So, like, it's easy to get on board with that, I think.

No, absolutely.

You're like, look, this, yeah, like I think, you know, we mentioned like how oftentimes, like, the charisma of youth group culture, it wanes over time because you realize that life isn't so black and white.

Like I mentioned, I look back at my MySpace now and I'm like, I was just having normal exploration.

But when you live in the world of, like, Christian theol- fundamentalist Christian theology, it's these extremes of sin and these extremes of, like, salvation and healing, and I think kids, we're so susceptible to buying into that.

But as we said, like, parents too, they, they also, like, I think are taught through the church to, like, believe in, like, slippery slope theology.

If I ca- if I see that my kid is sexting, tomorrow they're gonna be pregnant.

... yeah.

grief?

Who is worthy of grief, right? And we think about how white Christian communities in particular are grieving Lindsey Graham, how they did grieve Charlie Kirk.

We can think about Justice Scalia and how people were very critical of black communities for what they perceived as a celebration of Scalia's death.

versus an honest exhale because this person lived in ways that were so oppressive to their ability to survive that for him to die meant they are more free.

There are some people who live lives that are so oppressive to others that their death actually creates space for the freedom of others.

And that's not a celebration of their death.

That's an indictment on how they live.

We said a whole bunch of controversial stuff and we went too long.

But tell us a little bit about yourself and your story and how you got to doing what you're doing as the gardening theologian.

That was already so kind, too kind.

I really appreciate that.

you know i think like so many people like i came to the work of like progressive inclusive theology because of my own embodied experience uh growing up in the church i grew up pentecostal siblings of god so i don't know if any of you in the chat grew up pentecostal in particular but pentecostal is based upon the idea of like uh pentecost kind of when the holy spirit came to people within the within biblical texts and how the Holy Spirit manifested itself through charismatic engagement with the Holy Spirit, like speaking in tongues, which not every denomination believes in.

The Pentecostals do believe that when the Holy Spirit comes over you, that you can speak a different language, falling out under the Holy Spirit, which is like when someone prays over you and maybe you feel overcome and you faint or you fall out, all these different things.

So my church was very, but it also was very big on relational theology, having an individual relationship with God.

So pentecostals often feel like throughout the day they're hearing god speak to them that they're in this kind of constant dialogue with god and i think there can be a lot of beauty to that like something that i always felt growing up in church like it was so cool to see someone come into service and i went to a mega church but to see people come in and maybe you see their shoulders are a little down and they look a little dejected and they leave with this whole new air of uh compassion and self-love you can see these beautiful moments of transcendence and transformation in the church.

How do you teach us? How do you experience Creator God through your unique Black queer eyes?