We Gotta Do It...The Church Talk

00:00:03
Speaker 1: Welcome to Jay dot Il a production of I Heart Radio. What's Up Everybody? It is always a pleasure to be here with you. Welcome to Jay dot Illa Podcast. This is Jail Scotty and I'm here with my sister friends like Yah sat Cloud. Halleluj. That is me and age a great dance. I will since since like he has said, hallelu I will say I shay, this is great. I mean and I'm in okay. I mean we're like a little Hallelujah. Yes, never gets old. I find this particularly appropriate on today because I've been looking forward so much to having this conversation we're going to have today. I have to make sure that I cover the basics because we need to make sure y'all know who in fact we're talking to today. Today we have a fabulous guest, of course. His name is A Shan Crawley. He's a writer and artist and teacher. He explorined the intersection of performance, blackness, queerness, and spirituality. Associate Professor of Religious Studies and African American Studies at University of Virginia is the author of Black Pentecostal Breath, The Aesthetics of Possibility, and the lonely letters. Now, I just want you to know, those are the receipts. Are the receipts, Those are the receipts. We have to put the receipts out there because that we all do. You're googling, do your good when you do, you're good good googling that you come up with what you need to happen, and everything is there. Okay. But the reason why I love this person is because during the pandemic, um My, my good, good girlfriend, Princess um call me on the phone said, know you ain't got nothing to do. They won't let you work, and the kids. Isn't the driving you crazy? She like, I got a friend who says you could sit in the back of his classroom online and get this good Afrikaan of Studies Education. Now, I won't put this info out. I told this story already, but I don't want to get him in no trouble, so I ain't gonna retell it. Y'all gonna have to go back and listen to all the episodes set in the back of this classroom. And we went through some really amazing literature during that during that semester. But one of the books was a Sean Crawley's book A Pentecostal Breath, and I said, I just went down a rabbit hole really, oh gosh, and we're gonna talk about this. But he opened up my mind to something that he caused otherwise possibilities and that for me, UM just touched me in a in a deep place. So anyway, because y'all know I like to be on the social media's, I end up founding the shan on the social media's. We got connected on that, found out we knew a bunch of the same people people a people, I mean love loved some of the same people. There you have it. God did what God does, look okay, pull the right people together so that they could be family and so that we can all come together on this here podcast. So ladies are gentleman's okay. I want you to look to your neighbor, say neighbor, neighbor, welcome a Sean welcome, thank you for the welcome. It's like hot yoga. I've been going to hot yoga. We've had a black teacher, black woman twice and she definitely said both times your right and say I was like, oh, we're doing very black. Yeah, church culture is black culture. Let's just get intoto it it is what it is. It's nice to have an expert that will sit here in ponto. Kate, Actually, you know what I mean, That's what I just wanted to say. Well, we talk a lot about on the show about the fact that church, you know though, the intention of church, and then you know how much we all adore all of the things out of our culture that come out of church and what it does, and but I think we all can relate in particular to that moment in which it does not connect, that moment where the community of church doesn't only just not connect, and not just church, but many spiritual communities that at one point it doesn't connect, and not only does it not connect, it causes harm and that harm, the ripple effect of that harm, and what it what it does to us as a community, and how it serves at this antithesis to what church is supposed to be about and what what we're even supposed to do about it, you know, And so you know, I guess we have to really begin with your background and just like how does this, how does this really you know, touch you and influence your work? Thank you all for having me on the podcast. It's um, thank you for being here. It's it's it's a joy, it's a joy. And I'm gonna tell I'm I'm gonna move backwards. I will start by saying, no one has ever heard this before. There was like a moment in the nineties, and this will tell you about like my background. There's a moment in the nineties when Erica Badu released On and On. Most intellects don't believe in God, but they fear us just the same. M I really loved the sound of On and On. I was like, uh, that don't that don't sound right to my good, good, good Pentecostal Christian tears. There's something a little two five per center up up in there now right about it. And I remember the first time listen, I'm sorry to put you on the spot. First time listening to A Long Walk in the Park after Dark, finest spot for us. The first verse talked about revelation. I was like, yes, Laura, and then the second one was like sour, and I was like wait, wait, wait, wait wait wait, that's not there's something not Christian about this. And I remember the first time really listening to Kindred the Family so and like reading the liner notes, and I was like, wait, I think they Muslim Christian Christians ain't saved. The a Shan that you are meeting at forty two years old is very different than the Ashan that I was at the age of eighteen. I grew up in eastern New Jersey and a household. My father is a preacher pastor of Pentecostal church. My mother is a preacher, even though in our organs Asian Church of God in Christ they don't ordain women to be preachers because of sexism, UM, but my mother is a preacher. My brother was the musician, the Hammond organist for our church UM until he moved away for college. I became the organist UM for the church once he left. So I guess at the age of fourteen I started playing. I moved to Philadelphia. I tell people I moved to Philly to go to University of Pennsylvania for undergrad and the first thing I did when I moved to phillis by the church. I didn't choose my classes. I didn't care about my classes. I wanted to make sure I had the church home, and I needed a place that could take care of me. I was very and I started the New Spirit of penn which is the gospel choir at Universe of Pennsylvania. They still sing today. And I was very much a part of a very insular and doctrine there, but also very musical Black Pentecostal church world. I loved it. Um. I love planting tambourine. I didn't love playing him in Oregon, but I love directing choirs. Loved directing choirs, and I love the sort of sound of Black church. There was a lot of noisiness and Pentecostal churches. We made a lot of noise when we prayed. We haven't made a lot of noise when we shouted, dance, sinisphere, a lot of noise when you speak in tones. I loved it. There was nothing about like I would. I had a great tape recorder and I would go to church concerts and other church services that were not my home church, and I would take my great tape record with me, and some friends who did not know my name would call me boy with the great tape recorder because I always had a recorder so I could record the church services, so I could listen to primarily the music and learn from the music that I was listening to and so I was in this very insular church world. But I had friends at school who were very kind, lovely, I love them, who were like not Christian and listening to secular music, listening to hip hop, listening to things that I've never heard before. And I was really, really really drawn to a lot of what I was hearing, but there was like words and things and concepts for God that I was not acquainted with that I also felt like, this is a this could be a problem. And so the things that I would try to do is like when I heard on and On, I would like trying to change the I was like, oh, no, she's not she could not be saying. So I'm gonna change the words somehow to be something else that's I would like, find some kind of Christian language that I felt like was the thing she was really saying. And it's like she wasn't saying it, but it was me trying to like really force my structure of belief into something else, even though the other thing was like trying to, you know, push against my own understanding that was really limited and really very much a problem, very mudy, and I remember doing the same thing with lots of just lots and lots of music. I could not when De'angelo's Food came out, I could not listen to the album because it's like voodoo samee, don't do that. Like this is like literally I'm in college at this point and I'm still very much like oh no, no, no, you know, you know, I pray you do this. This is just who you are on your inside. More real talk after the break. When my maternal grandmother passed away the day of her funeral, I was four years old. I woke up at like six of the morning. Apparently I used to sleepwalk a lot. I woke up, got out of bed, walked to the threshold of my parents door, screamed at them, we can make it, and then I went back to sleep. And my parents have told me several times, because my mother was twenty eight at that time, she was really young. Um, they told me that that is what allowed them to get through the day. It's like four year old who doesn't know what he's saying, kind of don't know what's happening, but says this thing. And I think I've always had like a very strong sense for the spiritual, but because of the context under which I was having this strong sense of the spiritual. It made it really really difficult to figure out a relation to other spiritual practices that were not my own because everything is sinful. And it wasn't just like everything out there sinful, all the non Christians are sinful. It's also like most of y'all in here who go to church every week are also sinful. For me, as like a five year old, six year old, sevenyear old, it's like fine, but like you know, eight years old, when you start to like be attracted to people and you're like, why am I attracted to him? Why am I attracted to him? Why am I attracted to him? Uh? You start to also really feel that the things that you're saying about other people being sinful and heading to hell are also things that you're kind of feeling about yourself, but you don't know how to really express it. There's literally no one that you can talk to. Uh. In the eighties and the nineties, there's no one that you can say, hey, I feel really really like queer. Please don't judge me, but can we talk about so? Like you're carrying this strong sense of spiritual sort of orientation, a deep desire to love God, a deep love for the cultural practices of the Black Church, which I still love today, but also this deep shame that you can't really express. And in the eighties and the nineties, at the same time, a lot of musicians, choir directors, and singers are dying from AIDS, the AIDS crisis, and you hear people talking very very negatively about these people, but in like rumors and hushed conversation or through sermons where they say very pejorative things, and you're like, oh, I feel like I'm one of these people they're talking about, so I literally I can't say it. And also am I gonna die like they're dying? I'm ten years old, I'm twelve years old, like trying to like processing you're hearing this, You're ultimately hearing this in like your favorite place to be, hearing in my favorite place to be, And soon by the time you got to college, you still would keep it. As much as you were trying to shield your ears from what you were hearing your music, you also were shielding your friends circle in that way like your friends are school was any thinking the way you think my friends So the curious thing I would say about my friend circle when I was. When I first arrived to University of Pennsylvania, my first week of UM, there was a summer program for black students who, uh, we're coming to the university was called a f MS at that point, and I had met this black young woman who made some joke about something and I'm gonna call you Cookie. I don't remember the joke, but I remember embracing the nickname. And I embraced the nickname. I wrote about this a while ago. I embraced the nickname because it could be a new identity for me. It could be a way for me to establish myself where people didn't know me because my parents didn't know me because of the church, and I could like be my own person. But the person that I became was like the choir director the pussy church every week, the person who who would like very explicitly into inentionally and I think, with conviction, say it over like no, gay people are going to hell if they don't say like very much like in college. Oh yes. But I think I think what's really important here is that and what I just love that Shaun is talking about is that I think a lot of times we have this, We we have a real slender understanding of the fact that people can be perpetrators of of hateful and anti you know, anti energy that is really from a group that they belong to, from their own identity. It's like this this thing that we have this hard time understanding. We know from our politicians, and we know it from our our preachers, and we know it right, we see it. But I still think we just have a hard time really kind of owning that you can you can be black and be anti black. You know. I feel like, and I I had a series of random occurrences that I would be like that preacher, like it's there's nothing special about you know, I don't believe that. I think that we all are presented with opportunities to make certain kinds of choices, and it's what you do with the choices that you have. And I went on the date maybe it was I went out with someone uh black Friday of nineteen nine. He went to Rutgers. I went to penn and so I was home in New Jersey. We met on a well a long time ago. We went out to some dinner, we talked for like two hours. We went to a parking walker. It's like like midnight, we walked around. I was in love, he was not. Um we remained in loose contact. We went out two thousands. So the next year Black Friday again because I was home for Thanksgiving, and the first time we went out, we talked about like both going to church and having parents who were preachers, and just literally the language of trying to get the just trying to get it out of our systems so that you know, by the age we can really be serious, get married, have wives, children, and like totally like serious about And the next year we went out and I said something similar to what we were talking about the year previous, and he said to me, oh, you still think being gay as a sin question mark? And it was like, what do you mean questions? Like it was never a question for me. It was always, of course, it's sinful. People that are like out and gay have just accepted the fact that they're sinners, Like that was the way that I thought about it. And this question really interrupted not just the fact that someone could accept in quotes their uh, queerness, but that for them it's not even an accepted sort of idea that this thing could be sinful. And so it actually opened up my mind to the fact that oh, people think differently about this thing that I thought, uh, everyone has sort of accepted. And so having that experience was really it was a simple experience, but it was really, I think a necessary experience for me because it really pushed me to say, oh maybe, and then I get kicked out of undergrad some people know because I had low grades. I get back in. I was still directing the school choir. We were asked to sing for the Queer Week at University of Pennsylvania before I started changing my ideas, and I said to the board of the choir, we will not be singing for them. This is a direct one because we do not want to give them the impression that we are okay with their sins. Like it's what I said. It's very serious. It wasn't like and then I probably went home and got on the party line and like try to get aboy to come over to my part. Like it's it was that kind of deep conviction about something being wrong at the same time not really having any like there are no real conversations that I'm having with people that could interrogate what I'm thinking or my behaviors, and like, I mean, so many people from churches on a party like I used to call a party line for you Philly people. Then it's called a part line every night and I would stay on the party line for hours, and I met a lot of people, and a lot of the people that I met in part line I would go I was a musician for several churches in Philly. I would go to a church playing and I'd be like, oh, I know you eat by you way, it's not even it isn't people as kind of like you know this, sorry, sorry this one dude. I feel like I'm telling on myself. We hooked up at my apartment. We met on the party line. I went to a concert and I saw him at the concert and he spoke to me, and I was so aghast, how dare you speak to me? You center? I don't know you like, yeah, whatever, I'm like, oh, like I actually so, I'm also like a really uh how I think what I'm I'm I think what I'm deeply deeply like, listen, not only how old were you, but how do you then? How do you? At some point I kind of reconcile this moment with yourself because one of the things that I love and I listened to you on another podcast Wants talking to a group of young Christian people in a young Christian group, and you just were able to in this kind of beautiful way. And I know I'm skipping a lot because I know this is not a process that you can even really like compact, but I feel like you have reconciled your love for this space, like you've been able to um hold onto a such a caring, meticulously caring like attitude towards church and towards spiritual spaces and even the institution of it, you know what I mean, and breaking down all the beautiful pieces of it while still being really true to yourself and honoring who you are. And I think that is a dance that a lot of people really have a difficult time with. And this just really go was into all kinds of religions. But I think a lot of times church just gets put on blast for this because it's so directly associated with blackness. So as black people were like, how do we do this? Because I look at you and all with that because it's so it feels so honest. Well, I mean it was not easy at all. I mean, like you hear the things that I'm saying I wasn't saying them. I wasn't saying them like jokingly. You were. Your feet were insemented. I was serious, Like I was serious, and I was mostly trying to prove to what I thought God to me at that point. I'm not gonna cry, but like that, I was serious. You try really hard to say. No, I am trying to live this thing that you all have told. You know, I write about this in the Loneliness Book. Like I have never been as lonely as I've been since I've come out, but like I was also lonely, like when I was like trying to live the very very Christian life that I was told that I was supposed to live, and so it was. It was it was not easy to begin to have that person asked me that question at that dinner. One thing I will credit my parents with is they instilled in my brother and I a deep desire to have integrity. That integrity was more important than like the thing that you say is like the way that you have to live. And you know, I tell this story all the time. My mother she got saved at the age of fourteen. She was in a school marching band in North New Jersey. She went to the teacher the next day and said, I can't be in the marching band anymore. Why not? I can't wear pants anymore. I got saved yesterday. I can't wear pants. And he said, okay, you can practice with us. You'll get your grade based on practice. You don't have to march when we do the actual marching. And you know, I don't care about people wearing pants or not. I don't think she cares anymore about like wearing pants or not. She doesn't. But like I remember, like we would go to Macy's when I was younger. It was never like a question of is she going to have an existential crisis about buying a skirt today? No, it was like this is just the thing that she does. It was never like a question of is it hard for her to like not wear pants. It was like, no, this is what I believe, So this is what I do. And so like I learned very early that you have to try to live the thing that you say that you believe, or there's a problem. And like the problem that I kept running up against this we keep saying we believe this thing about queer people, about women, about non Christians, but like some of us have family who are not Christians, who we love, who we are not in a paternalistic relation to some of us have real deep relationships with people who are queer that we are not trying to send them to hell. Why are there all these queer people in these churches? Still there was something that was you enjoy like there was something it wasn't matching, and like having this person said, oh, you still think it's simple. And then you know, taking a class where the professor is showing things about like black representation in the media, you say that it's wrong. Latin next representation in media, and you say that it's wrong women representations in media, and you say, look at the consistency. It's not the same, but there's some cleavages, there's some relations and the section she does on queer people, you're like, oh, I can't. I almost had an existential crisis in that class because the responsive integrity is there's at least some consistency with which the way people talk about queer people and the Bible, which just the same way they talked about black people, the same kinds of practices of marshal as they shan it seems consistent, or I could just say, but the Bible says this is sinful, so I can't accept what she says. And instead I decided to do nothing. I just didn't do the response the responses for the homework for that section, and I refused to think about it. And I wrote that professor years later to say I had an extisential question in your class, but thank you because that non date in two thousands, that class like two years later, and like just like doing like research on Yahoo because Google didn't exist at that point, and like just reading things it made me start to say, well, I actually don't know. I don't know if I can say with conviction anymore that queerness is sinful. I can't say that the Bible says these things. I'm not willing to say those things anymore. And so it I was really being pushed to really evaluate my own life world. So I left they to acquire at the school. I refused to play for them and to direct them anymore. I still as a musician because I need the money, but like I was trying to dive vest from a lot of the spaces where I had leadership, public facing leadership roles and churches because except for the organ because I felt like I didn't want to like talk openly about what I was questioning. But I also knew that I could no longer accept the things that I was saying in the in the times previous, just because when did you feel comfortable with actually speaking out publicly about it, like clearness, Yeah, when you've written these books and so like when you're feeling like I'm I'm gonna go ahead and say something about it, is there you know? I don't I don't want to Hollywood, Like, is there a switch that goes on, like, No, We're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be right back. It seems to me that that when we're brought up in any particular religion, that we end up being in kind of an envelope. The whole world is happening around us, but we're inside this envelope, safe and sound, oh kind of. And then when you grow up a little bit, when you mature or and you're out in the world on your own, you find out that not everybody who is Muslim is in the tally band, you know, find out that everybody that claims Christianity it is not a kind there's some very very mean people that I've met in life that claim because you know there, um, I definitely remember the the stereotypes for sure. You know about church girls, you know, being you know, um, all the things that life preachers kids to being bad as hell, going being an African American or being Latino or being Asian, um and going to a different kind of church, or going to a church and feeling feeling alienated because of your race alienated or feeling alienated in your own church, Envine, because I feel like also to like what we what we what we hadn't really delved into. And this conversation is really also about like when you're not in a place that's foreign, when you're in the place that you came to be, you want to be there, and you yourself fure feeling are the person who's feeling feeling isolated, And the conversations and the interactions that you're having with people in your spiritual space as supposed to be your safe space, that ends up being not safe. And I think that's that's a good question. That's a good question. Yeah, Sean, I mean you too, as you know in your church, uh from church. So I've had lots of church. I know church well, Yeah, I know church well, so I know them both. But I'm curious in that moment, like what do you like in retrospect, now that you have all this knowledge and this experience, Like what do you tell that person? Do you tell that person and maybe you need to find a new church home, or do you tell that person to just you know, accept people for who they are? What do you do? Oh see, that's I mean for me, that's complished, complicated. Some day I want to say no, Like community is struggle, and like it's not to romanticize struggle at all, but it's like being with people that are different from you, as being with people that are different from you, and it's hard, and like it's not always easy, and like it's about what you can make together in the space and the time that you're together and don't allow for like harm to happen to you. But like community doesn't mean agreement, and so like I think, you know, we exist in the moment of community and that's supposed to collapse with agreement, so everyone doesn't agree. But then also like I'm not I don't want to go too far with that though, because it's like but yeah, like, if you're going to question my person who might act like, you know, queerness, like I actually like there are things that I do not do anymore, Like I don't go to certain kinds of churches. I'm grown. I went to somebody's shirts that was around the corner for me in North Carolina when I lived there, and like, I sat down and as soon as I sat down, the pastor preachers started saying something about day people, I want the keys, and I walked out. I was like, I don't have to do this. I'm I'm grown, and so like I feel, I feel that sometimes it's my answer would be, you know, struggle and other times like not get out. And I think that both of those are actually necessary because both of those will continue to UM. I think for me, there were there were two things that happened that increased the intensity of my sort of loud this about UM my different ways of thinking about queerness. And one was my last year and undergrad I spent every day with this boy uh sitting on the couch in one of the dorms and we would talk for hours, like every day, and we became really really close. And then I got drunk one night and my friends took my phone and called to him and said, you know, he's in love with you, right, And his response to that was I'm not gay. And it really caused for me a problem because I said, this is I can't feel this way about someone and have felt this way, and it was definitely, you know, more than flirty. Everyone noticed it, but like, I can't do this and that person at least not know who I am and who he is, and and I need to also like be willing to like start saying who it is that I am. And so that was a real transformative moment for me, I really and it was so transformative that I wrote an article for the school newspaper that was about our cans or like homophobia is an expression of sexism, and it was my first time writing anything about sexuality at all. Of it was mostly like you can't go backwards now, Sean like and like, I I don't know why I wanted to do it that way, but it was so public that I couldn't I couldn't recant it. It had to be there. And so that was like one emphatic moment of really just just trying to say I've been thinking a lot of these things for a long time now, I've been having conversations, I've been reading things. It's time to like say something that's like the churchy Pentecostle of me, like you gotta be both have holy bothus so and then like two thousand four elections really messed with me. I was a musician for a church on the second parish. I'll say your name if you want, uh, And I was I was a musician, and I was the director of the youth choir. And the two thousands of four elections when George bush Um was running on family value and there was so much and stuff right and the Defensive Marriage Act, Defensive Marriage Act, and uh. I remember, like, so I've graduated fro undergrad and I started my little online magazine with me and some people. He was writing things, and I was writing about queerness a little bit. But we had a like a circulation of like five people. All five of my friends would read it, so no one was reading it. But like I was trying to like process a lot of things that I was reading and trying to think about. And the Thursday before the election, there was a prayer that the pastor said we were going to have instead of church service. And as the elders were praying, they were saying, Lord, we know this election is about it's not about the economy, it's not about war. It's about the family. We need to save the family. And I said, this is a problem. And so I wrote the pastor and I said, we are a nonprofit organization and we took a political position tonight, and unless you want to UM get sued, we should probably give a balanced view of other options for people to vote for. And so I handed out material after church on that Sunday UM for other people that they could vote for that perhaps UM had more progressive policies that would actually be useful for people in West Philadelphia as opposed to this defensive marriage ack and got into arguments with people in the basement of the church. It was mind belowing because the queer people at the church, we're the ones argument. It was fascinating. The the election night, we had praising rehearsal and someone walks in and goes down in praise team rehearsal. It's the worst, it's the worst. And he walks in, he puts his fists in the air and he says, I made a vote for the family to day, I voted for Bush, and I said, in my head, I gotta go. I I said, this is I can no longer ethically like in the Donnie McClerkin of it all, I don't know. And then it turned out I can't say too much. They already know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I really don't already said too much. But any the person had their own complicated, slash violent story, violence that they acted on other people because they wanted to pretend that queerness isn't a thing that lives within them. And so you know, I left the church in two thousand five. I went to seminary. Years later, I find out about stuff that's happening. And the funniest part of all of this to me is they will still think that I am the center, and people who have repented are like, I'm just like this is and so like it. It took a series of being quiet, like have a very um quick temper, and I also responded to everything without thinking. I was a think later person, and I embarrassed myself enough by saying something first and then thinking about it later. I said, maybe you should just shut up, And so really I became introverted. I really I used to be an E. M. T. P. On the Myers brig and I like I'm an Ie or something like that, but like I am introverted. And part of that was a response to like really trying to like sit and think as opposed to just allow what other people will say to be the thing that I say, or the things that other people believe be the thing that I believe. It really took like a lot of like stillness, and I think I can try to practice something like compassion because I fundamentally recognized I could be somewhere else doing something else right now and be deeply unhappy and be practicing a kind of unethical behavior that I find abhorrent. Because I had certain kinds of opportunities and I got into certain kinds of doors, and I made a certain kind of set of choices within those contexts. But I also could be someone who was really like publicly homophobic and really hates himself and really like tell other people that they like That could also be me. And I mean, I've met so many of those folks, and some of them I used to call friends, and so like I recognized that kind of struggle and because I recognize it. I don't ever want to be dismissive while also being very clear like these are my ethics, this is who I am. But I also love like the noise of Black Church. That's something I am. I'm not giving up. It's it's something that I I think is it has transformative capacity. But also it's something that hasn't been fully honored because I think these musicians who died in the eighties and the nineties UM are an example of the kind of unkindness we can do to one another in community. As they are creating things for us, we can still be unkind to them. And so really trying to create contexts right in that context, make art in that context. That's about trying to to really compel a reckoning with the past. And to to to reckon with the past for me, means that you can't be um this passionate and you can't be dismissive because you have to try to understand contexts under which people make certain kinds of choices. As you speak about artists. It also made me think of during that time the population of black men who aren't living their truth who actually died because of that, and other people died in the process because of that as well, Like we don't even talk about that when it comes to black men. That was that it's hard to talk about. Yeah, it's hard to talk because there is so much shame, and you know, the shame isn't just for folks that go to church, Like that's the thing. It's like, it's a kind of because black. My my friend Jay Perry would say, black culture is churchy culture, and churchy does not mean Christian, and like it's like the conflation of churchy with Christian of actually is a big problem that we have. But like, because black culture is so I think culturally churchy, sometimes that does for a lot of people conflict with the kind of feel out cool orientation or doctrinal understanding of like a gender um sex um pleasure, sexuality. I'm sorry, but I was gonna ask you, but I know I didn't know when they're coming in with this question. But because you've had so many studies in the area, I'm always fascinated because I never I never called myself a religious person. I called myself more a spiritual person because I always get stuck in the the thoughts of how it became our religion and how you know, we didn't come here with that, And at some point it feels like, is that the one thing we thank the white man for that I don't know, like it just I don't I don't mean and how it doesn't sound uneducated it's to you, but like and you're trying, like how do you how does it direct? How do you erect this where we we know the history, you know, that's the that's the trickiest part. And we can say the same thing about Islam. But right you know, we're gonna we're gonna knock your teeth out, we're gonna cut your foot off. You don't you don't learn these ways. You know we're going to do something terrible to your body or to your mind. So it's the way we live under this book. It's so sometimes it it's weird to me because I'm like, wow, we really took this and it but oh I'm sorry. You know, to be rigid at one point was the distinction between being like pious as as opposed to like loosen these in these spiritual streets, you know, So it's like my my rigid, how rigid I am? Is how you distinguish me from the righteous? And the not righteous, and I think and and and the show you could it was wrong the first place, right, but but you know, and then I mean, you know, we could talk Ethiopia. We could talk a lot of stuff in terms of like, you know, the history of of you know, and and that kind of thing. That there, Africa is still Africa. Everything still came from there. Africa's Africa's Okay, what I'm saying or my understanding from some of what Shan was saying, I want to make sure that we don't get too far from it, because I really want to speak on it. Is that he talked about that Churchy versus Christian. The whole thing is that so even though our grandmothers may have right, so even though our grandparents may have gotten this rigid versus Christian right, what we're seeing now is this this really social phenomenon around churchy and what that means, and that if I look this way, if I dressed this way, if I speak these words, if I have this stone, if I do this thing, if I if I present, if I do this performance, that this performance is to be Christian as opposed to that. And I just and and I also want a Shan to expound on that. But I also want to ask you a question about this thing of our compassion, like the passion of compassion, like how passionate are you about your search? And or or should we be in our search for compassion? What space in our like religious institutions, is there space in there for that? Are we really talking about this this trying to seek out how compassionate we can really be? You got all that, Sean, We need you to talk about all of that was that was three things. That was three things. That was the churchy thing and then the whole thing about compassion, and then that was the history thing that I asked about too. So in the history, Yeah, I totally want to know, how do you find at home? How do you find a church home when you you know, I don't go to church no more, I don't. I don't. So like I left church and tooth, so I went to seminary and tooth that so when I left the church in Philly, I took literally I took the midnight train from three History station to Georgia and I went to seminary in Atlanta. And my first year I was I was a chaplain at the Metro State Prison for women, UM, and we were supposed to conduct their church service weekly and also pray with they gave They gave us a woman to meet with weekly for counseling. And my the person I met with weekly said to me one week, I like you because you don't pray, said thank you, and uh she she asked me, are you gay? I said yeah, I am. She was like, that's why I like it. So we had to preach the sermons. I preached. The sermon that's the last sermon I ever preached was at one of the church services UM at Metro State Prison for Women. I left that program because I felt it was unethical what we were doing. Um, I'm a prison abolitionist, and UM I found it. I didn't have the language. I had not read prison I listeners at that point, but I felt that there was something really wrong with asking us to come in every Sunday have a prayer service. Everybody's not Christian, but still everything that we're doing for them is very very not just Christians because Catholics are Christians. It's like, no, this is a very specific kind of eat black pentecostal ish, nondenominational ish practice of of of Christianity. That we're doing for the women every week, and I had to. I had to leave it because it felt unethical and so that was me really leaving church. And I haven't since really sought too hard for a church home. It's not something that I look for. What the Black Church does well, and what it historically did well was provide space. Literally, It's like it's a space that you could go um weekly sometimes I was daily. You knew it would be open, you knew that they would have resources. You knew that you could like come and sing music, you could learn things. The quire don't sound good, it don't matter, Like you're still gonna go to choire rehearsal, You're still gonna try to learn. Like it became a form of gathering in community with others that you knew was available. And I think that the availability of the space and what it provided in terms of like social community actually got conflated with the doctrines of certain churches to say that because the space was provided, the doctrines of the church must be right, and so that rigidity is actually a miss. It seems to me a misunderstanding of what it was actually offering. That rigidity is a refusal to actually understand that what, more than anything, what the church was providing with space. I think that had it been another tradition that offered that same kind of space and that kind of regularity of gathering, then it would be that other kind of thing as opposed to church as the sort of dominant. And I think that the thing that people like me laugh is a place to go where that kind of regularity, where people know you'll just show up and you'll do the things, and you'll be there with the people, and you'll learn things, and you'll grow together, and you'll argue with each other, you won't like each other, and you'll find a new one. But like it's there's something really uh that's community because it's not about agreement, it's about like being together and finding things together, and so like inconsistency. And so I think that the rigidity. Um I often wonder if I am just as rigid, but just now in in another direction. I'm really really rigid about like prison abolition. I'm really really rigid about queerness. I'm really really rich about loving black people. And I'm really not gonna have been do that kind of stuff, and you know I don't, but I don't want it to feel or be doctrine there in the way that you know when I was a young person. I mean, y'all going to help, that's okay, that's what you're gonna do, like and just being very much like, that's that's you. That's the decision that you have made. And so trying to not be rigid, but also trying to still have a sense of consistency. And it feels really important to me to to try to to try to do that. I forgot the other two classes. I'm sorry, it's all good. I just I feel like the way that we interact with each other has to have like a consistent baseline. And when we're talking about when we talk about belief and we talk about you know, um, what kind of binds us together in spirit that if it's absent of um, you know, compassion and like you said, you you feel like those are things you're original and I'm rigid about compassion. The thing to be rigid about should be like a can I just say, okay, I remember one thing I wanted to say. I wanted to say that Philly was a really important city for me to be in when I was having my various existential crisis because Philly is also the first place I have ever lived where I was meeting consistently people who are variously identified spiritually, and also it being a really black Muslim city. Like I remember meeting an organist and I was like, oh, you play really good? Did you grow up kajak for Church of Ditton Christ And he responded and said I'm a Pentecostal Muslim and kept walking and I said, that doesn't make any sense, and yet, welcome to Philly. I went on a date with someone and we were arguing at the table about he's Jehovah's Witness and Muslim, and it's like I was real Pentecostal still at that point, and like neither one of us thinks we're going to heaven? Were we both think we're going to Hell. We're defending our spiritual practices very very deeply, while at the same time like also flirting with each other. It was fastest and like Philly is, you know. I was a musician for two churches with um women pastors. One was really big. There were many churches in Philly with women pastors that have big congregations, which I had never been in the city before. With this kind of religious complexity. I was gonna say, it's a few queer congregations as well, and Philly that are really kind of dope and special. I was playing for one church and we had gone, uh, and she had gone to preach at this other church, and they were announcing this person who was going to be preaching in a couple of weeks, and I knew. I said, well, that pastor is a lesbian and she's out. She has an open of the firm, And I said, what kind of church are we? Yeah, it was Philly is for me, uh, such an important zone to think about the spiritual practices of black folks. And I think being there and seeing and being a part of that kind of deep complexity, like literally going to church with folks who was like shouting one day and I was like, well I just took the shado so and you're like the next day. But it was like it was it was. I think it was necessary though, because it really was able to finally dislodge me from this idea that one Pentecostals are the only church people. Church people are the only ones that are saved maybe saved. It's not a thing that you even need because what does that concept actually do? But like it was the first place that compelled me, forced me to confront a lot of the accepted realities because I was looking at things but this is like I'm saying, this is reality, but what is happening doesn't cohere with what I'm saying, And like having to deal with that and like a real place was really difficult, but it was a real It was a real, real, real gift And I'm really thankful um for having that kind of confrontation in that kind of place. More conversation after the break. What I'm gathering is that stillness is important m writing too, because you know, typically we're all by ourselves with our pins, you know, or you know, our computers or whatever. Where we're typically by ourselves. It's just our thoughts on paper, and paper tends to you know. I I say this that when you know you write it down, it becomes real. Yeah. So in these moments when you or I, anybody, all of us, we're trying to figure out our way because we've been so um indoctrinated by our parents and our community um about what is right. UM. We we realized that there is no absolutes when it comes to uh a church or community. You know, Um, there's no absolutes were really multidimensional as people. There's there's so many flavors in one person that is is really not fair to um to uh put folks in boxes. The boxes are unhealthy for us in my opinion. And eventually, if you manage to travel a little bit, if you manage to have conversations with with other people, with just other people, sometimes it's got to bust. Sometimes it's on a flight, Sometimes it's just in the in the market or in the mall, you know, having a conversation with someone. Um if if if those things open our minds, and ultimately it's up to us to own ourselves and to not um box ourselves in and beat ourselves up because because sometimes it's that's the way it seems that the church community is it's abusive. I know, I know, I'm not supposed to say that. That's the way it looks to me, it looks like that's the way it feels too, that it can be very abusive. And that's compassion thing you're talking about. It seems like the winner. Where is the compassion, Where's the kindness, where's the love? Where's the understanding that we we all are sinners. Um right Am I am? I making example? Well, would also say that is by telling you that you are wrong, But the things that they tell you that you're wrong about, I would rather say, whould tell me what my sin is? I was like, the thing about is that because this is something we all think about so much in our private spaces, and it's so hard to just be really honest about what we're actually thinking because I think it's one of the last things that we struggle with being truly honest about because we're really afraid of what people will say and what they will think about us because and and and I don't know what the because it is, but I do know that that is very true and that Um. So when we do have questions and we when we are really trying to trust our own instincts, it becomes an argument within ourselves. First, um, because there's that voice inside you that's consistently saying, well, no, you can't think about that, because if you think about that, then you're going down that road you're not supposed to go down. And you know what we did that it's gonna end up boom in this place You've been trying to avoid ever since you ever started learning about your relationship with God. And I think there's this thing that that that inner argument is the first one and it is the last one. You know, it is the one that starts the whole process, and it's the one that ends that process or transforms that process in the very end. And I know that that's why many of them, I know why this is a hard conversation for us to have, because I know that we're all still having that conversation within ourselves at least I know that I am. You know what I mean. But I really encourage everybody, if I had anything to say, will be encourage everyone to really be honest in that conversation with yourself as much as possible. Because the thing is that what a Sean has told you again and again is that you can't have this dual existence and justify it for a very long time if you are unhappy and if you're not being honest in the conversation having with the self, and then it really it really begins there. And the compassion that we're talking about, that passionate compassion and starts with the self too. Yeah, you must be compassionate to the self. If you're ever going to walk into an institution of any sort and love the person who you are and not allow anything that is said has done in that institution to define you. If you have not had that important conversation with yourself, it is just essential, and you will set yourself up for others to hurt you. You will, you will get harmed otherwise, No, no, please, you see we were saying, I just want to say really quickly. I had a friend years ago who once I started like thinking differently about sexuality, he was also a church kid. I would tell him like, well, I don't think the Bible actually says that, and Hebrew doesn't say that in Greek. And he would say to me explicitly, don't talk to me about that. I don't want to hear it. And his his reason was if I and he said it, like, if I find out that I was wrong about that and what the church said about that, when will it end? Because I don't know how far I'll have to go to figure out maybe like everything that I thought that I believe is wrong, and I'm just I don't want to have to deal with that kind of impact and I'd rather not think about it at all, And so I do think that we have to be willing to ask ourselves those questions. And like Jill was saying, you have to, like if you if you can't ask it, maybe write it down with a pen or use your cell phone and send yourself a note. But like like try to like at least at least be honest with yourself because you know, I also I still it's a place. It's a place that has compassion too. That's the thing. Like it also taught me how to love. It taught me how to ask questions and actually being in church taught me leadership skills. Literally, like they said, do this church service and I was fifteen and I said, okay. Like it taught me so much about how to be a person who loves myself. Like and that's the thing I struggled with loving myself. I didn't like myself. But like you know, I've been singing my whole life. Um, and I'm not happy about that part. But I really, actually, really, really really the one thing I don't question is if I love myself and if I am kind to myself. But like I think that it is it's so hard to hold the need for this kind of compassion because to begin to ask any of these questions, it can uncovered so much. But I think there's so much beauty that is possible to be discovered in the uncovering if we are in certain kinds of communities that will hold us and care while we are doing that kind of uncovered work. So I believe suppression is the brother sister of depression. Yes, And what's what's my favorite? One of my favorite lines is running ain't gonna save you? Hm? So true? M can you tell to a couple of boys I know trying to run, running ain't gonna say it? Doesn't say nah, this is this is your right, this is This is such a tough conversation because wow, I mean, yeah, we can see all the disparities. It could see them. They're they're bold, they're they've they've got um neon around the captions. We could see it all and pretending that it's not there. I'm not I cannot see how it benefits us. I'm not sure. I love the idea that there's a community. I love the fact that that they're sharing of information that building the community. I think I mentioned that. I think I like that part. But and that's the part you take to go to church. And I'm not. I never called myself a Christian, but I shout out to Pastor Waller Alfred Street Baptis over the n d C. I mean, because past the wall to be given the good sermons and sometimes I just need a little motivation and whatnot. But you know, I still say, I don't know, I haven't picked my squad. Squad is just me and the Lord, my relationship. That's me in the Lord. And I picked my squaw. That sound sound pretty squad deep to me, Like yeah, me and the Lord, we're tight. And then my grandma because she got my back up dead. So you know, it's like us three traditionally, you know, I say what's up to him and her? And there were good yeah, but you know, I'm agnostic, but I listened to Therenda Clark Coles, I am still here became like, look, I actually there was a lot that was trying to conspire against my being here in this world today, and like a lot that could have you know, taking me out. Most of it was in the church, and like, I'm but I'm still here, and I'm really thankful that I'm still here. And so like sometimes it's like the sermon has the message, the song has the message. Tell you right now, I shout, I shout because I'm not listen. I'm gonna tell you right now that that that one thing about that touches me is that is that dance. Shout right there, that right there, because I will find a corner and get it out. Okay, you know it is what it is. I think we all know where the spirit and the energy connects. And the shouting the windings, that's where it comes from. The shouting the winding stems systems. Yes, that's real. I mean, that's the argument of black film, costal breath. It's literally dark. It's like, this is the this is the thing. Yes, that's the consistency that whatever, all the things that we've brought in our in our bodies, in our DNA, they are still very very relevant. They still occur, all of it, and we need it, still need it, We need it still. I ain't following all the brules though, y'all got that. I don't know. I'm good on the rule. You know. I like my parents. I likes my parents and my sex before marriage or else, I would have never had no sex. Hello, not sex before marriage. I put that on as a prescription because I know too many people. People held out and they made And I'm glad you know to people because I don't know a single solitary one. I know several. I don't know what. You know. You got j W homies, so you know, first squad, this is true. Yeah, this is true. Yeah, I'm telling you right now, no one, no one. I don't know what. But y'all sound like a bunch of sinnis to me. We all are underway. Guess what. You also sound like a bunch of humans. I thank you so much for listening to Jay dot Ill the podcast. I thank you with Sean, you know, Opening Doors is a great way to see what's on the other side. Thank you, y'all, Thank you, thank you. How do you eat an elephant? One by it kind? Hey, y'all, it's like yah feeling in for Amber today and we just want to say thank you again to our guests, as Sean Crawley, who shared a story that so many can relate to, because the intricacies of church are real. So if you're struggling with leaving a church or finding a new spiritual path, we want to encourage you to check out some of his work like Black Pentecostal Breath, The Aesthetics of Possibility, and The Lonely Letters. We'll drop a link to both of these books and more in the show notes. You can find a Sean on social media. His Instagram is a Sean Crawley and a Sean Crawley Art. You can also find him on Twitter at a on Crawley. Thanks Shaw, and always thank you for listening. Hi. If you have comments on something we said in this episode called eight six six, Hey Jill, if you want to add to this conversation that's eight six six nine five four five by don't forget to tell us your name and the episode you're referring to. You might just hear your message on a future episode. Thank you for listening to Jill Scott presents Jay dot Ill. The podcast Jay dot Ill is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.