Published Work: Digital Hush Harbors: Black Preaching Women and Black Digital Religious Networks
Abstract
Non-cisgender, non-heterosexual, non-male bodies are not safe in Black churches. The digital Black church must be different from its physical landscape and historical institutional status. In the digital age, forward-thinking Black preaching women are going live on social media to preach in multifaceted ways and “bypass traditional systems of legitimization and historically recognized gatekeepers.” A natural progression from the clandestine clearing to phonograph preaching, to radio and televangelism livestreams—online streaming media broadcast in real time and simultaneously recorded—serve as agential sites. The article argues that Black preaching women are making use of networked space to circumvent interlaced oppressive religious structures and theologies. Acting as curators, they are deploying livestreams as digital hush harbors in ways that are challenging traditional hierarchies of Black church authority and changing the nature of religious space. The offering concludes that when Black preaching women couple digital media with spiritual agency, they sacralize their lived experiences in ways that colonized religion and the offline Black church have not fully recognized.
