Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Footnotes by Jemar Tisby, on October 21, 2025.
At first I tried to ignore it.
I had been here before.
The same online debate seems to crop up like clockwork.
Some pastor, influencer, or conference speaker says, “I’m Christian before I’m Black.”
Finally, the debate dragged on for so long, I felt compelled to speak.
While it sounds pious and holy to say that one’s Christian identity comes before all others, that doesn’t mean it’s actually right.
It pulls aspects of yourself apart and pits them against each other. You create divisions with yourself. You are at war with yourself.
Let’s play this out.
Let’s say that religious identity comes first. Okay. Then what?
Your race? Your gender? Your economic class? Your nation of birth? Are they all on the same level?
In the ‘Christian before Black’ frame, your soul starts to look like a corporate org chart.
Orderly on paper. Chaos in practice.
Instead of creating a hierarchy, what if we thought of ourselves holistically?
My blackness— “the soul of black being-in-the-world” as James Cone describes it—and my Christianity are not competing with each other. They are informing each other.
I cannot understand Christ apart from my own experiences and perspectives as a Black person.
Nor can I understand my blackness apart from my understanding of who Christ is.
Rather, I understand both my racial identity and my Christian identity more deeply because of the other.
The Black church has always taught that our faith interprets our experience, and our experience illuminates our faith.
They volley back and forth like the call and response cadence in preaching.
That is not elevating race to an improper place. It’s called incarnational theology.
We are created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27). In eternity there will be people from every nation, tribe, people, and language (Revelation 7:9). We are new creations, with redeemed identities not obliterated ones (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Unity with Christ doesn’t erase diversity, it fulfills it.
To deny my Blackness would be to deny part of God’s good creation. Christ redeems all of who I am. He does not erase it.
I picked up the idea that my blackness and my Christianity were in competition when I was in white evangelical spaces.
They proclaimed, “We don’t see color.”
They took a “colorblind” approach to race and racism. The solution to racial prejudice, in their view, was to act like race didn’t exist.
One effect Christian colorblindness was to maintain a white-centered status quo. If race cannot be seen, then racism need not be addressed.
No restitution. No restoration. No real repentance.
Another effect was to make every Black person seem like they were idolizing their race if they ever got caught speaking positively about their blackness.
If race cannot be seen, then bringing up notions of Black dignity could never be positive. It could only bring division in the Body of Christ.
The only acceptable way to talk about race in many white evangelical circles was to emphasize our supposed unity without ever talking about the ongoing harm of racial hierarchies.
Through the ministry of my former podcast, Pass The Mic, and many long conversations with my co-host, Tyler Burns, I began to see the God-glorifying beauty of blackness.
In studying the history of the Black church , I began to see that my blackness was an intentional aspect of being created in God’s likeness.
As Cone wrote in his final book,
“My message to blacks was: ‘It is time to stop hating who you are. God created you black—love yourself, love your hands and face, big nose and lips, for that is the only way you can love God. Blackness is God’s gift to humanity.’”
So I learned that celebrating blackness was not about idolizing race.
Instead it was a way to redeem our dignity in response to dehumanization based on race—often from those who call themselves fellow Christians.
But what I’ve learned is that denying our God-given identities doesn’t honor Him—it harms us.
Whether we are talking about race, gender, class, or some other aspect, the mission is to bring pieces of ourselves together into one integrated whole.
That word integrated comes from “integer” which means one, single, whole.
Sin has created separation—from God, from our neighbors, even from ourselves.
It divides us. The sharp, ragged fragments of our soul cause internal spiritual bleeding.
The goal, then, is to put the pieces back together. It is to move toward a unified harmonious, healthy, whole human being.
My blackness is never at odds with my Christianity. Just as my Christianity is never at odds with my blackness.
I’m not elevating race above Christ. I’m rejecting the lie that Christ demands I deny part of who he created me to be.
There is a glorious freedom in knowing we don’t have to performatively declare one aspect of our being as subordinate to another.
We become healed people when every aspect of ourselves is important and informs how we think about the other.
The good news is that God makes all things new, and as new creations, we are not divided within ourselves.
Wholeness honors the Creator.
