Centering Black Youth Wellbeing
This virtual community of practice explores ways to center the wellbeing of Black young people and... View more
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How can we navigate tension with themes of colonialism and religion?
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How can we navigate tension with themes of colonialism and religion?
I was listening to an interview with Malcolm X the other day, and I’m familiar with some of the sermons from Martin Luther King Jr. There are a variety of ways that Black leaders have approached activism and religion. I’ve had all sorts of expression of religion from Black students in my classes – Muslim, Christian, Rastafarian – but I feel society and critical theory pushing negative messaging around religion.
In listening to the first lecture in the Centering Black Youth Wellbeing course I saw this when describing White Supremacy: Christianity is associated with colonialism, clearly (religion doesn’t have a great track record here), and thus villified. But I don’t have a clear thought on how to approach this or post-colonial theory with Black Christian students.
I’m curious how you all both honour and challenge religion in your circles?
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3 Replies
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By leveraging the values of compassion, mercy, and service to others inherent in faith-based organizations, social services can be tailored to meet the specific needs of Black youth. Collaborating with faith leaders has been identified as a strategy to enhance community health, emphasizing the importance of partnerships between social service providers and religious institutions (Heward-Mills et al., 2018).
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What a beauty-filled inquiry. I am going to return to add to this thread. But first, I need to sit with its depths, complexity, and nuances, while gathering my experiences.
Thank you for this prompt.
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Thank you for your insightful opinion. I am particularly interested in religion and the framework it oppresses, especially gender/sexuality diversity and religion, so I became interested in your opinion. Like anything else, religion does not exist alone like an island. They are under the influence of society and the system and are not free from the interests of people and groups responsible for their religion.
There are also many cases where they are stingy in applying and interpreting their scriptures in the context of reality. For example, the Bible verse about loving your neighbour as yourself loses its power when today’s religions and religious people who deny homosexuality cite the Leviticus verse. Unfortunately, their interpretation of Leviticus contributes to strengthening the foundation of hatred towards sexual minorities.
Maybe we should learn archaeological anthropology, but I think we need to look into how people in Africa, the Americas, and Asia lived before Western imperialism and white supremacy were implanted, and we may be able to find an answer. I was thinking, why not restore and find the “indigenous spiritual traditions” mentioned in the table you presented and what we learned and apply them to the modern context?
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These are great points, and I do think in a way, returning to a time before Western white supremacy took root and applying what was done then to a modern context would be an interesting thought.
I think that Christianity in particular does have quite a bad track record when it comes to spreading hatred. But I do think that it is harmful to over-generalize all of Christianity or Christians as exhibiting hatred toward others.
I don’t know enough on this topic to truly form an educated opinion either way, but I think that what the original poster is questioning is how to marry the fact that Christianity does have such a bad track record with the fact that there are many Black youth and their families that are in fact Christian without dismissing their religious beliefs or affiliations. I do think that people do have a fair bit of agency in which religion (if any) they choose to follow, though I agree that environment and society certainly factors into this decision.
I almost wonder if the best thing to do (like the lectures said in Module 3), would be to just broach the subject with those Black youth and their families. Have a conversation with them. How do they feel about it? What are their thoughts and experiences?
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