Dear Revolutionaries: A Field Guide to the World Beyond the Church

another sneak peak at my new book from Broadleaf Feb'23

Greetings in the name of the Creator Lovers: 

I haven't posted in awhile. Apparently PhD’s and writing three books can really take your attention. But while I am working Psalms of my People: Vol 1-The Poetry of Hip Hop as Decolonial Counter Narrative which is slated for release Spring’24 with my good friends at Broadleaf, I don't want to forget that Dear Revolutionaries: A Field Guide for the World Beyond the Church will be released February 21, 2023! 

For a few years folks have asked me in person, online, in rather threatening exchanges to defend, expand upon, or just discuss Dear Church, my first book. I have flatly refused. Those ideas felt like they were no longer a fit, that I was wrong about a few things, and honestly of little interest to me compared to more creative projects in fiction lately. We can argue whether the church itself is an act of fiction forever, but the truth is my editor, Lisa, and others were right. It made for damn good theological interrogation of the mainline institutional church, and more importantly, I was able to share the practical tools we used to start to build a spiritual and ethical framework during the uprisings of 2020 in PDX. These early musings, and responses, and community defense building strategies in resistance to organized Christo-facist assault on our community, led us to practices of sacred encounter rooted in anti-oppression power analysis, but with emphasis on care for the practitioner, you! 

During this process I was paired with the incredible Cheritta Lee as an editor and I angrily, unwillingly, and unrepentantly told the truth as I saw it. About the institutional church, it’s wanton gorging on the future of this republic, and my own complicity in this act. 

Here is a sneak peek to hopefully get you to pre order! Pre-orders are huge for a writer, particularly a Black Queer Trans writer in religious space. Don't mistake popularity  for a full fridge or paid rent! If just 250 of you pre-order today, out of my several thousand subscribers,  you can rocket this book to the top of the charts at a critical time! 

So yes this is a straight up call to action to any of you who value my work, and a sneak peek. Sue me. You will have decent company. :) 

Chapter 5: 

ACES IN PLACES

We have lost our generation to whiteness, but we still have a chance with our children. To deconstruct and decolonize the liturgy is a battle of attrition. For each step you take, you will face radical evil wearing the face of a beloved member of your community. It will wail and scream in their voice as you exorcise the demon from your midst. But there is hope on the other side of the exorcism—hope of the resurrection.

—Dear Church

In Dear Church, I used a play on words I thought would point to a larger problem and a deeper truth, not become a sticking point for like every book event I did for the next few years, or the subject line of every angry email or DM I received over the next few years. At the time, I wrote what I thought was a clever phrase: Dear Church, the problem is theological, not sociological.

I thought that most folks would see that it rhymes, and take it in context with the rest of the rant that chapter is. Do I believe there are no sociological reasons for racism in the church? No offense to anyone who asked this question over the years, but I’m not as dumb as your question or “gotcha” point. Of course, there are sociological reasons. But I want to own my part. I was wrong—the problem isn’t theological.

It’s spiritual.

More on that in a second, but those who say that we shouldn’t examine the spiritual consequences of white supremacy and racism but solely focus on the function, form, facts, figures, fiscal, and reported instances of racism are the same people who want the same prizes as white men. They are stupid prizes, for the record.

It is a stupid fucking prize, kids. You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. As a young Black queer pastor, you want me to work my ass off for the next thirty years in the church so you can use me as a device to make your bishop’s election look more diverse, or your mission support money looks like it’s effective in a world you don’t understand? Then at the end, nothing really changes, and I get a retirement plan? Maybe another “churchy” book deal? If I am really lucky, I can become a multimillion-dollar drain on the movement and become a fixture in the thought leader industrial complex we call progressive Christian theology today. That’s my victory on Calvary? That’s what I receive in the upper room? That’s my prize?

Yeah, fuck that. Count me out. It’s a system that just reinforces white supremacy by making spiritual-seeking an industry.

That’s why I have always said that I went to seminary to become a pastor; I walked out a writer. An artist. All I’m saying is the people who beat me up for one point in an overall decent book are missing a few things, I treat theology like it’s supposed to be. An art. An impressionist painting. I am not looking for orthodoxy. That’s a white man prize. Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy leads to regulations, rules, for the sake of good order. But it’s all power. Even the most progressive among us. They want to turn liberation into orthodoxy. If we just do these five things in this order, presto: Kin-dom of God.

These people also, coincidentally, always think they should be in charge instead. They should be a bishop, or whatever trumped-up bureaucrat your tradition uses.

The

y would run it better. Just give them capitalism, and the hypocrisy, and a bloated system, and they will overcome it. Make it better. If you elected me presiding bishop (substitute with any head of a major denomination) today, I would be no better, if not worse, than any previous before me. It is a stupid fucking prize, kids.

It is through the position itself, it is in its form and function, and in many ways that of all professionalized and institutional churches, that systemic white supremacy is given ontological meaning and reason, and for that point, my detractors are right.

The edges of the blade that cuts me are fiscal in nature. They are sociologically crafted to a finely honed edge so that when they cut me, most of you don’t even see them pass or hear the cold steel slide out of its scarab. My detractors are right in a very real sense: One cannot call for reparations without having a full accounting. There is a human cost to what we are discussing. Black bodies. Brown bodies. Carmel bodies. Queer bodies. Trans bodies. Indigenous bodies. All piling up on the tally of this republic, and by proxy, the church. Every time we have said “God Bless America,” we have implored an already, in my opinion, disinterested God in the endeavor of trying to redeem this place. This “American” church. God is very disinterested in attempts to resurrect the empire. It is like Daniel imploring God to make Babylon the new center of his spiritual world.

And that was my original point. If the church is who it claims to be, the spiritual caregivers to this nation, and we are showing signs of the same disease, racism, that the nation suffers from, it is our job to do the spiritual work on behalf of folks doing the other important work—in legislatures, in academia, in literature, on the streets. It is our call to come alongside the power analysis that matched who we thought was living out the true heart of Christ and offer that still-beating heart to the movement. Even if we had to rip it from our chest. To be chaplains to revolution, not decide what it should look like or sound like. Not to come up with a model to follow. Jesus did that. Black women did that. Assata Shakur did that. Gil Scott- Heron did that. Jill Scott did that. Ella Baker did that. Leonard Peltier did that. 

END OF PREVIEW OF CHAP 5