacred vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the Roman Catholic Church. However, the church’s longstanding practices of racial segregation and exclusion in religious life kept the global population of black Catholic sisters low and statistically insignificant in various parts of the world well into the twentieth century.

In the United States, for example, white Catholic sisterhoods were among the fiercest strongholds of racial segregation and white supremacy. The majority of white orders remained staunchly opposed to the integration of their ranks through America’s Civil Rights movement well into the 1960s, and most never had a single perpetually professed U.S.-born black sister in all of the 20th century. Moreover, archival records and oral history reveal that many pioneering black sisters in white congregations endured years of racial harassment, verbal abuse, emotional isolation, and daily humiliation.

Some, such as the first black Sisters of St. Mary (now the Franciscan Sisters of Mary) in St. Louis, Missouri, initially had to enter the backdoors of their motherhouse and profess their vows separately from their white counterparts. Many other black sisters had their ministries severely limited because their white counterparts refused to live and dine with them on a non-segregated basis or because the communities in which their congregations labored fiercely opposed the presence of black nuns.

Many black sisters in white congregations also endured intense pressure to deny and degrade their racial heritage in order to feel accepted by their communities. Some even admitted to praying to become white in order to stop the incessant bullying and racist name calling of their white counterparts. As Sister of the Blessed Sacrament Christine Nesmith aptly put it in 1971,

“Entering an order meant ceasing to be black and looking on what you grew up with as uncouth. You could do the Irish jig, but anything African was taboo.”

Such abuse and the prolonged intractability of white supremacy in female religious life eventually drove scores of black sisters out their communities in the late 1960s and 1970s, decimating their already marginal national population. While some black sisters left on their own accord or defected in explicit protest to racial discrimination, many others in temporary vows were summarily dismissed from their communities as a result of their political activism and willingness to testify publicly about their experiences of racist and sexist abuse in the church. Consequently, black sisters in white congregations (whether they persevered or not) routinely have been subject to historical erasure, marginalization, and myth-making.

Indeed, it should give everyone pause that the world’s most famous and beloved black nun is a fictional character instead of an actual black sister-saint. It should also come as no surprise to discover that the character of Sister Mary Clarence was very loosely based on the life of an actual black nun, who fought to revolutionize Catholic masses by incorporating sacred African-American cultural and spiritual traditions.

In 1970s and 1980s, pioneer African-American Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration Thea Bowman took the U.S. Catholic church by storm with her public opposition to Catholic divestment from inner-city communities and her revolutionary ministry, which masterfully combined African-American storytelling, preaching, dancing, and singing. At the time of her death from bone cancer in 1990, Sister Thea, then only 52 years old, was arguably the most famous Catholic sister in America. Goldberg even was planning to produce a documentary about Sister Thea’s life.

That Sister Thea, who held doctorates in English and theology from the Catholic University of America and Boston College respectively, and whose cause for canonization, i.e. “sainthood,” is making its way through Vatican channels, could be reduced to the morally ambiguous character of Delores Van Cartier in the hands of white Hollywood producers is a tragedy.

That Sister Act remains the chief reference point for the vast majority of conversations about black Catholic nuns and the integration of female religious life is even worse.

While some may argue that the Sister Act films have helped to mitigate longstanding white opposition to black sisters and the casting of black women as nuns in Hollywood, the racist backlash to Audra McDonald’s scene-stealing performance as Mother Abbess in NBC’s 2013 live remake of The Sound of Music suggests otherwise.

Moreover, black sisters’ 2,000–plus years of history and the unprecedented growth of the global black nun population over the last 50 years demand that we begin making different kinds of films about black nuns, Kari Skogland’s made-for-television Courage to Love (2000) notwithstanding. We must also never miss an opportunity to include them in movies where they rightfully belong.

For example, two pioneer African-American nuns, Franciscan Sister of Mary Antona (Elizabeth Louise) Ebo and Sister of St. Joseph Ann Benedict (Barbara) Moore, were among the handful of Catholic nuns who traveled to Selma, Ala., to join the game-changing voting rights marches in 1965. In fact, Sister Mary Antona was in the first delegation of sisters to arrive in Selma, and she delivered an impassioned address to the national media when some questioned whether she was in fact “a Negro” and a nun.

Yet Sisters Mary Antona and Barbara conspicuously are absent from the Academy-award nominated film Selma, as are sisters such as Pittsburgh’s M. Martin de Porres (Patricia Muriel) Grey, R.S.M. who founded the radical National Black Sisters’ Conference in 1968. Although Grey’s superiors explicitly forbade her from traveling to Selma to participate in 1965 demonstrations, she led a delegation of students from her community’s Mount Mercy College (now Carlow University) in a Selma sympathy march through the streets of downtown Pittsburgh on March 16, 1965.

Sister Mary Antona Ebo speaks at a Civil Rights march in Selma, Ala., in 1965. Photo: “Sisters of Selma”

That the black sisters who traveled to Selma and participated in solidarity marches across the nation at the same time were subjected to racial discrimination in their congregations undoubtedly fueled their determination to respond to King’s clarion call. Many in their position had already demonstrated an uncommon faithfulness by refusing to abandon their vocations in the face of whites-only admissions policies and traveling hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from their hometowns to enter communities that would accept “Negroes.”

This same indomitable faith and perseverance also enabled members of the nation’s black sisterhoods (established by black women in the 19th and early 20thcenturies to ensure the development of black female religious life in the Western world) routinely to turn the other cheek when white Americans, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, pushed them off sidewalks, ripped their habits from their heads, or threatened their convents and schools with violence during America’s slave and Jim Crow years.

The names of these courageous black women of God deserve to be better known than the fictional Mary Clarence, and we should take every opportunity to tell their stories of faith in the face of unholy discrimination in any way that we can—especially on film.

Their history—the real sister act, if I may—is a far more compelling drama anyway.

Photo: IMBD

Shannen Dee Williams is an assistant professor of history at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. She is currently completing the manuscript for her first book, Subversive Habits: Black Nuns and the Long Struggle to Desegregate Catholic America. When published, it will be just the first scholarly monograph to examine the lives and labors of black Catholic sisters in the twentieth-century United States.

by Rev. Dominique Atchison

A few years back I made the hard choice to leave the majority African American church and denomination where I was raised. I left because I felt we were choosing misogyny and homophobia over the Spirit of the Living God. For the sake of my sanity, I left and joined another church and denomination. It was a majority white church and affiliated with a majority white denomination. That is where I was eventually ordained and that is where I still hold my membership.

Birth control: it was a subject in my house that I knew would cause me strife if I ever dared to ask for a prescription. A trip to the gynecologist? That was out of the question as well.