Thread by @CandiceBenbow

So many sisters sent me clips of Erica Campbell’s Breakfast Club Interview. I watched the whole thing. A long thread:

The use of religion to oppress the sexual agency of *girls and women only* has a long and storied history.

The sexual purity+virtue ascribed to Christian women never included Black women because sisters, enslaved at the time, weren’t considered capable of being pure or virtuous.

In fact, the notion of Christian women’s piety and sexual purity [research “The Cult of Domesticity/True Womanhood”] was created to separate White women *from* the enslaved Black women who were being raped and impregnated by their husbands.

Even as victims of enslavement+sexual violence, Black women weren’t seen as victims. They were wanton sexual beings whose bodies provoked good men to behave contrary to their Christian morals.

Black women were/are always the problem.

Then, as the politics of respectability became a(n unsuccessful) strategy for navigating gendered violence at the hands of White people and Black men, sisters attempted to take on as many characteristics of a safe, virtuous, Christian woman as possible.

Even though being good, Christian Black women didn’t protect them from racism+sexism, many held onto the myth and shamed Black women who didn’t subscribe to their rigid conception of womanhood as a way of life.

Again, Black women were/are always the problem.

Ask people who believe in soul ties whether sexual assault victims receive them. Ask why we have to work so hard to break them when Jesus’ blood breaks every chain. Ask them why it’s only taught that soul ties are created through sex.

The belief women are “receivers” of spirits during sex is a conflation of biology+fear tactics and works to absolve men of accountability. We should ask wives who advance these ideologies if they “received” the spirits from their husbands’ affairs.

Also, married women with an “over-sexualized” youth and/or past aren’t the only ones who struggle with sex in marriage. I work with many sisters, virgins when they married, who have intimacy challenges because of the messages they heard in the church.

I’ve also worked with sisters whose intimacy challenges were rooted in the insecurities of not being as experienced as their husbands—who grew up hearing (and still hear) how much their masculinity is about their interactions+exploits with women.

And I’ve worked with brothers *and* sisters, whose sexual experiences range from virginity to getting it in FREQUENTLY, who navigate insecurity, identity and intimacy issues because of what we’ve heard about sex from the church.

All of us have been messed up.

The church’s obsession with sex+sexuality has always been unhealthy and focused on the wrong thing. If we spent half as much time denouncing sexual violence and emotional terrorism as we do Black women’s sexuality, imagine where we could be.

Be very clear: not all Black Christians subscribe to soul ties or theologies that severely restrict Black Christian women’s sexual agency. This comes from a specific ideological camp and from specific denominations.

Everybody Black and loving Jesus don’t think like this.

There are Black women spiritual leaders who approach sexual responsibility from an affirmation of our relationship with God+God’s investment in our autonomy. It’s possible to be abstinent without grounding it in side-eye worthy biblical analysis and an affinity for Whiteness.

Like them, I believe there is more Biblical justification to suggest that, IF soul ties exist, they are between parents and children and bind deep, lasting friendships than simply being formed through sexual intercourse.

I believe soul tie theology demonizes human emotion and causes Black women to over-spiritualize the very natural reactions to heartbreak and disappointment. Sometimes, love hurts us. That pain is no fault of our own and is not God’s punishment for premarital sex.

Black Evangelical Christianity’s fascination with sex+sexuality is tired and why we’re tired of this church. What worked in the ‘70s-‘90s—when Black churches were trying to contend with the “rise” in single motherhood, gangs and the crack epidemic—ain’t working anymore.

We know better. We have access to more information. We’re asking questions. We’re bringing faith+feminism+sexuality together to articulate our experiences in the same way faith+race+justice were brought together to reveal a God who stands with the oppressed.

There are medical studies linking the lack of touch+intimacy with a number of health [physical+emotional] challenges. As singleness among Black Christian women becomes something we can no longer ignore, we need realistic approaches to what is a very real health crisis.

You can love Erica and her contributions to gospel music and recognize the [possibly unintended] harm messages like this cause Black Christian women. It’s okay to say, “ooh Sis, this might not be it.”

It’s okay for all of us to interrogate what we believe, why we believe it and why we pass it along. And it’s okay to ask God to endow us again with what sisters need *now* to heal+thrive that will go beyond flat theological interpretations, trite cliches and patriarchal messages.