Decolonizing from Within by Kelle Brown

Love is not the absence of critique.

The heart of justice is truth-telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be.  More than ever before we, as a society, need to renew a commitment to truth-telling. -bell hooks

As I reflect on my time as an African American woman pastor in a predominantly white church setting, I am convinced that God is calling the church to decolonization, repentance, and lament.  In the context of the church universal, the 11 o’clock hour is still the most segregated.  Even in multicultural churches, the requirement to assimilate to the dominant culture is more often the case, rather than a celebration of all the faithful.  There are more women in ministry than ever, yet, fewer women are in senior pastorates.  “Black Lives Matter” banners are hanging on the exteriors of dominant culture churches that have many times not valued or respected their Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian members, leaders, or other participants.  Some of these churches are now in gentrified neighborhoods that were once filled with Black and other minoritized people.  The power is drained from the movement, leaving the BLM statement hanging on buildings like the bumper stickers for closed businesses on the back of an old car.

Let us begin with truth-telling.  Many churches continue to maintain the status quo and promote preference of some over setting an open, authentic, and gracious table.  Churches are impacted by the pandemic, loss, and death; clergy are leaving the ministry in a variety of ways and for many reasons.  Faith organizations largely do not create communities of thriving and care for clergy or their congregations.  Church “refugees” watch, wondering why our worship and participation in the community doesn’t seem to align itself with what the world asks of us.  They dare to join us but are pushed away by the incongruency.  Many join James Baldwin in his critique, “I can’t believe what you say because I see what you do.”

The church must decolonize.  Yes, decolonization is usually a political term used to describe nations that are reclaiming their sovereignty from a colonizing country.  However, this is the time to reflect upon where we are and evaluate faith organizations haven’t been co-opted by the very systems God in Jesus Christ challenges people of the spirit to dismantle and eradicate for the good of the world and all God’s creation.

This is what movement-making must involve.  For those who choose this quest, we must keep ever before us the impacted, the disenfranchised, the marginalized the least, and the last as priority and signs that we are in solidarity with those God is interested.  The world is aching for healing, leaning into any sign that a change is upon us.

The following is in no way a comprehensive list.  However, these suggestions represent my learning as well as a hopeful vision for our way forward:

• Decolonizing the church means joining the work of God to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly for the sake of God’s people.  The vocation is moral, spiritual, emotional, political, and cultural. 
• The task of decolonizing must include truth and reconciliation processes that include reparations.
• Becoming a church in the process of decolonizing requires expecting transformation and change.  This church understands the risk implicit in evolution and will not shy away from the difficult work involved.
• Understanding “intersectionality” is key to becoming decolonized.  According to Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term, intersectionality is the manner in which systems of oppression, such as racism, sexism, and classism, interrelate to form distinct realities for those who are impacted with multiple discriminations at once.  Conversely, intersectionality is not about finding the commonalities with the oppressed so as to diminish their experience, nor is the term an invitation to equate all unfortunate events and circumstances with oppression.
• A faith organization in the process of decolonizing will honor those sent by God as leaders to help stir the movement, as well as participate fully in relationship and community-building.
• Decolonizing the church is welcoming prophetic and visionary voices that can see beyond what is present and learning to implement their wisdom.
• A decolonized community learns the tools and skills needed to work faithfully and intelligently by becoming anti-oppressive and trauma-informed while learning the definitions of the movement such as Christian Imperialism; white supremacy; dominant culture; racism; classism, and others for the purpose of being prepared for dialogue, organizing, and action.
• A church who is actively decolonizing is willing to be critiqued and welcomes healthy assessment.  While the church honors the ways it has responded historically to movements of the spirit, it must also reveal the ways it has fallen short, been short-sighted, or caused harm and trauma to the ones the church sought to welcome. 
• Communities that are doing the work of decolonization will invite leaders with the desire to support, affirm and follow the leadership.  This church will resist covenanting with a leader to look evolved or “woke” but because it understands the power of centering voices that have been historically ignored or muted.
• The decolonized church resists self-congratulation as a cover to the work yet to be done.
• Those who are in covenant with a church on this journey will remain active and connected.  They will accept the responsibility to be transparent, vulnerable, and present as an act of discipleship.
• The decolonized church honors interfaith and ecumenical work, to include welcoming those who claim no faith and live out their sense of morality through social justice.
• Decolonizing the church requires honest reflection as to the antiBlackness, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia prevalent in our liturgies, music, faith formation, and study of sacred text.  The faithful must turn their reflection into moral and ethical action.
• The decolonizing church understands that becoming antiracist is not simply about the percentages of minoritized people in the congregation.  A congregation made up completely of the white, cisheteronormative, able-bodied, and primarily resourced people (which I refer to in this series as “dominant culture”) is charged by God—despite the homogeneity—to do antiracism and repent from antiBlackness; to become feminist; to be open and affirming to the full LGBTQIA+ community; to be accessible and affirming to the disabled; to be youth-affirming and elder-inclusive; to make space for the neurodivergent; to welcome and affirm people of all sorts to participation and leadership.
• The decolonizing church will choose abundance over scarcity; loving movement over fear; and righteousness over maintaining privilege.
• Those active in decolonizing will desire liberation over comfort.  They will prioritize the freedom of those impacted in the church and beyond over tradition, nostalgia, practice, or what has worked in the past.
• The decolonizing church creates ways to honestly evaluate its history and strategize about the future. 
• Decolonizing the church will operate with the wisdom of Audre Lourde as its guide: “Without community, there is no liberation.”

Without hesitation, we are ordained and anointed to move in hope, truth, and faith, despite the ravishing of the pandemic, war around the globe, along with the ever-rolling wheels of complacency and complicity.  There is no time to be lost in the preparation of this movement until a forward momentum is impossible. 

Churches and faith organizations can do Bible studies and read books while we do reparations to the Indigenous whose land was colonized.  We can become intelligent about critical race theory while we take down images of a European, manifest destiny Jesus.  The church can decolonize by remembering that Jesus was a Palestinian Jew.  The church can struggle with survival and stand for reproduction rights for people of all identities.  Let us build up our muscularity toward justice and equity, resistance, and revolution, knowing full well that the movement of decolonization in the church setting follows the wind of the spirit.  Let the movement begin.

Rev. Dr. Kelle Brown is the Senior Pastor of Plymouth Church United Church of Christ in downtown Seattle, Washington.  Kelle is a gifted creative artist and a thinker; a Womanist public theologian who is a curator of equity, justice, and adaptive change.

Dr. Brown earned her BA in Psychology from Atlanta’s Spelman College where she was a featured soloist of the renowned Glee Club.  She later attended Seattle University School of Theology and Ministry, where she went on to receive a Master of Divinity. Kelle completed her Doctorate of Ministry from San Francisco Theological Seminary in 2018, focusing on eradicating homelessness through solidarity. 

She facilitates conversations on dismantling oppression and offers ways to reflect on white supremacy, privilege, bias, prejudice and bigotry, particularly on racial, ethnic and LGBTQ justice. She had been a vocal presence for justice and equity in Seattle, participating in the Poor People’s Campaign:  A National Call for a Moral Revival; the 2019 Women’s March leadership team; and traveled to Tijuana, along with a contingent of Black and Brown women of color of faith. as a moral and faithful witness in the face of oppressive immigration legislation.  

Kelle desires to resist moments by participating in movements that shift the narrative toward freedom. She believes in people and that redemption and reconciliation is possible, and imagined in her lifetime, the world will turn for the better, and imagines a world where all people are valued and extravagantly loved.   She invites those she meets to follow the advice of Howard Thurman: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”