Religiously fluid

I remember the first time I realized I was fluid. I was new to Christianity, having spent the early part of adolescence as a Five Percenter—a Black radical religious group closely resembling the Nation of Islam—which I found by way of hip-hop, my first religion. My favorite emcees were Muslim (or some version of it), and it felt right for me: the emphasis on knowledge and discipline, the critique of empire, the lifting of Black consciousness, and the outright declaration that we were not subjects but in fact “gods” ourselves. I was sold.

After a while I found myself spell-broken—perhaps due more to the wandering of adolescence than anything else—and in a local church that was allowing kids to rap during its Monday night program. Like every kid I wanted to rap, but unlike most kids I could actually rap. The problem was, I didn’t have anywhere to go! So I guess we’re going to church then, was how my internal dialogue went. Yuck. White man’s Jesus and all of that. I had a real attitude about it.

Turns out, it was pretty nice! I didn’t enjoy the syrupy Jesus stuff, but I was needing a little love and a place to feel seen. The pastors there were amazing, and I quickly became a formidable youth leader—in all the ways that “formidable” really means “annoying”—but a full-fledged evangelicalism never quite took. I enjoyed sex, for one. I also genuinely missed the emphasis on Black consciousness that felt so core to my identity. So while I was onstage rapping and being a Christian On Fire, I was for sure still reading the Qur’an, re-centering myself with prayer throughout the day, and struggling to reconcile any sort of organized religion with the racism that seemed so clearly embedded in it. To be honest, it felt like I was cheating on God.