Book Explores Lives of Black Lesbian Religious Leaders

ATLANTA — In her new book, “Hidden Histories: Faith and Black Lesbian Leadership,” Georgia State University researcher Monique Moultrie challenges prevailing notions of the interactions among race, gender, sexual identities and spirituality.

The book explores the oral narratives of Black lesbian religious leaders in the United States with the intent to “elevate the stories of Black women who proudly claim a lesbian and religious identity,” and shares how these leaders combat racism, sexism and homophobia, said Moultrie, an associate professor of Africana Studies and Religious Studies.

Through their life stories, Moultrie highlights the qualities that make these women role models for feminist leadership and illustrates how their authenticity, commitment to social justice, collaborative approach and spirituality promote change. Moultrie also explores how their advocacy for social justice can offer inspiration to anyone looking to become a more effective leader.

Question: What made you interested in stories about Black lesbian religious leaders in the U.S.?

Answer: I grew up in a very conservative Christian community and I spent a great deal of time as a high school student campaigning for all things conservative Christian agenda-wise, which included anti-gay everything. The book became my mea culpa, my trying to do recompense for how publicly wrong I was in the beginning and trying to show you can learn better, you can change your mind and you can still learn through life.

The second avenue, the more scholarly answer, is I started doing these interviews as a graduate student. The premise on which I was hired was, “Let’s tell the story of the first gay bishop of so-and-so, the first ordained so-and-so.” And typically, those who are first in society are men so that’s what the story became.

One of the participants unexpectedly died and he had not told his story other places. That put a bug in my ear that these stories are transformative and they’re meaningful and they’re life lessons for other folks. I started thinking, “How could we amplify these messages?”

Q: What was the research process like in writing this book?

A: The process for doing oral history does involve that deeper exploration of a person’s life history. For me, the story I was interested in was this social justice activism and leadership. What does it mean to lead with an orientation towards healing the world and fixing the world? And that meant my prep work was, “Let’s learn where these folks are coming from. What are their biographies? What’s their story? What in their makeup made them amenable to giving a damn?” Because not everyone comes to the planet and cares about anyone else. So why did they?

So doing that work of oral history is you do your biography work and then you make the ask of, “Hey, I am a stranger to you, but I would like for you to tell me your most intimate stories.”

Recovering some of those pieces that may not be a part of how a person thinks about their story is the work of oral history. And then making some analysis of it. Once I had thousands and thousands of pages of transcripts, the goal was, “What’s the thread? What holds these very different people together? What’s the story here?”

Q: What surprised you the most about the process of this work?

A: In this work, I didn’t really delve into questions about the interiority of their lives. It surprised me because I wasn’t aware I was doing it until I looked at the bulk of the questions — and the responses in the transcripts — and I knew data that the transcripts didn’t show me. I had this decision to make, like, “Do you insert what wasn’t on record?” I chose not to. I stand by that ethical decision that I made. I think people don’t owe you all of themselves and that there’s a way in which society requires you to be sort of “on” all the time.

And when you’re a great activist but a poor partner, people are stunned because you’re supposed to be this justice-seeking person on every avenue of your life and in every day of every moment of your life. And you know, like, what if Dr. King cuts you off in traffic or if I got flipped the bird by the president? What do I do with that? I felt like, sometimes we expect too much of our leaders, of our heroes. And I wanted them to have some pieces that were theirs that the public didn’t have access to. So that was surprising.

Q: How did sharing stories from women of different faiths provide insight into issues faced by Black lesbian religious leaders?

A: No matter which tradition these people came from, there was an innate spirituality within each of them. That was their source of restoration and perhaps even their catalyst for social justice animation, the feeling that there is something greater that we are called to do.

And that they had these schisms of how their faith and their activism and their identities didn’t always reconcile for themselves and for others. And I think that was shared across religious tradition as well, that it wasn’t just, “Oh, this is a particular problem for Christians.” I heard it from Jews. I heard it from secularists. I heard it from Buddhists. I heard it from spiritualists. I heard it from African indigenous practitioners. They all have these tensions. They all have these schisms.

I found that really fascinating — that there wasn’t any one right religion to go to. Because if the answer had been “All of these people have this problem in Christianity, but none of them have it in Buddhism,” then let’s send everyone to be trained to be a Buddhist meditator. That wasn’t the case. And that for me was helpful too, because, again, we want these neat packages. We want to be able to send someone to the place that gets it right or the movement that does it best. And the answer was there isn’t one. And I think that’s true to life. That’s true to life experience.

Q: You share this powerful image of “shattering stained-glass ceilings.” What do you mean by that?

A: What I found is that denomination wasn’t the issue. There is a Black, gay-affirming denomination. Well, there are several, but at the time when I was interviewing, there was one that was created by a Black gay man, Carl Bean, called Unity Fellowship. When I started doing interviews, I just thought everyone would be in Unity because, duh, it’s for us, by us. And the majority of my participants were like, “Yeah, I went there. It didn’t really rock with me.” And largely, that was around gender and patriarchy.

For those who organized within Metropolitan Community Church, which is predominantly white, racism and sexism were their things to shatter in this stained-glass ceiling. But sexism was always there. It was always a component. So, if you were in an all-Black space, it was probably just sexism. If you were in a predominantly white space, it was definitely racism, but it was also sexism.

So many of them noticed, like, “We’re willing to change everything else. We’re going to do differently. We’re not going to say that being gay is an abomination. We’re not going to say that our likes and loves are sinful. We’re totally rewriting the way we look at this biblical text. And yet, Paul was right about women in leadership.” Like, really? We have discounted three quarters of what Paul was saying but this is the thing he was right on? Seriously?

I think, particularly in the Black church context, and this is something I know quite intimately, that patriarchy is one of the pillars. It’s one of the foundations of the tradition. I say that because Black church spaces are majority female. That remains true even when you’re talking about gay-affirming spaces.

So if we wanted to not hold up patriarchy, we could do it on a random Tuesday. I mean, literally a group call and say, “We’re not getting tithes, we’re not showing up, we’re not frying chicken, we’re not watching nobody’s kids, we’re not teaching Sunday school. We literally are doing nothing until the church acknowledges these women’s roles and women’s gifts. And the church would not open that Sunday.” So, the result of that is that innate patriarchy that women accept about themselves that has to be fought as well. And that doesn’t change in gay and lesbian spaces or predominantly heterosexual spaces.

Q: Do you have any sense of differences between generations? What do you expect (or hope) to see in the Black, queer religious community in the future?

A: The main difference I think I can see — and it’s perhaps too early to make conjectures from the younger leaders — is the ability to be out earlier in their lives, and to be authentically their selves earlier in their lives, gave them a wider platform of things that they could be concerned about.

Most of the senior leaders that I interviewed had that, “I knew I was a religious leader. I knew I was called. And so I worked in the church until I felt like, ‘Oh, I’m going to be called a fraud because I got this thing that I know is in my heart and in my mind. I like girls. I can’t say it to anyone.’” And so they worked in a religious space and then they stopped. I saw in their journeys this long period to get to, “I am a queer lesbian, religious leader, activist.” And it took many of them most of their lives to get there.

And these younger leaders start knowing this at 13, knowing this at 14, coming out at 18, coming out at 20. And so that whole division, schism process, because it starts so much earlier for them, they are more reconciled and I think are able to activate themselves in these multiple spaces at much earlier ages. I think we’re going to see a longevity in these movements and a collaborative longevity from these younger leaders because they’re able to be themselves sooner.

Q: What are you most proud of in your work and in writing this book?

A: I am most proud that the goal I had — to have them be as present as I was — was achieved. I literally set out with a goal that half the book would be just their words, would be their transcripts. And I achieved that. Over half the book — like 43,000 words — come from their transcripts. I’m proud of that because this is their story. I’m simply trying to amplify it.

My work is to hold the megaphone whenever I get an opportunity, to hold the beacon light and shine it on these women and say, “This is what we should be looking at.” And I’m proud in any endeavor that I get to do that, that I get to shine light, that I get to say loudly, “Listen to these women over here, the leaders we’re waiting for.” In every opportunity I get to do that, I’m proud.

Q: What are you hoping readers will take away from this book?

A: I don’t think I’m just writing a book for queer leaders. I think I’m writing a book for anyone who’s interested in leadership and who wants to understand, “How do I make social change? How do I change the world?”

I want you to look at these women’s examples as sustainable models. I want the reader to come back from the text going, “OK, I can do it, too.”

Because yes, these are all model exemplars. They are phenomenal women. They are charismatic and talented and resourced and networked. But they also all started somewhere. And for me, what I’m producing or trying to share is that this innate power to change the world is in each of us as leaders.