Black, Gay, British, Christian, Queer: the Church and the famine of Grace

Abstract

As a priest, theologian, art historian, Canadian, Queer, white woman, I have received Jarel Robinson-Brown’s words as longed-for and profoundly challenging gifts. He offers his book Black, Gay, British, Christian, Queer to all, though I am aware that, like Toni Morrison’s novels and James Baldwin’s essays, these words of theology and lived experience have not been written for white audiences. Available to white Christians through Robinson-Brown’s generosity, the only response that can possibly be offered is gratitude. Robinson-Brown’s language of “us,” “we” and “I” open up a space of safety and healing for Black people within and beyond the Church of England. He explains, “it will not do for some to carry crosses while others carry feathers.” (113) The white Christian, he implores, “must use their body, ‘take up their cross and follow’ Jesus, and quit faking discipleship.”(113) Robinson-Brown’s book opens a space for reckoning and critical anger. His work, like Azariah France-Williams, Jide Macaulay, and Anthony Reddie, is the theological equivalent of art exhibitions such as Kehinde Wiley’s The Prelude at the National Gallery, with its subversion of whiteness within European Christian art histories, as well as Sonia Boyce’s Feeling Her Way at the Venice Biennale’s British Pavilion. These public celebrations of Black life in the midst of so much pain exemplify the nonbinary Black Episcopal priest and activist Pauli Murray’s belief that “Hope is a song in a weary throat.” In February 2021, the Church Times published an essay by Robinson-Brown on rage, prophecy, and racism. Focusing on Jeremiah, he explains,