Unveiling Black Faith & Justice: Danyelle Thomas and 'The Day God Saw Me As Black

Join host Esther Dillard on 'The Color Between The Lines' for an in-depth discussion with D. Danyelle Thomas, a celebrated author, speaker, and activist in Black faith and spirituality. In this episode, Danyelle delves into her influential book, "The Day God Saw Me As Black," providing deep insights into the intersections of faith, race, and social justice.

Danyelle articulates her experiences and the challenges she has faced within the religious community, and elaborates on how her initiative, Unfit Christian, reconciles traditional Christian doctrines with African spiritual practices. This conversation not only highlights her unique viewpoints but also examines the wider impact of her work on fostering liberation and societal transformation. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the nuanced realities of Black religious life or seeking motivation to pursue social justice through faith.

With a background that includes contributions to major outlets like Rolling Stone, Essence, and NBC News, Danyelle's perspective is an essential addition to contemporary discussions on faith and liberation. Tune in to discover how Danyelle Thomas is redefining public theology with boldness and authenticity.

🔔 Subscribe to our podcast for more enlightening dialogues on faith, justice, and the transformative power of spirituality in contemporary social issues.

#BlackSpirituality #JusticeInFaith #DanyelleThomas #TheColorBetweenTheLines #PublicTheology #ChristianReform #AfricanSpirituality #SocialJusticeFaith #InspirationalBooks #PodcastOnFaith

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Transcript

00:00:08 
I'm Esther Dillard on the Black Information Network, chatting with writers 
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and authors who offer an added perspective for our listeners. This is 
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the color between the lines.  
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On this edition of the color between the lines, we're speaking with 
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an author that is talking about faith, 
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about critiquing white supremacy in the Black Church tradition and the Black Church.  
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The book we're talking about is the day God saw me as black and the author is D Danielle Thomas. 
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She is a faith and spirituality leader as well as a founder of the unfit Christian. 
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Her work has been featured in essence the Smithsonian National Museum of African American 
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History and Culture, just to name a few. 
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We get her thoughts on what might be, what some might describe as controversial 
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points of view. Welcome D Danielle Thomas to the B I N. Thank you for having me. 
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Oh, this book dives deep into why you joined the ministry when you had some major concerns and criticisms about the Black Church and what you believe. 
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Deep. 
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And this is not new as far as folks who. 
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Have been pulling out some of these. 
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One reason I believe stemmed from the passing of your father you wrote about in the chapter called the Preacher's Kid, that you never thought you'd become a pastor or a leader in the church. 
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But you did. 
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Do you think that caring for your dad during his last days before he passed was the reason why? 
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No. 
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I honestly never thought I would go into ministry. 
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But when he passed, it reminded me just how brief life is. 
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And literally, I just didn't want to die with all this conflict with all of this wisdom, with all of this journey within me, as far as my faith was concerned, of course, his passing was a charge in my faith. 
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It challenged all the things that it had been marvelous to me about dealing with death and dealing with three a challenge that space that a lot of Christians find ourselves in, which is this idealization. 
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Of all, feelings must be good, right? 
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Must. 
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Feel good even in the midst of some of the most. 
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Worst parts of. 
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Human. 
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I actually listened to Kirk Franklin today talk about this very thing on his Instagram, and he's he's talking about being in Florida and witnessing the devastation. 
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Of these two hurricanes that have just passed and talking about his frustration with the ways in which Christians like to throw scripture at everything, and a lot of religious cliche and everything. 
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And I found myself in that same location in dealing with my dad's passing. 
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And so it led me to creating unfit question and starting to have these. 
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I like to say that I was processing and thinking aloud, but even then, without the intention to become a pastor. 
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But once folks started to tune in and start to find themselves. 
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Those identifying within my words within my language, they sought me out in that way of being a leader of giving an offering pastoral care. 
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So I kind of fell into it. I like to say. 
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I was well and told to become a pastor as opposed to desiring to be someone, but it's not a path that I regret. 
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In healing. 
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Other folks relationship to the church by offering a different perspective or paradigm of a pastoral experience. I also feel my own. I became the kind of pastor and offered the kind of pastoral care that I wish I received. 
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In my time as a member of various churches. 
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That's the fact that you became conflicted with church philosophy and traditions when you started taking courses in college. 
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And at one point, you feel you, you appeared that you were going to abandon the church. 
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What made you come back to the ministry and how is your ministry different than what you grew up with? 
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I mean, it always came down to this idea of core belief in the spirituality of blackness and of black people. 
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I think more than the. 
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I think the church houses or in some ways interests, our spiritual expressions. 
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Think black folks. 
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Just have this innate connection to spirit. This innate connection to something that is bigger and more divine than our mortal human existence. 
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And for me, it was difficult to walk away from that. 
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For me, a separation from the spirit would also mean a separation from community. I think a lot of folks are very culturally fishing, if not professed fishing of faith. They at least have a deep cultural connection to what the Black Church has offered to our community and has. 
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Established as part of our communal identity. So for me. 
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I always put it this way. 
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Blackness has outlived Jesus. 
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It's older than Jesus. 
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And whether or not I censor my face in this particular video, there is still a deep connection to spirit for me that will not allow me to say it doesn't exist. 
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Doesn't matter, but it's not something that I want to be part of my life. That connection to my culture and to my people. 
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Supersedes any kind. 
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Fault or issue or unbridged I may take with the church, and there's certainly quite a few. 
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But it matters to me to be in that deep community. And so I created that kind of community where people can show up as their whole selves the reason. 
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Book is called the bigot saw me as black is because for so many of us, we showed up in religious faces having to compartmentalize parts of our identity. 
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We could show up as the maybe gender self, but not the sexuality. 
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We can show up in black churches the racial stuff, or maybe not the radical self that questions and interrogate the things that have been talked to us about our color and our identity and what that means for us in this world. 
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So I created a space. 
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That I felt allowed folks to show up as their whole self, including their questioning self including their agnostic self including their not Christian self and still have that space of community to connect to, spirit and discuss the things of the school with. 
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The confines, or at least most of the conflicts that many of us have experienced in traditional church. 
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So I think that's what differentiates my work is that it does offer that familiarity that most of us feel love and long for when we have been in Community. 
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The black church. 
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But also offers that freedom and liberation that many of us have been demanding from that. 
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But haven't found. 
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In your chapter called Black and Ugly as ever. 
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You talk about some of the scriptures used over the years by white Christians as the reason for black people not becoming successful and why they were subject to servants. 
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More and in your opinion, are those things that you feel like the Black Church has neglected to teach in those Sunday school classes and Bible classes because it's just too painful. 
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Do you think it's just something that they don't think that it's important to address? 
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I think, ironically enough, the Black Church actually has a very for the most part, or at least the one that I experienced that there are different experiences of the Black Church. 
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I can admit to that when I think of some of the popular. 
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Sound bites that are coming out from the Black Church these days that sound very white to them. This is in nature, but the one I grew up with had a very strong black ethic and politics and identity. 
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Those things were talked about. 
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The problem is that the primacy doesn't begin and end with our enslavement. 
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Right. It is literally this idea of dehumanizing black bodies as well. 
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And so our teachings around racial identity may be very black. But our teachings around sex are suppressed. 
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Our teachings around gender arsenic is our teaching around every other facet of most of our ideas. 
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Communities tend to be rooted and grounded in a very systemic theology, and so I think that is where the issue comes in and this this separation, this striation, if you will, for most folks, engagement with the institution. 
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Belongs there. 
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It's like you're black. Yes, but everything else that you've taught me about myself is anti black and engages and deep anti blackness. 
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And so I I don't think the church is afraid to approach race. 
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But I do think it is afraid to approach the idea that it's theology in every other regard is a re articulation of white supremacy. 
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For those who are of you who are just joining us, I'm Esther Dillard with the blank information network and we're speaking with spiritual leader and writer, Doctor. 
00:09:01 
I'm sorry. D Danielle Thomas, who is a founder of the unfit Christian and dot, the author of the book the Day God, saw me as black. 
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You address a lot of different points in this book, but I believe what? 
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I wonder, I wanted to make sure that you got out what you wanted readers to come away with as far as the central message and and you'll be able to articulate that. 
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Yeah, absolutely. 
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I always want folks to know when they are reading this book. First of all, I'm not classified into you. 
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I have no interest in making efficient or taking away from your beliefs. 
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I want you to know that there is room to consider who you are and how God sees you. 
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Because it matters how God sees you. 
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You can only receive the God that you understand. 
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And it's the. 
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Way you understand, God is. See your oppression. 
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Will begin to associate oppression with holiness. 
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You will begin to associate it with what makes you redeemed with what has staged you, as opposed to what may be hindering you from having life abundant here. 
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When folks read this book. 
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I don't ask them to think what I think. 
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I simply want them to take the material and think about it. 
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I'll never tell you what to think. 
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I just want you to think so. When you walk away, I want you to walk away knowing that you have. 
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To question back to question your identity, to question how your understanding of that had served you or not served you and trust that God has made for all of it. 
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Think a lot of us were given an understanding of that. 
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Was very well that doesn't allow questioning. 
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That doesn't allow contemplation, I think. 
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My experience, we grew up in a A state and a institution that demonized intellectual. 
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So I want folks to know that you can be curious and you can steal the five. You can be angry about your experience in this world at the point of your intersections of gender, fast race, sexuality, ability, etcetera, so forth. 
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And still have a God that loves you. 
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Or you can decide that you don't see yourself reflected in this experience and choose. 
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To. 
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Forward in a way that feels satisfactory to you. 
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The day that saw me as black as is nearly a turning point is not a final. 
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It is literally a way in which we're supposed to begin to reframe their thinking and identity as it comes to their relationship with God, and how that relationship. 
00:11:30 
Is being related to every other part of community that they are part of, yeah. 
00:11:35 
It's funny, but when I was reading the book I kind of felt like it was part of. 
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Not only is the day God saw me as black, but as feminine because it is a very big part of how people relate in the church because it's their very masculine. 
00:11:43 
Yeah. 
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You know. 
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Absolutely. 
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Yeah, part of the church where feminine being feminine and being able to be outspoken is kind of like a dichotomy there. 
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Right. 
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You bring about, you bring that out in the book a lot. 
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I do because for me, as a black woman, I live in the experience where massage noir dictates. I never know if the discrimination is because of my race or my gender. 
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Is no beginning and there is no end. 
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And in black spaces, particularly the institutional Black Church, where I should find rested from racism, I am still dealing with what it means to be a black woman in spaces where black women are not always loved. 
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But we're not always well funded, even though we serve in so many capacities of making the Church of faith face we serve in the CAP. 
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People still welcome, literally in our sanctuary, and often we are bullied as a pulpit or we get access to it is to continue to uphold patriarchy and not to do what the liberation. And so it's very important for me to talk about that experience. 
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For black women or women in general, not even just black women, you look at a Christian Church, the majority of its attendance is women. 
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Literally create these churches. 
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We sustain their membership by our direct participation, but also. 
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As the people who bear children and that of course includes, you know, non binary folks who are able to bear children. 
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But we reproduce the next generation. 
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We are the people who keep this. 
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We keep the lights on, quite literally so to not include us and to not make that our voices matter. 
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And for many of us to then internalize that oppression as normative and to not see an option otherwise because. 
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Like the religious text normalizes or has been used to normalize racism, it has also been used to normalize and simplify sexism. 
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So I wanted to offer people a different perspective. 
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A different way of seeing their feminine or I should say non masculine identity because I want to include people who are of all marginalized genders and that may not be cisgender identity as well, but as a as a black cisgender woman, it was extremely important to me to. 
00:14:05 
That. 
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Up, because if not for the women, there would be no gospel. 
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Quite literally it. 
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Jesus appears to women first. 
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When he's resurrected, so without the woman, there would be no gospels of resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
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And for me, having gone through so much of all of this experience being shaped and molded by women, my mother being my first sight or first sex of what God is. 
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And the women preachers who raised me and shaped me, I could not have written this book without the essential idea that it needs to be seen as both black and feminine. And those things together. 
00:14:42 
Well, Deanne Thomas, we appreciate your time and thank you for joining us on the BIN. 
00:14:47 
Thank you for having me. 
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That's it for this edition of the color between the lines. 
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Name is Esther. 
00:14:53 
The book is called the day God saw me as black. 
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This is the black information network. 
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