A Space for Faith, Sexual Desire, and Ethical Black Ministerial Practices

Abstract

From the first time that I read it many years ago I have been intrigued by the relationship between spirituality and sexuality presented in Ann Allen Shockley’s 1980s feminist novel about a Black minister. In Say Jesus and Come to Me the main character makes her living as an evangelist preaching at black church revivals. The novel tells the story of how this minister falls in love and how she successfully builds her own church in Nashville, Tennessee. This fictional account has a somewhat startling yet, refreshingly open depiction of sexual dynamics in black church and community life. In one early scene, Rev. Myrtle Black, the lesbian main character, thinks about how much her voice and good looks resemble those of her father. He, too, was a black preacher. The author explains that Myrtle “soon discovered that her voice, coupled with her inherent facility for words, could play havoc in the ears and hearts of people. It served her well, too, in bed as an incitement to lovemaking. Also, just as women were attracted to her father, they were to her. But because she was a woman, too, they blinded themselves to the true nature of the magnetism, preferring to place it in the category of the spiritual.”^1’ The rest of the story offers a very romantic description of the development of Myrtle’s intimate relationship with a celebrity in the music business who attends her revival. It includes some highly erotic moments between them during the altar calls.