43 Search results for "sermon"

The greatest irony produced on Super Bowl Sunday had nothing to do with the game or the lackluster and unimaginative halftime show by some guy named Justin. Interestingly enough, it was produced when Dodge ran a commercial for its Ram line of trucks, touting ideals of service as an excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King […]

By: Obinna Tony-Francis Ochem Long before I called myself queer, I called myself gay because it was the only language I had for my attraction to men. Growing up in Nigeria, the word rarely belonged to people like me. Among young people, “gay” was less an identity than an insult, tossed around with the same […]

By: Alana Brown-Davis I’ve been a daughter of the South all of my life. I was born in Alabama and raised in southwest Mississippi. Being Black and Southern meant that I grew up as Christian. Our family typically attended Methodist gatherings but in an effort to get into heaven, we went wherever. The COGIC church […]

Creative expression did not begin with writing. It began with voice — with stories spoken across rooms, songs carried across distance, rhythms tapped into tabletops and knees when words alone could not hold what needed to be said. Long before notebooks, microphones, or publishing platforms, Black communities were shaping experience into sound and gesture so […]

By Donnie Moreland It was no later than 6:23 am, on September 19th, when Officer Jacob Dochavney discovered the two bodies in the Tacoma River. He waited to call it in. He was three days from his two week vacation he’d been hollering about since February. He was supposed to be going to Las Vegas […]

by Maya Williams  This essay mentions r/pe.  One day, in the fifth grade, I was playing outside and fell on my crotch. I ran inside crying to my mom, “I hurt my…my…” gesturing to my pelvic area, “bad part.” The one thing I can appreciate from my mother was how she immediately responded, “No, your […]

Not enough people know about Bois Caïman. I only learned of it myself within the last few years. Even among those of us who are familiar with the 18th century slave rebellion that led Haiti (once called Saint-Domingue) to its independence from French colonial rule, some do not know that this insurrection began with a […]

  by Kamilah Bush I am a Queer woman with sexual desires that should and can be fulfilled. That took a lot to say. It took a long time for me to say it—precisely because it took a long time for me to even realize it. Not because I was “denying” it, not because I […]

by Tiffany Hobbs  I hope Jesus doesn’t look like the white man on the wall. That flowy-locked iteration of the Messiah they wanted Black people to believe in would find his alabaster skin colored with surprise as Ms. Aretha Franklin entered the gates and demanded payment—her heavenly reward—upfront. Her blessings must be plentiful, as she […]

By Verdell Wright I used to be a minister. I preached the goodness of God every day. But after deep reflection and honesty, I decided this Black boy had to go. I had to leave the Christian faith, as well as any belief in the supernatural, behind. I was headed toward this point for a […]

Content Warning: This essay contains discussion of sexual violence against a child and a mention of r/pe Listen. I cannot deal with either one of these women, especially after sitting through this episode of OWN’s Fix My Life. I came across a short clip of what happened in Auntie Iyanla’s Legacy Room (to be explained […]

by Jamila Mitchell The emancipation of freed slaves and subsequent constitutional amendments of the 20th century meant that white people could no longer marginalize Black folks through the physical bondage of chattel slavery. Faced with new restrictions, they quickly resigned to maintaining their rule through a new age of psychological warfare on the formerly enslaved, […]