Easter Sunday in the Black church is exuberant. From the Saturday following Good Friday to the day itself, Black hair salons are booked and buzzing as the smell of hair oils and smoke from hot iron combs permeates the air. Black children, tired from Easter egg festivities and or rehearsals for the church play, recite Easter speeches relentlessly for Sunday morning worship. And on that Sunday, as collard greens stew in pots with the likes of hammocks or turkey necks, Black folks — in their finest suits, dresses, and hats — congregate in a church sanctuary preparing to hear about the resurrection of Jesus.
It’s a day of reverence within the Black church, which, in its multiple denominations, was essentially formed out of resistance to racism and a need for community, a place where Black expression could safely exist outside of white gazes and threats. But that safety hasn’t been extended to everyone within the community: Christianity is a religion whose sects of churches have spewed certain theologies that have been extremely violent and silencing to women and members of the LGBTQ community — and those theologies exist within the Black church as well.
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