We Gotta Do It...The Church Talk

In this episode Jill, Laiya, and Aja talk to Ashon Crawley. Ashon is a writer, artist and teacher, exploring the intersection of performance, blackness, queerness and spirituality. He’s also the Associate professor of Religious Studies and African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. Ashon shares what he’s learned as he’s navigated his love for the church and his sexuality.

You can find out more about Ashon on his website ashoncrawley.com and on Instagram and Twitter @ashoncrawley and @ashoncrawleyart.

Links to Ashon’s work are below:

Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility
https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823274550/blackpentecostal-breath/

The Lonely Letters
https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-lonely-letters

Meditation on Abolition
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2035-meditation-on-abolition

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Jay dot Il a production of I Heart Radio.
What's Up Everybody? It is always a pleasure to be
here with you. Welcome to Jay dot Illa Podcast. This
is Jail Scotty and I'm here with my sister friends
like Yah sat Cloud. Halleluj. That is me and age

(00:28):
a great dance. I will since since like he has said,
hallelu I will say I shay, this is great. I
mean and I'm in okay. I mean we're like a
little Hallelujah. Yes, never gets old. I find this particularly

(00:53):
appropriate on today because I've been looking forward so much
to having this conversation we're going to have today. I
have to make sure that I cover the basics because
we need to make sure y'all know who in fact
we're talking to today. Today we have a fabulous guest,
of course. His name is A Shan Crawley. He's a
writer and artist and teacher. He explorined the intersection of performance, blackness, queerness,

(01:18):
and spirituality. Associate Professor of Religious Studies and African American
Studies at University of Virginia is the author of Black
Pentecostal Breath, The Aesthetics of Possibility, and the lonely letters. Now,
I just want you to know, those are the receipts.
Are the receipts, Those are the receipts. We have to
put the receipts out there because that we all do.
You're googling, do your good when you do, you're good

(01:40):
good googling that you come up with what you need
to happen, and everything is there. Okay. But the reason
why I love this person is because during the pandemic,
um My, my good, good girlfriend, Princess um call me
on the phone said, know you ain't got nothing to do.
They won't let you work, and the kids. Isn't the
driving you crazy? She like, I got a friend who

(02:01):
says you could sit in the back of his classroom
online and get this good Afrikaan of Studies Education. Now,
I won't put this info out. I told this story already,
but I don't want to get him in no trouble,
so I ain't gonna retell it. Y'all gonna have to
go back and listen to all the episodes set in
the back of this classroom. And we went through some

(02:21):
really amazing literature during that during that semester. But one
of the books was a Sean Crawley's book A Pentecostal Breath,
and I said, I just went down a rabbit hole really,
oh gosh, and we're gonna talk about this. But he
opened up my mind to something that he caused otherwise

(02:42):
possibilities and that for me, UM just touched me in
a in a deep place. So anyway, because y'all know
I like to be on the social media's, I end
up founding the shan on the social media's. We got
connected on that, found out we knew a bunch of
the same people people a people, I mean love loved

(03:02):
some of the same people. There you have it. God
did what God does, look okay, pull the right people
together so that they could be family and so that
we can all come together on this here podcast. So
ladies are gentleman's okay. I want you to look to

(03:22):
your neighbor, say neighbor, neighbor, welcome a Sean welcome, thank
you for the welcome. It's like hot yoga. I've been
going to hot yoga. We've had a black teacher, black
woman twice and she definitely said both times your right

(03:44):
and say I was like, oh, we're doing very black. Yeah,
church culture is black culture. Let's just get intoto it
it is what it is. It's nice to have an
expert that will sit here in ponto. Kate, Actually, you
know what I mean, That's what I just wanted to say. Well,
we talk a lot about on the show about the

(04:06):
fact that church, you know though, the intention of church,
and then you know how much we all adore all
of the things out of our culture that come out
of church and what it does, and but I think
we all can relate in particular to that moment in
which it does not connect, that moment where the community
of church doesn't only just not connect, and not just church,

(04:29):
but many spiritual communities that at one point it doesn't connect,
and not only does it not connect, it causes harm
and that harm, the ripple effect of that harm, and
what it what it does to us as a community,
and how it serves at this antithesis to what church
is supposed to be about and what what we're even

(04:50):
supposed to do about it, you know, And so you know,
I guess we have to really begin with your background
and just like how does this, how does this really
you know, touch you and influence your work? Thank you
all for having me on the podcast. It's um, thank
you for being here. It's it's it's a joy, it's
a joy. And I'm gonna tell I'm I'm gonna move backwards.

(05:14):
I will start by saying, no one has ever heard
this before. There was like a moment in the nineties,
and this will tell you about like my background. There's
a moment in the nineties when Erica Badu released On
and On. Most intellects don't believe in God, but they

(05:35):
fear us just the same. M I really loved the
sound of On and On. I was like, uh, that
don't that don't sound right to my good, good, good
Pentecostal Christian tears. There's something a little two five per
center up up in there now right about it. And

(05:58):
I remember the first time listen, I'm sorry to put
you on the spot. First time listening to A Long
Walk in the Park after Dark, finest spot for us.
The first verse talked about revelation. I was like, yes, Laura,
and then the second one was like sour, and I
was like wait, wait, wait, wait wait wait, that's not
there's something not Christian about this. And I remember the

(06:22):
first time really listening to Kindred the Family so and
like reading the liner notes, and I was like, wait,
I think they Muslim Christian Christians ain't saved. The a
Shan that you are meeting at forty two years old

(06:44):
is very different than the Ashan that I was at
the age of eighteen. I grew up in eastern New
Jersey and a household. My father is a preacher pastor
of Pentecostal church. My mother is a preacher, even though
in our organs Asian Church of God in Christ they
don't ordain women to be preachers because of sexism, UM,

(07:06):
but my mother is a preacher. My brother was the musician,
the Hammond organist for our church UM until he moved
away for college. I became the organist UM for the
church once he left. So I guess at the age
of fourteen I started playing. I moved to Philadelphia. I
tell people I moved to Philly to go to University
of Pennsylvania for undergrad and the first thing I did

(07:29):
when I moved to phillis by the church. I didn't
choose my classes. I didn't care about my classes. I
wanted to make sure I had the church home, and
I needed a place that could take care of me.
I was very and I started the New Spirit of
penn which is the gospel choir at Universe of Pennsylvania.
They still sing today. And I was very much a
part of a very insular and doctrine there, but also

(07:55):
very musical Black Pentecostal church world. I loved it. Um.
I love planting tambourine. I didn't love playing him in Oregon,
but I love directing choirs. Loved directing choirs, and I
love the sort of sound of Black church. There was
a lot of noisiness and Pentecostal churches. We made a
lot of noise when we prayed. We haven't made a

(08:16):
lot of noise when we shouted, dance, sinisphere, a lot
of noise when you speak in tones. I loved it.
There was nothing about like I would. I had a
great tape recorder and I would go to church concerts
and other church services that were not my home church,
and I would take my great tape record with me,
and some friends who did not know my name would

(08:37):
call me boy with the great tape recorder because I
always had a recorder so I could record the church services,
so I could listen to primarily the music and learn
from the music that I was listening to and so
I was in this very insular church world. But I
had friends at school who were very kind, lovely, I

(08:57):
love them, who were like not Christian and listening to
secular music, listening to hip hop, listening to things that
I've never heard before. And I was really, really really
drawn to a lot of what I was hearing, but
there was like words and things and concepts for God
that I was not acquainted with that I also felt like,

(09:19):
this is a this could be a problem. And so
the things that I would try to do is like
when I heard on and On, I would like trying
to change the I was like, oh, no, she's not
she could not be saying. So I'm gonna change the
words somehow to be something else that's I would like,
find some kind of Christian language that I felt like

(09:40):
was the thing she was really saying. And it's like
she wasn't saying it, but it was me trying to
like really force my structure of belief into something else,
even though the other thing was like trying to, you know,
push against my own understanding that was really limited and
really very much a problem, very mudy, and I remember

(10:01):
doing the same thing with lots of just lots and
lots of music. I could not when De'angelo's Food came out,
I could not listen to the album because it's like
voodoo samee, don't do that. Like this is like literally
I'm in college at this point and I'm still very
much like oh no, no, no, you know, you know,

(10:23):
I pray you do this. This is just who you
are on your inside. More real talk after the break.

(10:44):
When my maternal grandmother passed away the day of her funeral,
I was four years old. I woke up at like
six of the morning. Apparently I used to sleepwalk a lot.
I woke up, got out of bed, walked to the
threshold of my parents door, screamed at them, we can

(11:07):
make it, and then I went back to sleep. And
my parents have told me several times, because my mother
was twenty eight at that time, she was really young. Um,
they told me that that is what allowed them to
get through the day. It's like four year old who
doesn't know what he's saying, kind of don't know what's happening,
but says this thing. And I think I've always had

(11:30):
like a very strong sense for the spiritual, but because
of the context under which I was having this strong
sense of the spiritual. It made it really really difficult
to figure out a relation to other spiritual practices that
were not my own because everything is sinful. And it

(11:51):
wasn't just like everything out there sinful, all the non
Christians are sinful. It's also like most of y'all in
here who go to church every week are also sinful.
For me, as like a five year old, six year old,
sevenyear old, it's like fine, but like you know, eight
years old, when you start to like be attracted to
people and you're like, why am I attracted to him?

(12:14):
Why am I attracted to him? Why am I attracted
to him? Uh? You start to also really feel that
the things that you're saying about other people being sinful
and heading to hell are also things that you're kind
of feeling about yourself, but you don't know how to
really express it. There's literally no one that you can

(12:34):
talk to. Uh. In the eighties and the nineties, there's
no one that you can say, hey, I feel really
really like queer. Please don't judge me, but can we
talk about so? Like you're carrying this strong sense of
spiritual sort of orientation, a deep desire to love God,
a deep love for the cultural practices of the Black Church,

(12:56):
which I still love today, but also this deep shame
that you can't really express. And in the eighties and
the nineties, at the same time, a lot of musicians,
choir directors, and singers are dying from AIDS, the AIDS crisis,
and you hear people talking very very negatively about these people,

(13:21):
but in like rumors and hushed conversation or through sermons
where they say very pejorative things, and you're like, oh,
I feel like I'm one of these people they're talking about,
so I literally I can't say it. And also am
I gonna die like they're dying? I'm ten years old,
I'm twelve years old, like trying to like processing you're

(13:43):
hearing this, You're ultimately hearing this in like your favorite
place to be, hearing in my favorite place to be,
And soon by the time you got to college, you
still would keep it. As much as you were trying
to shield your ears from what you were hearing your music,
you also were shielding your friends circle in that way
like your friends are school was any thinking the way

(14:03):
you think my friends So the curious thing I would
say about my friend circle when I was. When I
first arrived to University of Pennsylvania, my first week of UM,
there was a summer program for black students who, uh,
we're coming to the university was called a f MS
at that point, and I had met this black young

(14:24):
woman who made some joke about something and I'm gonna
call you Cookie. I don't remember the joke, but I
remember embracing the nickname. And I embraced the nickname. I
wrote about this a while ago. I embraced the nickname
because it could be a new identity for me. It
could be a way for me to establish myself where
people didn't know me because my parents didn't know me

(14:46):
because of the church, and I could like be my
own person. But the person that I became was like
the choir director the pussy church every week, the person
who who would like very explicitly into inentionally and I think,
with conviction, say it over like no, gay people are
going to hell if they don't say like very much

(15:07):
like in college. Oh yes. But I think I think
what's really important here is that and what I just
love that Shaun is talking about is that I think
a lot of times we have this, We we have
a real slender understanding of the fact that people can
be perpetrators of of hateful and anti you know, anti

(15:35):
energy that is really from a group that they belong to,
from their own identity. It's like this this thing that
we have this hard time understanding. We know from our politicians,
and we know it from our our preachers, and we
know it right, we see it. But I still think
we just have a hard time really kind of owning
that you can you can be black and be anti black.

(15:56):
You know. I feel like, and I I had a
series of random occurrences that I would be like that preacher,
like it's there's nothing special about you know, I don't

(16:18):
believe that. I think that we all are presented with
opportunities to make certain kinds of choices, and it's what
you do with the choices that you have. And I
went on the date maybe it was I went out
with someone uh black Friday of nineteen nine. He went
to Rutgers. I went to penn and so I was

(16:38):
home in New Jersey. We met on a well a
long time ago. We went out to some dinner, we
talked for like two hours. We went to a parking walker.
It's like like midnight, we walked around. I was in love,
he was not. Um we remained in loose contact. We

(17:00):
went out two thousands. So the next year Black Friday
again because I was home for Thanksgiving, and the first
time we went out, we talked about like both going
to church and having parents who were preachers, and just
literally the language of trying to get the just trying
to get it out of our systems so that you know,
by the age we can really be serious, get married,

(17:21):
have wives, children, and like totally like serious about And
the next year we went out and I said something
similar to what we were talking about the year previous,
and he said to me, oh, you still think being
gay as a sin question mark? And it was like,
what do you mean questions? Like it was never a

(17:42):
question for me. It was always, of course, it's sinful.
People that are like out and gay have just accepted
the fact that they're sinners, Like that was the way
that I thought about it. And this question really interrupted
not just the fact that someone could accept in quotes

(18:03):
their uh, queerness, but that for them it's not even
an accepted sort of idea that this thing could be sinful.
And so it actually opened up my mind to the
fact that oh, people think differently about this thing that
I thought, uh, everyone has sort of accepted. And so

(18:23):
having that experience was really it was a simple experience,
but it was really, I think a necessary experience for
me because it really pushed me to say, oh maybe,
and then I get kicked out of undergrad some people
know because I had low grades. I get back in.
I was still directing the school choir. We were asked

(18:44):
to sing for the Queer Week at University of Pennsylvania
before I started changing my ideas, and I said to
the board of the choir, we will not be singing
for them. This is a direct one because we do
not want to give them the impression that we are

(19:05):
okay with their sins. Like it's what I said. It's
very serious. It wasn't like and then I probably went
home and got on the party line and like try
to get aboy to come over to my part. Like
it's it was that kind of deep conviction about something
being wrong at the same time not really having any

(19:28):
like there are no real conversations that I'm having with
people that could interrogate what I'm thinking or my behaviors,
and like, I mean, so many people from churches on
a party like I used to call a party line
for you Philly people. Then it's called a part line
every night and I would stay on the party line

(19:49):
for hours, and I met a lot of people, and
a lot of the people that I met in part
line I would go I was a musician for several
churches in Philly. I would go to a church playing
and I'd be like, oh, I know you eat by
you way, it's not even it isn't people as kind

(20:13):
of like you know this, sorry, sorry this one dude.
I feel like I'm telling on myself. We hooked up
at my apartment. We met on the party line. I
went to a concert and I saw him at the
concert and he spoke to me, and I was so aghast,

(20:35):
how dare you speak to me? You center? I don't
know you like, yeah, whatever, I'm like, oh, like I
actually so, I'm also like a really uh how I
think what I'm I'm I think what I'm deeply deeply like, listen,
not only how old were you, but how do you then?

(20:57):
How do you? At some point I kind of reconcile
this moment with yourself because one of the things that
I love and I listened to you on another podcast
Wants talking to a group of young Christian people in
a young Christian group, and you just were able to
in this kind of beautiful way. And I know I'm
skipping a lot because I know this is not a
process that you can even really like compact, but I

(21:22):
feel like you have reconciled your love for this space,
like you've been able to um hold onto a such
a caring, meticulously caring like attitude towards church and towards
spiritual spaces and even the institution of it, you know

(21:46):
what I mean, and breaking down all the beautiful pieces
of it while still being really true to yourself and
honoring who you are. And I think that is a
dance that a lot of people really have a difficult
time with. And this just really go was into all
kinds of religions. But I think a lot of times
church just gets put on blast for this because it's
so directly associated with blackness. So as black people were like,

(22:10):
how do we do this? Because I look at you
and all with that because it's so it feels so honest. Well,
I mean it was not easy at all. I mean,
like you hear the things that I'm saying I wasn't
saying them. I wasn't saying them like jokingly. You were.
Your feet were insemented. I was serious, Like I was serious,

(22:33):
and I was mostly trying to prove to what I
thought God to me at that point. I'm not gonna cry,
but like that, I was serious. You try really hard
to say. No, I am trying to live this thing
that you all have told. You know, I write about
this in the Loneliness Book. Like I have never been
as lonely as I've been since I've come out, but

(22:55):
like I was also lonely, like when I was like
trying to live the very very Christian life that I
was told that I was supposed to live, and so
it was. It was it was not easy to begin
to have that person asked me that question at that dinner.
One thing I will credit my parents with is they

(23:16):
instilled in my brother and I a deep desire to
have integrity. That integrity was more important than like the
thing that you say is like the way that you
have to live. And you know, I tell this story
all the time. My mother she got saved at the

(23:37):
age of fourteen. She was in a school marching band
in North New Jersey. She went to the teacher the
next day and said, I can't be in the marching
band anymore. Why not? I can't wear pants anymore. I
got saved yesterday. I can't wear pants. And he said, okay,
you can practice with us. You'll get your grade based
on practice. You don't have to march when we do

(23:58):
the actual marching. And you know, I don't care about
people wearing pants or not. I don't think she cares
anymore about like wearing pants or not. She doesn't. But
like I remember, like we would go to Macy's when
I was younger. It was never like a question of
is she going to have an existential crisis about buying
a skirt today? No, it was like this is just
the thing that she does. It was never like a

(24:19):
question of is it hard for her to like not
wear pants. It was like, no, this is what I believe,
So this is what I do. And so like I
learned very early that you have to try to live
the thing that you say that you believe, or there's
a problem. And like the problem that I kept running
up against this we keep saying we believe this thing

(24:42):
about queer people, about women, about non Christians, but like
some of us have family who are not Christians, who
we love, who we are not in a paternalistic relation
to some of us have real deep relationships with people
who are queer that we are not trying to send
them to hell. Why are there all these queer people

(25:05):
in these churches? Still there was something that was you
enjoy like there was something it wasn't matching, and like
having this person said, oh, you still think it's simple.
And then you know, taking a class where the professor
is showing things about like black representation in the media,

(25:25):
you say that it's wrong. Latin next representation in media,
and you say that it's wrong women representations in media,
and you say, look at the consistency. It's not the same,
but there's some cleavages, there's some relations and the section
she does on queer people, you're like, oh, I can't.
I almost had an existential crisis in that class because

(25:46):
the responsive integrity is there's at least some consistency with
which the way people talk about queer people and the Bible,
which just the same way they talked about black people,
the same kinds of practices of marshal as they shan
it seems consistent, or I could just say, but the
Bible says this is sinful, so I can't accept what
she says. And instead I decided to do nothing. I

(26:09):
just didn't do the response the responses for the homework
for that section, and I refused to think about it.
And I wrote that professor years later to say I
had an extisential question in your class, but thank you
because that non date in two thousands, that class like
two years later, and like just like doing like research

(26:31):
on Yahoo because Google didn't exist at that point, and
like just reading things it made me start to say, well,
I actually don't know. I don't know if I can
say with conviction anymore that queerness is sinful. I can't
say that the Bible says these things. I'm not willing
to say those things anymore. And so it I was

(26:54):
really being pushed to really evaluate my own life world.
So I left they to acquire at the school. I
refused to play for them and to direct them anymore.
I still as a musician because I need the money,
but like I was trying to dive vest from a
lot of the spaces where I had leadership, public facing
leadership roles and churches because except for the organ because

(27:17):
I felt like I didn't want to like talk openly
about what I was questioning. But I also knew that
I could no longer accept the things that I was
saying in the in the times previous, just because when
did you feel comfortable with actually speaking out publicly about it,
like clearness, Yeah, when you've written these books and so

(27:37):
like when you're feeling like I'm I'm gonna go ahead
and say something about it, is there you know? I
don't I don't want to Hollywood, Like, is there a
switch that goes on, like, No, We're gonna take a
quick break and then we'll be right back. It seems

(28:03):
to me that that when we're brought up in any
particular religion, that we end up being in kind of
an envelope. The whole world is happening around us, but
we're inside this envelope, safe and sound, oh kind of.
And then when you grow up a little bit, when
you mature or and you're out in the world on

(28:24):
your own, you find out that not everybody who is
Muslim is in the tally band, you know, find out
that everybody that claims Christianity it is not a kind
there's some very very mean people that I've met in

(28:44):
life that claim because you know there, um, I definitely
remember the the stereotypes for sure. You know about church girls,
you know, being you know, um, all the things that

(29:05):
life preachers kids to being bad as hell, going being
an African American or being Latino or being Asian, um
and going to a different kind of church, or going
to a church and feeling feeling alienated because of your
race alienated or feeling alienated in your own church, Envine,

(29:30):
because I feel like also to like what we what
we what we hadn't really delved into. And this conversation
is really also about like when you're not in a
place that's foreign, when you're in the place that you
came to be, you want to be there, and you
yourself fure feeling are the person who's feeling feeling isolated,
And the conversations and the interactions that you're having with

(29:52):
people in your spiritual space as supposed to be your
safe space, that ends up being not safe. And I
think that's that's a good question. That's a good question. Yeah, Sean,
I mean you too, as you know in your church,
uh from church. So I've had lots of church. I
know church well, Yeah, I know church well, so I

(30:12):
know them both. But I'm curious in that moment, like
what do you like in retrospect, now that you have
all this knowledge and this experience, Like what do you
tell that person? Do you tell that person and maybe
you need to find a new church home, or do
you tell that person to just you know, accept people
for who they are? What do you do? Oh see,
that's I mean for me, that's complished, complicated. Some day

(30:34):
I want to say no, Like community is struggle, and
like it's not to romanticize struggle at all, but it's
like being with people that are different from you, as
being with people that are different from you, and it's hard,
and like it's not always easy, and like it's about
what you can make together in the space and the
time that you're together and don't allow for like harm
to happen to you. But like community doesn't mean agreement,

(30:57):
and so like I think, you know, we exist in
the moment of community and that's supposed to collapse with agreement,
so everyone doesn't agree. But then also like I'm not
I don't want to go too far with that though,
because it's like but yeah, like, if you're going to
question my person who might act like, you know, queerness,
like I actually like there are things that I do
not do anymore, Like I don't go to certain kinds

(31:18):
of churches. I'm grown. I went to somebody's shirts that
was around the corner for me in North Carolina when
I lived there, and like, I sat down and as
soon as I sat down, the pastor preachers started saying
something about day people, I want the keys, and I
walked out. I was like, I don't have to do this.
I'm I'm grown, and so like I feel, I feel

(31:38):
that sometimes it's my answer would be, you know, struggle
and other times like not get out. And I think
that both of those are actually necessary because both of
those will continue to UM. I think for me, there
were there were two things that happened that increased the
intensity of my sort of loud this about UM my

(32:02):
different ways of thinking about queerness. And one was my
last year and undergrad I spent every day with this
boy uh sitting on the couch in one of the
dorms and we would talk for hours, like every day,
and we became really really close. And then I got
drunk one night and my friends took my phone and

(32:24):
called to him and said, you know, he's in love
with you, right, And his response to that was I'm
not gay. And it really caused for me a problem
because I said, this is I can't feel this way
about someone and have felt this way, and it was definitely,

(32:46):
you know, more than flirty. Everyone noticed it, but like,
I can't do this and that person at least not
know who I am and who he is, and and
I need to also like be willing to like start
saying who it is that I am. And so that
was a real transformative moment for me, I really and
it was so transformative that I wrote an article for

(33:08):
the school newspaper that was about our cans or like
homophobia is an expression of sexism, and it was my
first time writing anything about sexuality at all. Of it
was mostly like you can't go backwards now, Sean like
and like, I I don't know why I wanted to

(33:28):
do it that way, but it was so public that
I couldn't I couldn't recant it. It had to be there.
And so that was like one emphatic moment of really
just just trying to say I've been thinking a lot
of these things for a long time now, I've been
having conversations, I've been reading things. It's time to like

(33:50):
say something that's like the churchy Pentecostle of me, like
you gotta be both have holy bothus so and then
like two thousand four elections really messed with me. I
was a musician for a church on the second parish.
I'll say your name if you want, uh, And I
was I was a musician, and I was the director
of the youth choir. And the two thousands of four
elections when George bush Um was running on family value

(34:16):
and there was so much and stuff right and the
Defensive Marriage Act, Defensive Marriage Act, and uh. I remember, like,
so I've graduated fro undergrad and I started my little
online magazine with me and some people. He was writing things,
and I was writing about queerness a little bit. But

(34:36):
we had a like a circulation of like five people.
All five of my friends would read it, so no
one was reading it. But like I was trying to
like process a lot of things that I was reading
and trying to think about. And the Thursday before the election,
there was a prayer that the pastor said we were
going to have instead of church service. And as the

(34:57):
elders were praying, they were saying, Lord, we know this
election is about it's not about the economy, it's not
about war. It's about the family. We need to save
the family. And I said, this is a problem. And
so I wrote the pastor and I said, we are
a nonprofit organization and we took a political position tonight,
and unless you want to UM get sued, we should

(35:19):
probably give a balanced view of other options for people
to vote for. And so I handed out material after
church on that Sunday UM for other people that they
could vote for that perhaps UM had more progressive policies
that would actually be useful for people in West Philadelphia
as opposed to this defensive marriage ack and got into

(35:42):
arguments with people in the basement of the church. It
was mind belowing because the queer people at the church,
we're the ones argument. It was fascinating. The the election night,
we had praising rehearsal and someone walks in and goes
down in praise team rehearsal. It's the worst, it's the worst.

(36:04):
And he walks in, he puts his fists in the
air and he says, I made a vote for the
family to day, I voted for Bush, and I said,
in my head, I gotta go. I I said, this
is I can no longer ethically like in the Donnie
McClerkin of it all, I don't know. And then it

(36:27):
turned out I can't say too much. They already know.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I really don't already said too much.
But any the person had their own complicated, slash violent story,
violence that they acted on other people because they wanted

(36:48):
to pretend that queerness isn't a thing that lives within them.
And so you know, I left the church in two
thousand five. I went to seminary. Years later, I find
out about stuff that's happening. And the funniest part of
all of this to me is they will still think
that I am the center, and people who have repented

(37:12):
are like, I'm just like this is and so like it.
It took a series of being quiet, like have a
very um quick temper, and I also responded to everything
without thinking. I was a think later person, and I

(37:33):
embarrassed myself enough by saying something first and then thinking
about it later. I said, maybe you should just shut up,
And so really I became introverted. I really I used
to be an E. M. T. P. On the Myers
brig and I like I'm an Ie or something like that,
but like I am introverted. And part of that was
a response to like really trying to like sit and

(37:56):
think as opposed to just allow what other people will
say to be the thing that I say, or the
things that other people believe be the thing that I believe.
It really took like a lot of like stillness, and
I think I can try to practice something like compassion
because I fundamentally recognized I could be somewhere else doing

(38:17):
something else right now and be deeply unhappy and be
practicing a kind of unethical behavior that I find abhorrent.
Because I had certain kinds of opportunities and I got
into certain kinds of doors, and I made a certain
kind of set of choices within those contexts. But I
also could be someone who was really like publicly homophobic

(38:40):
and really hates himself and really like tell other people
that they like That could also be me. And I mean,
I've met so many of those folks, and some of
them I used to call friends, and so like I
recognized that kind of struggle and because I recognize it.
I don't ever want to be dismissive while also being

(39:03):
very clear like these are my ethics, this is who
I am. But I also love like the noise of
Black Church. That's something I am. I'm not giving up.
It's it's something that I I think is it has
transformative capacity. But also it's something that hasn't been fully

(39:23):
honored because I think these musicians who died in the
eighties and the nineties UM are an example of the
kind of unkindness we can do to one another in community.
As they are creating things for us, we can still
be unkind to them. And so really trying to create
contexts right in that context, make art in that context.

(39:47):
That's about trying to to really compel a reckoning with
the past. And to to to reckon with the past
for me, means that you can't be um this passionate
and you can't be dismissive because you have to try
to understand contexts under which people make certain kinds of choices.

(40:07):
As you speak about artists. It also made me think
of during that time the population of black men who
aren't living their truth who actually died because of that,
and other people died in the process because of that
as well, Like we don't even talk about that when
it comes to black men. That was that it's hard
to talk about. Yeah, it's hard to talk because there
is so much shame, and you know, the shame isn't

(40:31):
just for folks that go to church, Like that's the thing.
It's like, it's a kind of because black. My my
friend Jay Perry would say, black culture is churchy culture,
and churchy does not mean Christian, and like it's like
the conflation of churchy with Christian of actually is a
big problem that we have. But like, because black culture

(40:52):
is so I think culturally churchy, sometimes that does for
a lot of people conflict with the kind of feel
out cool orientation or doctrinal understanding of like a gender
um sex um pleasure, sexuality. I'm sorry, but I was
gonna ask you, but I know I didn't know when

(41:13):
they're coming in with this question. But because you've had
so many studies in the area, I'm always fascinated because
I never I never called myself a religious person. I
called myself more a spiritual person because I always get
stuck in the the thoughts of how it became our
religion and how you know, we didn't come here with that,
And at some point it feels like, is that the

(41:35):
one thing we thank the white man for that I
don't know, like it just I don't I don't mean
and how it doesn't sound uneducated it's to you, but
like and you're trying, like how do you how does
it direct? How do you erect this where we we
know the history, you know, that's the that's the trickiest part.
And we can say the same thing about Islam. But

(41:56):
right you know, we're gonna we're gonna knock your teeth out,
we're gonna cut your foot off. You don't you don't
learn these ways. You know we're going to do something
terrible to your body or to your mind. So it's
the way we live under this book. It's so sometimes
it it's weird to me because I'm like, wow, we
really took this and it but oh I'm sorry. You know,

(42:24):
to be rigid at one point was the distinction between
being like pious as as opposed to like loosen these
in these spiritual streets, you know, So it's like my
my rigid, how rigid I am? Is how you distinguish
me from the righteous? And the not righteous, and I

(42:45):
think and and and the show you could it was
wrong the first place, right, but but you know, and
then I mean, you know, we could talk Ethiopia. We
could talk a lot of stuff in terms of like,
you know, the history of of you know, and and
that kind of thing. That there, Africa is still Africa.
Everything still came from there. Africa's Africa's Okay, what I'm

(43:10):
saying or my understanding from some of what Shan was saying,
I want to make sure that we don't get too
far from it, because I really want to speak on it.
Is that he talked about that Churchy versus Christian. The
whole thing is that so even though our grandmothers may
have right, so even though our grandparents may have gotten
this rigid versus Christian right, what we're seeing now is

(43:34):
this this really social phenomenon around churchy and what that means,
and that if I look this way, if I dressed
this way, if I speak these words, if I have
this stone, if I do this thing, if I if
I present, if I do this performance, that this performance
is to be Christian as opposed to that. And I
just and and I also want a Shan to expound

(43:57):
on that. But I also want to ask you a
question about this thing of our compassion, like the passion
of compassion, like how passionate are you about your search?
And or or should we be in our search for compassion?
What space in our like religious institutions, is there space
in there for that? Are we really talking about this

(44:18):
this trying to seek out how compassionate we can really be?
You got all that, Sean, We need you to talk
about all of that was that was three things. That
was three things. That was the churchy thing and then
the whole thing about compassion, and then that was the
history thing that I asked about too. So in the history, Yeah,

(44:39):
I totally want to know, how do you find at home?
How do you find a church home when you you know,
I don't go to church no more, I don't. I don't.
So like I left church and tooth, so I went
to seminary and tooth that so when I left the
church in Philly, I took literally I took the midnight
train from three History station to Georgia and I went

(45:00):
to seminary in Atlanta. And my first year I was
I was a chaplain at the Metro State Prison for women, UM,
and we were supposed to conduct their church service weekly
and also pray with they gave They gave us a
woman to meet with weekly for counseling. And my the

(45:21):
person I met with weekly said to me one week,
I like you because you don't pray, said thank you,
and uh she she asked me, are you gay? I
said yeah, I am. She was like, that's why I
like it. So we had to preach the sermons. I preached.
The sermon that's the last sermon I ever preached was

(45:42):
at one of the church services UM at Metro State
Prison for Women. I left that program because I felt
it was unethical what we were doing. Um, I'm a
prison abolitionist, and UM I found it. I didn't have
the language. I had not read prison I listeners at
that point, but I felt that there was something really

(46:03):
wrong with asking us to come in every Sunday have
a prayer service. Everybody's not Christian, but still everything that
we're doing for them is very very not just Christians
because Catholics are Christians. It's like, no, this is a
very specific kind of eat black pentecostal ish, nondenominational ish

(46:24):
practice of of of Christianity. That we're doing for the
women every week, and I had to. I had to
leave it because it felt unethical and so that was
me really leaving church. And I haven't since really sought
too hard for a church home. It's not something that

(46:45):
I look for. What the Black Church does well, and
what it historically did well was provide space. Literally, It's
like it's a space that you could go um weekly
sometimes I was daily. You knew it would be open,
you knew that they would have resources. You knew that
you could like come and sing music, you could learn things.

(47:08):
The quire don't sound good, it don't matter, Like you're
still gonna go to choire rehearsal, You're still gonna try
to learn. Like it became a form of gathering in
community with others that you knew was available. And I
think that the availability of the space and what it
provided in terms of like social community actually got conflated

(47:30):
with the doctrines of certain churches to say that because
the space was provided, the doctrines of the church must
be right, and so that rigidity is actually a miss.
It seems to me a misunderstanding of what it was
actually offering. That rigidity is a refusal to actually understand
that what, more than anything, what the church was providing

(47:51):
with space. I think that had it been another tradition
that offered that same kind of space and that kind
of regularity of gathering, then it would be that other
kind of thing as opposed to church as the sort
of dominant. And I think that the thing that people
like me laugh is a place to go where that
kind of regularity, where people know you'll just show up

(48:14):
and you'll do the things, and you'll be there with
the people, and you'll learn things, and you'll grow together,
and you'll argue with each other, you won't like each other,
and you'll find a new one. But like it's there's
something really uh that's community because it's not about agreement,
it's about like being together and finding things together, and
so like inconsistency. And so I think that the rigidity.

(48:35):
Um I often wonder if I am just as rigid,
but just now in in another direction. I'm really really
rigid about like prison abolition. I'm really really rigid about queerness.
I'm really really rich about loving black people. And I'm
really not gonna have been do that kind of stuff,
and you know I don't, but I don't want it

(48:56):
to feel or be doctrine there in the way that
you know when I was a young person. I mean,
y'all going to help, that's okay, that's what you're gonna do,
like and just being very much like, that's that's you.
That's the decision that you have made. And so trying
to not be rigid, but also trying to still have

(49:16):
a sense of consistency. And it feels really important to
me to to try to to try to do that.
I forgot the other two classes. I'm sorry, it's all good.
I just I feel like the way that we interact
with each other has to have like a consistent baseline.

(49:37):
And when we're talking about when we talk about belief
and we talk about you know, um, what kind of
binds us together in spirit that if it's absent of um,
you know, compassion and like you said, you you feel
like those are things you're original and I'm rigid about compassion.
The thing to be rigid about should be like a

(50:01):
can I just say, okay, I remember one thing I
wanted to say. I wanted to say that Philly was
a really important city for me to be in when
I was having my various existential crisis because Philly is
also the first place I have ever lived where I
was meeting consistently people who are variously identified spiritually, and

(50:28):
also it being a really black Muslim city. Like I
remember meeting an organist and I was like, oh, you
play really good? Did you grow up kajak for Church
of Ditton Christ And he responded and said I'm a
Pentecostal Muslim and kept walking and I said, that doesn't
make any sense, and yet, welcome to Philly. I went

(50:51):
on a date with someone and we were arguing at
the table about he's Jehovah's Witness and Muslim, and it's
like I was real Pentecostal still at that point, and
like neither one of us thinks we're going to heaven?
Were we both think we're going to Hell. We're defending

(51:12):
our spiritual practices very very deeply, while at the same
time like also flirting with each other. It was fastest
and like Philly is, you know. I was a musician
for two churches with um women pastors. One was really big.
There were many churches in Philly with women pastors that
have big congregations, which I had never been in the

(51:33):
city before. With this kind of religious complexity. I was
gonna say, it's a few queer congregations as well, and
Philly that are really kind of dope and special. I
was playing for one church and we had gone, uh,
and she had gone to preach at this other church,
and they were announcing this person who was going to
be preaching in a couple of weeks, and I knew.

(51:54):
I said, well, that pastor is a lesbian and she's out.
She has an open of the firm, And I said,
what kind of church are we? Yeah, it was Philly
is for me, uh, such an important zone to think
about the spiritual practices of black folks. And I think
being there and seeing and being a part of that

(52:18):
kind of deep complexity, like literally going to church with
folks who was like shouting one day and I was like,
well I just took the shado so and you're like
the next day. But it was like it was it was.
I think it was necessary though, because it really was
able to finally dislodge me from this idea that one

(52:39):
Pentecostals are the only church people. Church people are the
only ones that are saved maybe saved. It's not a
thing that you even need because what does that concept
actually do? But like it was the first place that
compelled me, forced me to confront a lot of the
accepted realities because I was looking at things but this

(53:00):
is like I'm saying, this is reality, but what is
happening doesn't cohere with what I'm saying, And like having
to deal with that and like a real place was
really difficult, but it was a real It was a real, real,
real gift And I'm really thankful um for having that
kind of confrontation in that kind of place. More conversation

(53:27):
after the break. What I'm gathering is that stillness is
important m writing too, because you know, typically we're all

(53:52):
by ourselves with our pins, you know, or you know,
our computers or whatever. Where we're typically by ourselves. It's
just our thoughts on paper, and paper tends to you know.
I I say this that when you know you write
it down, it becomes real. Yeah. So in these moments

(54:13):
when you or I, anybody, all of us, we're trying
to figure out our way because we've been so um
indoctrinated by our parents and our community um about what
is right. UM. We we realized that there is no

(54:35):
absolutes when it comes to uh a church or community.
You know, Um, there's no absolutes were really multidimensional as people.
There's there's so many flavors in one person that is
is really not fair to um to uh put folks

(54:58):
in boxes. The boxes are unhealthy for us in my opinion.
And eventually, if you manage to travel a little bit,
if you manage to have conversations with with other people,
with just other people, sometimes it's got to bust. Sometimes
it's on a flight, Sometimes it's just in the in
the market or in the mall, you know, having a

(55:18):
conversation with someone. Um if if if those things open
our minds, and ultimately it's up to us to own
ourselves and to not um box ourselves in and beat
ourselves up because because sometimes it's that's the way it

(55:42):
seems that the church community is it's abusive. I know,
I know, I'm not supposed to say that. That's the
way it looks to me, it looks like that's the
way it feels too, that it can be very abusive.
And that's compassion thing you're talking about. It seems like

(56:02):
the winner. Where is the compassion, Where's the kindness, where's
the love? Where's the understanding that we we all are sinners.
Um right Am I am? I making example? Well, would
also say that is by telling you that you are wrong,
But the things that they tell you that you're wrong about,

(56:22):
I would rather say, whould tell me what my sin is?
I was like, the thing about is that because this
is something we all think about so much in our
private spaces, and it's so hard to just be really
honest about what we're actually thinking because I think it's
one of the last things that we struggle with being

(56:45):
truly honest about because we're really afraid of what people
will say and what they will think about us because
and and and I don't know what the because it is,
but I do know that that is very true and
that Um. So when we do have questions and we
when we are really trying to trust our own instincts,
it becomes an argument within ourselves. First, um, because there's

(57:07):
that voice inside you that's consistently saying, well, no, you
can't think about that, because if you think about that,
then you're going down that road you're not supposed to
go down. And you know what we did that it's
gonna end up boom in this place You've been trying
to avoid ever since you ever started learning about your
relationship with God. And I think there's this thing that
that that inner argument is the first one and it

(57:28):
is the last one. You know, it is the one
that starts the whole process, and it's the one that
ends that process or transforms that process in the very end.
And I know that that's why many of them, I
know why this is a hard conversation for us to have,
because I know that we're all still having that conversation
within ourselves at least I know that I am. You

(57:50):
know what I mean. But I really encourage everybody, if
I had anything to say, will be encourage everyone to
really be honest in that conversation with yourself as much
as possible. Because the thing is that what a Sean
has told you again and again is that you can't
have this dual existence and justify it for a very

(58:12):
long time if you are unhappy and if you're not
being honest in the conversation having with the self, and
then it really it really begins there. And the compassion
that we're talking about, that passionate compassion and starts with
the self too. Yeah, you must be compassionate to the self.
If you're ever going to walk into an institution of

(58:33):
any sort and love the person who you are and
not allow anything that is said has done in that
institution to define you. If you have not had that
important conversation with yourself, it is just essential, and you
will set yourself up for others to hurt you. You will,
you will get harmed otherwise, No, no, please, you see

(58:57):
we were saying, I just want to say really quickly.
I had a friend years ago who once I started
like thinking differently about sexuality, he was also a church kid.
I would tell him like, well, I don't think the
Bible actually says that, and Hebrew doesn't say that in Greek.
And he would say to me explicitly, don't talk to
me about that. I don't want to hear it. And

(59:19):
his his reason was if I and he said it, like,
if I find out that I was wrong about that
and what the church said about that, when will it end?
Because I don't know how far I'll have to go
to figure out maybe like everything that I thought that
I believe is wrong, and I'm just I don't want
to have to deal with that kind of impact and

(59:41):
I'd rather not think about it at all, And so
I do think that we have to be willing to
ask ourselves those questions. And like Jill was saying, you
have to, like if you if you can't ask it,
maybe write it down with a pen or use your
cell phone and send yourself a note. But like like
try to like at least at least be honest with

(01:00:02):
yourself because you know, I also I still it's a place.
It's a place that has compassion too. That's the thing.
Like it also taught me how to love. It taught
me how to ask questions and actually being in church
taught me leadership skills. Literally, like they said, do this
church service and I was fifteen and I said, okay.
Like it taught me so much about how to be

(01:00:25):
a person who loves myself. Like and that's the thing
I struggled with loving myself. I didn't like myself. But
like you know, I've been singing my whole life. Um,
and I'm not happy about that part. But I really, actually, really,
really really the one thing I don't question is if

(01:00:45):
I love myself and if I am kind to myself.
But like I think that it is it's so hard
to hold the need for this kind of compassion because
to begin to ask any of these questions, it can
uncovered so much. But I think there's so much beauty

(01:01:06):
that is possible to be discovered in the uncovering if
we are in certain kinds of communities that will hold
us and care while we are doing that kind of
uncovered work. So I believe suppression is the brother sister
of depression. Yes, And what's what's my favorite? One of

(01:01:32):
my favorite lines is running ain't gonna save you? Hm?
So true? M can you tell to a couple of
boys I know trying to run, running ain't gonna say it?
Doesn't say nah, this is this is your right, this
is This is such a tough conversation because wow, I mean, yeah,

(01:02:01):
we can see all the disparities. It could see them.
They're they're bold, they're they've they've got um neon around
the captions. We could see it all and pretending that
it's not there. I'm not I cannot see how it
benefits us. I'm not sure. I love the idea that

(01:02:26):
there's a community. I love the fact that that they're
sharing of information that building the community. I think I
mentioned that. I think I like that part. But and
that's the part you take to go to church. And
I'm not. I never called myself a Christian, but I
shout out to Pastor Waller Alfred Street Baptis over the

(01:02:48):
n d C. I mean, because past the wall to
be given the good sermons and sometimes I just need
a little motivation and whatnot. But you know, I still say,
I don't know, I haven't picked my squad. Squad is
just me and the Lord, my relationship. That's me in
the Lord. And I picked my squaw. That sound sound
pretty squad deep to me, Like yeah, me and the Lord,

(01:03:09):
we're tight. And then my grandma because she got my
back up dead. So you know, it's like us three traditionally,
you know, I say what's up to him and her?
And there were good yeah, but you know, I'm agnostic,
but I listened to Therenda Clark Coles, I am still
here became like, look, I actually there was a lot
that was trying to conspire against my being here in
this world today, and like a lot that could have

(01:03:33):
you know, taking me out. Most of it was in
the church, and like, I'm but I'm still here, and
I'm really thankful that I'm still here. And so like
sometimes it's like the sermon has the message, the song
has the message. Tell you right now, I shout, I
shout because I'm not listen. I'm gonna tell you right

(01:03:56):
now that that that one thing about that touches me
is that is that dance. Shout right there, that right there,
because I will find a corner and get it out. Okay,
you know it is what it is. I think we
all know where the spirit and the energy connects. And
the shouting the windings, that's where it comes from. The

(01:04:18):
shouting the winding stems systems. Yes, that's real. I mean,
that's the argument of black film, costal breath. It's literally dark.
It's like, this is the this is the thing. Yes,

(01:04:39):
that's the consistency that whatever, all the things that we've
brought in our in our bodies, in our DNA, they
are still very very relevant. They still occur, all of it,
and we need it, still need it, We need it still.
I ain't following all the brules though, y'all got that.
I don't know. I'm good on the rule. You know.

(01:05:03):
I like my parents. I likes my parents and my
sex before marriage or else, I would have never had
no sex. Hello, not sex before marriage. I put that
on as a prescription because I know too many people.
People held out and they made And I'm glad you

(01:05:25):
know to people because I don't know a single solitary one.
I know several. I don't know what. You know. You
got j W homies, so you know, first squad, this
is true. Yeah, this is true. Yeah, I'm telling you
right now, no one, no one. I don't know what.

(01:05:46):
But y'all sound like a bunch of sinnis to me.
We all are underway. Guess what. You also sound like
a bunch of humans. I thank you so much for
listening to Jay dot Ill the podcast. I thank you
with Sean, you know, Opening Doors is a great way
to see what's on the other side. Thank you, y'all,

(01:06:09):
Thank you, thank you. How do you eat an elephant?
One by it kind? Hey, y'all, it's like yah feeling
in for Amber today and we just want to say
thank you again to our guests, as Sean Crawley, who
shared a story that so many can relate to, because

(01:06:31):
the intricacies of church are real. So if you're struggling
with leaving a church or finding a new spiritual path,
we want to encourage you to check out some of
his work like Black Pentecostal Breath, The Aesthetics of Possibility,
and The Lonely Letters. We'll drop a link to both
of these books and more in the show notes. You

(01:06:51):
can find a Sean on social media. His Instagram is
a Sean Crawley and a Sean Crawley Art. You can
also find him on Twitter at a on Crawley. Thanks Shaw,
and always thank you for listening. Hi. If you have

(01:07:17):
comments on something we said in this episode called eight
six six, Hey Jill, if you want to add to
this conversation that's eight six six nine five four five
by don't forget to tell us your name and the
episode you're referring to. You might just hear your message
on a future episode. Thank you for listening to Jill

(01:07:38):
Scott presents Jay dot Ill. The podcast Jay dot Ill
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast
from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.