Q Chats | Anti-Racism | Week 4
Q Christian is a community comprised of people with diverse backgrounds, differing theological beliefs, and a variety of ethics. Q Chats are designed to be a deep dive into self-discovery by learning from one another, and spiritually growing side-by-side. Q Chats cannot be effective without you! We invite you to participate. Share your thoughts, stories, and perspectives. Your influential voice can make a difference in the lives of others.
What is the benefit of embracing and striving for racial equity within Q Christian Fellowship?
Bukola Landis-Aina
As members of this community, we are modeling to the church what the full diversity and equity of God’s kin-dom looks like. In order for us to take up the cause against LGBTQ+ marginalization within society, we have to be taking part in combating all forms of injustice and marginalization. Racial equity must be an intersectional value for us. A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Sarah Ngu
I think it’s vital that LGBTQ+ Christian spaces strive towards racial equity because Christian colonialism has played a huge role historically in undermining societal tolerances for gender and sexual non-conforming folks, whether in Asia, Americas, and Africa, to the point of criminalizing such deviance.
Representation on the plenary stage and among workshop leaders is also critical for people of color to see their stories, and thus their humanity, dignified in a public manner.
Additionally, given that most of QCF is white, coming out for some can feel equivalent to exchanging your brown, non-affirming family for a white, affirming family. I’ve never felt comfortable getting a ‘free parent hug’ because all the parents I saw who were giving them were white and did not remotely resemble my parents.
Erica Lea-Simka
Pilate asks Jesus, “what is truth” during the trial leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion in John 18. Earlier in John, chapter 8, Jesus teaches his disciples that “truth will set you free”. Whatever is truthful sets us free to be whole, complete, thriving, people. This complete completeness is sometimes called shalom. Shalom for me is only possible when other people have shalom. Working together for racial equity is a way to deepen our individual, then collective shalom. Shalom is liberating truth.
Jessica Wang
We need to address how we view theological leadership. I’ve noticed that any time a person of color leads a church, people view the church for people of color; however when a white person leads the church, their race is viewed as a blank slate that people of color can then enter. I think this ideology is a product of societal conditioning that we are all susceptible to.
However, the truth is that in order to make all parties feel welcome, we need to consider the diversity of our theological leadership team and intentionally place people of color in leadership positions because whiteness is not a blank slate. It is more often an oppressive slate.
Yet, simply placing people of color in leadership positions can be tokenizing and does not make for a welcoming environment. We also need to address whether white-centered culture has impacted how we perform worship and the way we socialize outside of service and make spaces for worship and socializing practices that may not be white-centered.
Laura Beth-Buchleiter
Again, exposure. QCF is the thin space between a wide range of worlds. In general people come into the space with open minds, ready to receive and be received in ways that they have only dared imagine. The journey into self-awareness that most of us take as we embrace our LGBTQ+ identities leaves us with pliable minds, not unlike a teenager. This “second adolescence” provides a wonderful opportunity to rethink a great deal of embedded notions about self, God and the world around us.
Kevin Garcia
I don't know if any of the shaming experiences in my life have been redeemed in the same sense that I used to think of it. I'm not exactly thankful for the struggles I've had to go through, but rather I am thankful that God made me resilient enough to survive those moments. God made me strong and bold and creative, and it was because of those things that I was able to keep going.
And when I look back at those seasons of my life that were heavy with shame, I give thanks that I was resilient enough to overcome, that the Spirit was present even in the moments when I could not see it at all.
