The Lack Of Equity For Women In The Black Church

The Lack Of Equity For Women In The Black Church

If you grew up in the church like me, then you can attest that women make up at least 85% of the black church. Yes, its true, but how do you have a conversation on race in the church when those who disproportionately constitute, administer, and fund the church are not there? What kind of biased, lop-sided conversation is that, even if it is in the name of Jesus? Black women are the black church. Period.

While the gifts and labor of Black women are consistently exploited in black churches (and in white churches too) they are regularly excluded from leadership and critical conversations at the highest denominational levels. Black women’s intersectional identity that casts them not only as racially subordinate, but as gender, and class subordinate, as well, therefore, indicts interracial, interdenominational conversations that “celebrate” racial reconciliation as inherently insufficient for the work of justice as it relates to the entire black community, male and female.

While statistics indicate that black women comprise 85-90% of black church membership, personal experience confirms that without black women administering the ministry, praying for the pastor, teaching the children, singing in the choir, cooking in the kitchen, answering the phones, photocopying the bulletin, giving the tithe and the offering, and witnessing and testifying to the goodness of the Lord on Wednesday nights, there is no Black Church.

The absence of black women from the black church is evidence of the Black Church’s moral failure and ecclesial fraud as it relates to gender equity. It misrepresents the face of false identity and serves as yet another shining example of sexism in the black church.