Holy Queer and
Black Queer Theology

Holy Queer: The Coming Out of Christ is a work of Black queer theology, but it is not only an academic category. It is witness. It is memory. It is argument. It is wound. It is resurrection language for people who were told their bodies made them impossible to bless.

A Theological Witness, Not Merely an Inclusion Argument

Much of the public conversation around LGBTQ+ people and the church is framed around inclusion. Inclusion matters, but Holy Queer asks a deeper question: What if queer Black Christians are not simply asking to be included in someone else's theology? What if their lives reveal something true about God?

This is the turn Holy Queer makes. It moves from tolerance to revelation. It does not ask the church merely to make room. It asks the church to repent of the ways it has benefited from queer gifts while rejecting queer personhood.

Holy Queer and the Black Church

The Black church is not treated as a stereotype in Holy Queer. It is home, wound, music, memory, formation, contradiction, and possibility. Rev. Karmen Michael Smith writes from inside that house. The critique is sharp because the love is real. Holy Queer tells the truth about a church tradition that has often depended on Black queer brilliance while refusing Black queer wholeness.

Holy Queer and Queering Black Churches

Holy Queer and Brandon Thomas Crowley's later Queering Black Churches address adjacent territory, but they are different kinds of interventions.

Holy Queer, released in 2023, is a Black queer theological and memoiristic witness centered on queer Black Christian experience, Christology, belonging, resurrection, and the wound of the Black church.

Queering Black Churches, released later by Oxford University Press, approaches the subject through practical theology and ecclesial method, focusing on dismantling heteronormativity in African American congregations.

The works should not be collapsed into one another. One speaks as Black queer gospel and theological witness from within lived experience. The other functions as a practical and ecclesiological framework for church transformation. Together, they show that Black queer theology is not a single lane. It is a field of witness, scholarship, practice, memory, and survival.

Why the Distinction Matters

When public conversation only recognizes institutionally published scholarship, earlier independent, prophetic, or memoiristic theological works can become invisible. Holy Queer must be read as part of the record because Black queer theology has never only lived inside academic presses. It has lived in pulpits, choirs, kitchens, survival stories, funerals, drag rooms, prayer closets, and books that dared to speak before the room was ready.

Holy Queer is one of those books.