The Black Church must acknowledge its shortcomings. We must confess that our efforts have not been sufficiently radical, nor have they reflected the liberative call of Jesus Christ, who stood with the marginalized and challenged the oppressive systems of his time.
We must recognize that our responses to the crises plaguing Black communities—poverty, mass incarceration, gender violence, LGBTQ+ exclusion, and economic exploitation—have been inadequate. The Black Church must accept that silence in the face of injustice is complicity, and the inaction of one church is a reflection on the collective Black church body.
Furthermore, the Black Church must confess before God and community that it has not always served as a sanctuary for the people it is called to protect. Too often, we have conflated holiness with patriarchy, respectability with righteousness, and assimilation with salvation. Too often, we have internalized and perpetuated aspects of white supremacy, mistaking white evangelical ideology for theological truth.
We have surrendered to an imperial Christ instead of embracing the liberating Christ, the one who was born in occupied territory, lived under an unjust government and was executed by the state.
The Black Church must also acknowledge its political complicity—our uncritical loyalty to corrupt Democrats and Republicans alike, our willingness to serve as spiritual chaplains to law enforcement even as police officers lynch our people in broad daylight.
We cannot continue to place faith in systems that betray us. We need a theology that does not merely pray for the oppressed but fights alongside them.
African theology teaches us that God is both transcendent and imminent, that the divine is in relationship with creation and is deeply woven into the fabric of our lives. African spirituality reminds us that God is not a distant, punitive ruler but an ever-present force that calls us into community and liberation. The Black Church must return to an African theological framework that sees Christ as the liberator, the one who walks with us in struggle, the one who is revealed in our collective resistance to empire.
Process theology calls us to reject static, rigid understandings of God and instead recognize the divine as dynamic, ever-moving, ever-becoming. God does not impose coercive power but calls us through persuasive love.
This means the Black Church must stop waiting on divine intervention and instead become the divine intervention. If we truly believe that God is moving in history, then we must also believe that we are co-creators with God in shaping a just future.
We need a church where pastors and congregants are equals, authority is shared, and where the wisdom of the people—not just the clergy—is honored. We need a church with an inclusive Christology, that welcomes all—not just those who fit the mold of heteronormativity and patriarchy.
We need a church where the table of communion is radically open, where all of God’s people—baptized or unbaptized, believer or seeker—can partake in the bread and cup without exclusion. We must remember the example that Christ shows us in Mark Chapter 5: He asks the Gerasene Demoniac his name amid his crisis so he can respond to his need.
It is time for the Black Church to repent—not in the individualistic sense of moral failing but in the collective sense of turning away from oppressive structures and toward God’s radical love and justice. We must unite against governance that mirrors the empire that crucified Jesus, and we must be the salt and light, not only in our sanctuaries but also in the streets, prisons, schools, and halls of power.
The Black church must no longer be a sanctuary of empire but a fortress of liberation, a beacon of revolutionary love, and a home for all who long to be free.
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The Rev. K. Mekhi Jackson is a Presbyterian Minister and serves as the Associate of African American Churches for the Presbyterian Church U.S.A
