Black History Month often is framed as a time of celebration — a time to honor leaders, milestones and achievements that reshaped the American story. But at its deepest level, Black History Month is about moral memory. It is about…
Druski held up a mirror to the church
For some of us, watching Druski’s recent megachurch parody is hitting a nerve because it’s holding up a mirror. Druski is a comedian and cultural commentator known for using humor to reflect everyday truths about Black life, power and performance,…
Too many Black churches have stopped doing the work
Since its inception, the Black Church has stood for activism. It has been loud when the world demanded silence. Emotive in a culture that prizes stoicism over vulnerability. Communal in the face of capitalism’s insistence on individualism. Faithful amid unrelenting…
Texas Senate primary pits white Social Gospel against Black Church tradition
The stage is set for a Democratic Senate primary in Texas with one candidate who is trying to convince fellow Texans to love all their neighbors and one who refuses to turn the other cheek. James Talarico is easygoing and…
We need to learn again from the Black Church tradition
Growing up, my parents — Evangelist Idella Cora Thomas and Leonard Thomas — guided me spiritually. They emphasized the importance of spiritual discernment in navigating the world and advocating for justice. They wanted me to understand where evil lurks within…
How the Black Church saved me from white evangelicalism
There was a time when I almost lost myself trying to fit into white evangelical spaces that never were designed for me. These were spaces where I was preemptively labeled a “liberal” and my passion for racial justice was dismissed…
Frederick Douglass Found His Mission in the Black Church
“The negro can go into the circus, the theater, the cars … but cannot go into an Evangelical Christian meeting,” an elderly Frederick Douglass exclaimed in 1885 to a crowd in the nation’s capital.”
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Yolanda Pierce
Yolanda Pierce serves as dean of the Divinity School and Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Religion and Literature at Vanderbilt University. One of America’s vital theologians, Pierce was founding director of the Center for African American Religious Life at the Smithsonian…
Dismantling DEI is about making America white again, Lewis warns
Donald Trump’s prohibition of government diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with subduing marginalized communities, pastor, activist and author Jacqui Lewis said during a recent episode of “The State of Belief”…
‘Credo’ calls Black Church to rise up amid Trump presidency
A group of Black ministers has released a new document to protest white Christian nationalism and provide moral and spiritual strength to African Americans during the coming Trump presidency. “A Credo to Legatees of the Black Church Tradition” is rooted…
What good is a law that’s not enforced?
If your pastor were to stand in the pulpit this Sunday and explicitly tell you to vote for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris for president, would your church be in legal jeopardy? Technically, yes. Realistically, no. The potential peril…
‘Theological revolution’ needed to bring liberation to jails and prisons, PNBC panel says
Viewing jail and prison inmates as more than souls to be saved requires the church to apply a social-justice lens to its theological understanding of incarceration and the incarcerated, insisted Jacqueline Thompson, second vice president of the Progressive National Baptist…