Candice Marie Benbow Profile picture
Aug 20, 2019 11 tweets 3 min read Read on X
When folks ask me to promote projects/initiatives grounded in celibacy, I wonder if they've ever read anything I've written. LOL!

#RedLipTheology is not Calvinism with a splash of Ruby Woo.

My resistance to celibacy is as theological as it is feminist. #DoYouTho
When I study the scriptures and look at the examples of leadership and holy boldness that we lift up as exemplar, I remain unconvinced that God deems sex before marriage or outside of covenant as sinful. There are too many examples where that behavior was blessed and sanctioned.
Most of our construction of sexual outside of marriage as sinful comes from Paul and I want us to have some very serious conversations about who Paul was. First and foremost, Paul was zealot. When have they ever made sense?! LOL
Paul was out here literally killing Christians, got saved and did what most new converts do: he went to the extreme with it. Yall remember when you first got saved and everything but church and gospel was sinful? That's Paul. LOL
Add to this that, while/as a zealot, he became a moral authority for the very people he once hunted and, as Christians began to establish themselves in communities, his thoughts and opinions became rule, law and doctrine.
Yes, Paul had a name change and underwent a radical transformation but be very clear: Paul's articulation of faith was always rooted in his desire (and inability) to escape his best. At best, Paul's religious fundamentalism was contrition. At worst, it was arrogance.
This doesn't mean he wasn't striving to be his best self and live a life in/of gratitude for salvation. I believe he was.

For me, though, it means that I must read Paul- not as authoritative but through the lens of grace as someone who was trying to overcome a very dark past.
Paul's understanding of the flesh (the body) as sinful grounds so much our understanding of ourselves. I wholly reject the idea that the flesh/the body is demonic/sinful. My flesh is how God intended I show up in the world. It is divine.
The rejection of ideology that frames the body as sinful invites you to rethink intimacy and pleasure from a space rooted in God's intention that Creation flourish. Intimacy and pleasure feed parts of me and sustain my life. Anything *life*giving is of God. I believe that.
Now, the fact that people read this as sexual irresponsibility has everything to do with the fact that critical thinking is a lost art and a sexually autonomous Black woman threatens the construction of absolutely everything.
If you believe God has called you to abstinence and celibacy, go forth and flourish. Seriously.

As for me and my house, we will not restrict the ways God extends an invitation to experience communion, pleasure, joy, fulfillment and sacred touch.

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More from @CandiceBenbow

Aug 6, 2023
“Well the Jews did kill Jesus…it’s in the Bible”

So how about this…let’s not say this in service of defending Jamie—lest we do the very thing he was accused of doing that he actually didn’t do.
Saying the Jews killed Jesus IS antisemitic.

Yes, he was put to death. He didn’t ask to be killed.

But to say “the Jews” did it presents them as a monolith and asserts that Jewish cultural and religious identities are in violent opposition to Christian identity.
It grounds the belief that Christians must defend themselves at all cost against Judaism because its purpose is to eradicate Christianity.

That’s been used to justify the more violent and extreme forms of antisemitism. It’s also used to justify benevolent forms of it, too.
Read 9 tweets
Feb 18, 2023
Soul ties and “God delivered me but I still struggle” logic are some wild hills to die on because where did Jesus encounter someone and not radically change their life and circumstances?
Show me in the Bible where it says:

“and straightway Jesus partially healed them from their afflictions so they could spend the rest of their life wondering if they met him for real.”

Because that’s exactly what’s happening when we live realities grounded in these teachings.
When we feel or experience something we’ve been told we shouldn’t, we question the very existence of our faith.

This is why, despite what we’ve been taught, asking questions matter.
Read 12 tweets
Feb 17, 2023
I’m an unapologetic member of the Beyhive so I know that what I say gets written off as fandom. I’m also a scholar of race, religion and gender so I be knowing what I’m talking about. LOL
Many Black evangelicals/evangelical-adjacents call Beyoncé “demonic” because to be Black and Christian, for them, is to desire (knowingly or unknowingly) a religious identity and existence distant and apart from anything that culturally affirms Blackness.
It is because, for many of them, their understanding of what it means to be Christian is tethered to what it means to be white and, because they can’t *be* white, they will do all they can to *believe* white.
Read 10 tweets
Feb 16, 2023
I get tagged in or sent a lot of videos of people whose theological views and perspectives are different from mine. Many sisters send it to me asking my opinion.

I’m gon be honest with you: I never watch it. LOL
If your theological position is one I deem to be harmful and death dealing, I couldn’t care less what you have to say about anything. And here’s the truth: they’d probably say (or have said) the same about me.
I’m not in school anymore. I don’t have to familiarize myself with your argument for argument’s sake—especially when I know you’re not reading or listening to anything I have to say.
Read 9 tweets
Dec 12, 2022
I wish we could talk about:

- Derrick Jaxn
- Da’Naia Jackson
- the relationship expert industrial complex
- the Christian couple social media/influencer empire
- hyper-religiosity and the wounds women carry because of it
- how these dudes will never hesitate to make you look like a fool and leave you for who you were told you couldn’t be

…without it devolving into jokes about her, the helmet of salvation and that recent video where she went Old Testament on us.
If you’ve been paying attention, there have been a great deal of high profile Christian couples ending their marriages and, of course, the vitriol gets spewed at the woman. And, if we’re being honest, a lot of them are publicly coming apart at the seams.
Read 8 tweets
Dec 12, 2022
When I attended a private Christian school, a teacher’s family owned one of the biggest Christian supply stores. Whenever I’d go in there (or in Lifeway), I always said I wanted my book in there. “One day, people are going to be coming in here to get my stuff.”
That was when I was lowkey evangelical AF and had no idea how my theological views would shift so much that the people who own, operate and shop in those stores would no longer think I’m Christian.
It’s also when my dream job was to be the Director of Christian Education at a church and we’d be a church that would publish our own innovative resources and curriculum for Black churches (that’s still a dream, btw).
Read 6 tweets

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