Holy Queer: What Karmen Michael Smith Tells Us About Living Black and Gay as a Person of Faith

Holy Queer. What a great title for a book: Holy Queer. The subtitle is also great: The Coming Out of Christ. The writer, Rev. Karmen Michael Smith, knew the title would attract attention. But his hope was to create a better understanding of himself, a self-described queer Black man, and others like him who seek affirmation instead of rejection in Black church circles.

The author is Union Theological Seminary’s (NYC) director of the social justice center, in which they raise issues of justice, equity and inclusion.

Rev. Karmen Michael Smith acknowledges that it is tough for Black gay men and women to fit in the historical Black church, and that those who are both Black and LGBTQ are “often talked to and talked about but rarely listened to.” 

“I wanted to put flesh on the experience of what it’s like to grow up in the Black church and be a part of this community that is marginalized and is a minority, but then you’re a minority within a minority.” 

The subtitle, “The Coming Out of Christ,” is meant to focus on the belief that we are all created in the image of the divine, of God, as people who identify as queer, and how “divine queerness is.” 

Rev. Karmen Michael Smith is using “queer” in this way: “Queer, not as in who you are sleeping with--because that’s what people’s minds go to first, which can be a part of queerness--but queer as in, at odds with everything around you, as Jesus was a t odds at the entire system around him.” 

What Rev. Karmen Michael Smith hopes happens is that churches would be both more inclusive and more affirming. “To be inclusive means that yes, come into the congregation. To be affirming means that you have welcomed in and created a space where we see you, acknowledge yo, there’s programming for you, there’s ministries for you.” 

Here’s a link to the article about the book found in religionnews.com:https://religionnews.com/2023/02/27/holy-queer-author-seeks-black-church-inclusion-beyond-singing-with-choir/

Holy Queer.

Divine Queer.

Godly Queer.

They are all pointing out the one thing we know is truth: God made us all in God’s image, and because of that, the spark of the Divine, the Creator, the Source of all living, is in us all.

May it be so.



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