<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s Note: This article was\u00a0originally published\u00a0on\u00a0Footnotes by Jemar Tisby, on October 21, 2025.<\/p>\n
At first I tried to ignore it.<\/p>\n
I had been here before.<\/p>\n
The same online debate seems to crop up like clockwork.<\/p>\n
Some pastor, influencer, or conference speaker says, \u201cI\u2019m Christian before I\u2019m Black.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finally, the debate dragged on for so long, I felt compelled to speak.<\/p>\n
While it sounds pious and holy to say that one\u2019s Christian identity comes before all others, that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s actually right.<\/p>\n
It pulls aspects of yourself apart and pits them against each other. You create divisions with yourself. You are at war with yourself.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s play this out.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s say that religious identity comes first. Okay. Then what?<\/p>\n
Your race? Your gender? Your economic class? Your nation of birth? Are they all on the same level?<\/p>\n
In the \u2018Christian before Black\u2019 frame, your soul starts to look like a corporate org chart.<\/p>\n
Orderly on paper. Chaos in practice.<\/p>\n
Instead of creating a hierarchy, what if we thought of ourselves holistically?<\/p>\n
My blackness\u2014 \u201cthe soul of black being-in-the-world\u201d as James Cone describes it\u2014and my Christianity are not competing with each other. They are informing each other.<\/p>\n
I cannot understand Christ apart from my own experiences and perspectives as a Black person.<\/p>\n
Nor can I understand my blackness apart from my understanding of who Christ is.<\/p>\n
Rather, I understand both my racial identity and my Christian identity more deeply because of the other.<\/p>\n
The Black church has always taught that our faith interprets our experience, and our experience illuminates our faith.<\/p>\n
They volley back and forth like the call and response cadence in preaching.<\/p>\n
That is not elevating race to an improper place. It\u2019s called incarnational theology.<\/p>\n
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).<\/p>\n
Unity with Christ doesn\u2019t erase diversity, it fulfills it.<\/p>\n
To deny my Blackness would be to deny part of God\u2019s good creation. Christ redeems all of who I am. He does not erase it.<\/p>\n
I picked up the idea that my blackness and my Christianity were in competition when I was in white evangelical spaces.<\/p>\n
They proclaimed, \u201cWe don\u2019t see color.\u201d<\/p>\n
They took a \u201ccolorblind\u201d approach to race and racism. The solution to racial prejudice, in their view, was to act like race didn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n
One effect Christian colorblindness was to maintain a white-centered status quo. If race cannot be seen, then racism need not be addressed.<\/p>\n
No restitution. No restoration. No real repentance.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Through the ministry of my former podcast,\u00a0Pass The Mic, and many long conversations with my co-host, Tyler Burns, I began to see the God-glorifying beauty of blackness.<\/p>\n
In studying the history of the Black church , I began to see that my blackness was an intentional aspect of being created in God\u2019s likeness.<\/p>\n
As Cone wrote in his final\u00a0book,<\/p>\n
\u201cMy message to blacks was: \u2018It is time to stop hating who you are. God created you black\u2014love yourself, love your hands and face, big nose and lips, for that is the only way you can love God. Blackness is God\u2019s gift to humanity.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
So I learned that celebrating blackness was not about idolizing race.<\/p>\n
Instead it was a way to redeem our dignity in response to dehumanization based on race\u2014often from those who call themselves fellow Christians.<\/p>\n
But what I\u2019ve learned is that denying our God-given identities doesn\u2019t honor Him\u2014it harms us.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
That word integrated comes from \u201cinteger\u201d which means one, single, whole.<\/p>\n
Sin has created separation\u2014from God, from our neighbors, even from ourselves.<\/p>\n
It divides us. The sharp, ragged fragments of our soul cause internal spiritual bleeding.<\/p>\n
The goal, then, is to put the pieces back together. It is to move toward a unified harmonious, healthy, whole human being.<\/p>\n
My blackness is never at odds with my Christianity. Just as my Christianity is never at odds with my blackness.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not elevating race above Christ. I\u2019m rejecting the lie that Christ demands I deny part of who he created me to be.<\/p>\n
There is a glorious freedom in knowing we don\u2019t have to performatively declare one aspect of our being as subordinate to another.<\/p>\n
We become healed people when every aspect of ourselves is important and informs how we think about the other.<\/p>\n
The good news is that God makes all things new, and as new creations, we are not divided within ourselves.<\/p>\n
Wholeness honors the Creator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Editor\u2019s Note: This article was\u00a0originally published\u00a0on\u00a0Footnotes 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, \u201cI\u2019m Christian before I\u2019m Black.\u201d Finally, the debate dragged on for so long,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[1631,2191,72,313,2192,861],"class_list":["post-10505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-christian-living","tag-black","tag-blackness","tag-christian","tag-christianity","tag-odds","tag-stopped"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}