BY Jason Victor Serinus
Among the theologians playing key roles in Souls' Fire, the Chicago conference for lesbian and gay African Americans involved in religion and ministry, is Rev. Lynice Pinkard. Currently a pastor at the First Congregational Church in Oakland, Calif., and a therapist with the city and county of San Francisco, the 42-year old minister in the United Church of Christ was among the first African American ministers to dedicate themselves to the needs of the African American lesbian and gay community.
Attendees will first meet Rev. Lynice Pinkard Thursday evening, June 23, when she preaches at Souls' Fire's free Thursday evening worship and reception at Chicago Theological Seminary entitled 'How We Got Over May not 'Necessarily' Be How We'll Get Through.'
Asked what she considers most important about the conference, Pinkard replied:
'We need to utilize our own histories as African-American LGBTs to understand and uncover the more radical parts of Christianity. Remember that Jesus, that Jewish carpenter, was a poor, landless radical/revolutionary. He stood up and fought the powers that be. Today we'd say that he stood up against Homeland Security.
'Faith gives people the ability to resist forms of oppression. I'd like Black people of faith to make the connection between the resistance of the early church—of Jesus in particular—with the history of other African-American peoples who have fought on all kinds of liberation fronts.
'Resistance to every form of suffering and oppression is a mandate. We must connect our suffering to the suffering that's happening all over the world and to the environment. We can get power from connecting to coalitions based in what I call collective projects for freedom.'
Pinkard's religious activism began at what is now Hampton University in Virginia, where she served as president of the Student Christian Association. After a stint in law school, a motorcycle accident in 1992 changed the course of her life. Shortly thereafter, Rev. Yvette Flunder, a former member of the Hawkins Family Singers ( 'O Happy Day' ) , asked Pinkard and two other Black lesbians to help her start Oakland's City of Refuge church.
Located in the same Love Center in Oakland where the Hawkins Family began to sing, City of Refuge was founded at the height of the AIDS and crack epidemics. Initially attracting a Black and gay/bi congregation, it maintained the flair, rhythms, cadences in preaching, and jubilistic worship of the traditional Black church, melding it with a liberating theology that addressed pressing needs for justice work, community service, and structural change.
'We founded the church first and foremost to serve people who were being subjugated in their own churches by conservative theology,' explains Pinkard. 'Our second motivation was outreach to people living with HIV and AIDS. We also reached out to people living with substance abuse issues, alienation, and depression.'
During her five years at the City of Refuge, Pinkard began to attend the Pacific School of Religion. After receiving her M.Div and M.A., she got another degree in counseling from Cal State Hayward. Amidst it all, she founded her own Church, which lasted a year and a half. The congregation was a racial mix of working poor African-Americans, fellow seminarians who wanted to be with her, activists who were coming to faith, and people of faith who were coming to activism.
'Yvette continues to make unbelievable head roads into conservative Black churches,' Pinkard reports. 'Back then, people were very exclusionary, critical, and even nasty. There was a lot of misogyny and homophobia, triggered by outrage that there were lesbian women in ministry who had the audacity to start their own church and do their own thing independently.'
Given her background, it is no wonder that Pinkard thought of Souls' Fire's Friday afternoon plenary, 'Un-Holy Ghosts: Decolonizing the Churches of Our Youth.' She will serve as the plenary's 'respondent,' commenting on ideas raised by the four panelists, then initiating a conversation amongst them and the audience.
'It's about challenging the churches of our youth: the misogyny, homophobia, and hierarchical authoritarian class structures we were raised with,' she explains. 'We want to make sure that in creating new churches and theologies, we don't retain a lot of the old baggage.'
Pinkard has strong thoughts about June 24's opening plenary, 'Wrapped Up, Tied Up, Tangled Up: The Politics of Aesthetic Maleness, Masculinity & Charisma in Black Religious Culture.'
'We want to investigate the notion of masculinity from a Black religious perspective,' says Pinkard. 'What kind of damage has been done as a result of social constructions of gender that have been foisted onto young people?'
Rev. Pinkard cites her experience as a therapist dealing with violence issues in San Francisco's predominantly African-American Bayview-Hunters Point. The reluctance of Black men to hold each other, cry, and share their feelings has led to what she terms 'a real deprivation of the spirit.' To this she ascribes some Black men's desire to subordinate others and perpetrate violence on other men and women.
'There's a replication of oppression that stems from a male notion of power and strength, from violence and force,' says Pinkard. 'Some of this relates to the fact that Black men have been emasculated in this country due to racism; they're considered 'less than' and feminized. This leads to a high degree of homophobia in Black churches where Black men are in positions of authority, and a denigration of the feminine, whether in women or gay men.'
According to Pinkard, denigration of African bodies began with the transatlantic slave trade. Roundtable participants will examine what it means for Blacks to have been taught to hate themselves and people who look like them, and how internalized oppression leads to sexual repression and internalized homophobia.
Pinkard believes the many people she worked with at City of Refuge who knowingly spreading HIV were motivated by self-hatred and anger that were projected out. 'It stems to the levels of denigration we learned to internalize,' she asserts. 'As Black gay people, the levels of self-hatred just mounted up and up and up. Much of our outreach serves to mediate hatred by helping people develop a sense of self-love and self-esteem.'
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