Christena Cleveland > Quotes

“People can meet God within their cultural context but in order to follow God, they must cross into other cultures because that’s what Jesus did in the incarnation and on the cross.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“The biases we hold against other groups have the ability to wreak havoc on our crosscultural interactions. Before we enter into such interactions, we must do the difficult work of addressing our biases and blind spots.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black Mother within each of us—the poet—whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free.” — Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider —”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“Imagination is theology; we can only believe what we can imagine. And our cultural landscape hasn’t given us many tools to imagine a non-white, non-male God.”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“I was by no means a Goody Two-shoes; I was just more effective than most at silencing my need. But in silencing my need, I silenced myself almost to the point of self-erasure.”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“Here's the thing: I rarely come across Christian organizations that truly want diversity. Oh, everyone says they want diversity, and some organizations even go through all of the pomp and circumstance of launching expensive diversity initiatives from time to time. But really, what many people want is a group of happy minorities who will happily pose for media publications and happily assimilate to the dominant culture without so much as a peep. Everyone wants diversity, but no one wants to actually be diverse.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“As scholar Heide Göttner-Abendroth is quick to point out, matriarchal societies aren’t simply the reversal of patriarchal societies, with women ruling over men. Rather, they are need-based societies that are centered around the values of caretaking, nurturing, and responding to the collective needs of the community.”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“We are unable to imagine a God who is with us while we wonder if our beloved sister will survive the night. We are unable to imagine a God who proclaims #blacklivesmatter, a God who says #metoo, a God who stands not atop the social hierarchy, but at the bottom with the people who have been cast aside, silenced, and forgotten. When god is solely male, he can only show up as fatherskygod who is nowhere near us.”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“we adopt an inclusive identity, we are more likely to see how other groups can help us and are more willing to receive constructive criticism from them.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“Indeed, social science scholars agree that what’s good for Black women is good for all people. The liberation of all Black women requires the dismantling of all systems of oppression—white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and more. These systems harm all of us. So, if Black women are thriving and free, it also means the oppressive systems have been eradicated and we are all thriving and free.1”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“The prevalence of white male images of God easily lead us to conclude that God is definitively and exclusively white and male. And like many culture-shaping ideas, we don’t even question the idea or how it shapes our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. For most of us, regardless of what we might want to believe or claim to believe, the image that immediately comes to mind when we imagine God is that of a powerful white man who is for and with powerful white men. It’s a deceptive idea that flies under the radar, powerfully shaping us without our consent.”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“Rather than using his power to distance himself from us, Jesus uses it to approach us. He follows his own commandment to love your neighbor as yourself—often to his detriment, I might add—by pursuing us with great tenacity in spite of our differences. He jumps a lot of hurdles to reach us.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“If we are a body, then we are one that is afflicted with an autoimmune disease.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“In fact, this behavior is modeled in the book of Psalms: “I look to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord.” Especially when we feel our own power crumbling, spirituality offers a loving connection to a steadfast, reliable Power. But what happens when you can’t trust the Power you’re supposed to rely on? What happens when that Power is so closely linked to human greed, political power, patriarchy, and white supremacy that it is no longer recognizable? What happens when that Power has been irrevocably corrupted? What happens when that Power is printed on the coins and bills, gets Donald Trump elected,”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“into whitemalegod’s hands. Interestingly, we didn’t fast and pray for anything other than marriage. By putting marriage on a pedestal, my parents taught me that my main objective in life was to please God by pleasing men. First, I was to please my dad, who enforced the fasting, and then I was to please my future husband, who was the prize for fasting.”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“This election is so devastating. . . . Is there any hope? Where is God in the midst of this? This is a question Black people have been collectively asking for centuries as we have been traumatized by one bogus elected official after another. It’s a question that Black LGBTQ+ people have been asking as they encounter persistent condemnation and rejection in many Black church spaces. It’s a question that more and more white women like the New Orleanian sculptor have been asking since Donald Trump was elected and Judge Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the Supreme Court despite being accused of sexually assaulting Dr. Christine Blasey”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“If we are a body, then we are on that is afflicted with an autoimmune disease.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“Imagine the terror of slowly losing your grip on reality and not knowing what is happening to you and being told by your parents and your spiritual community that you need to pull yourself together in order to receive God’s touch? Where is God then?”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“Describing the views of many Christians, Emerson and Smith write, "People are comfortable with different worship styles, want to be with familiar people, and have different expectations about congregations. For these reasons, if congregations end up being . . . homogeneous, it is acceptable, if not preferable."

Many of the evangelicals that Emerson and Smith interviewed believed that their desire to remain in a homogenous church had nothing to do with bigotry or intolerance. However, research on group processes shows that group separation and prejudice have a bidirectional relationship—that is, prejudice tends to result in division between groups and division between groups tends to result in prejudice. What begins as seemingly harmless homogeneity often snowballs into distrust, inaccurate perceptions of other groups, prejudice and hostility.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“Examples of black sheep are a pro-choice Republican and a pro-death-penalty Democrat. For the most part, the individual buys into the majority ideology, but fails to toe the party line when it comes to one issue. Yeah, we hate those people.

As ingroup members who disagree on one or two issues, black sheep blur the cultural lines that separate the ingroup and the outgroup. For this great offense, ingroup members hate black sheep and reserve their worst judgment for them. In fact, studies show that ingroup members treat black sheep worse than they treat outgroup members.

Outgroup members are supposed to disagree with us. As such, we are not as threatened by their disagreement. If anything, their disagreement with us further solidifies ingroup/outgroup boundaries by showing us that we are different from them. Ingroup members, on the other hand, are supposed to agree with us, so we are shocked and appalled if they express disagreement. Further, the fact that they disagree with us blurs the ideological lines between the groups. If one of our group members agrees with them on this important issue, then maybe we are not so different from them after all. The mere thought of this makes us feel angry and threatened.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“Sociologist Jessie Daniels confirms, “To the extent that liberal feminism articulates a limited vision of gender equality without challenging racial inequality, then white feminism is not inconsistent with white supremacy. Without an explicit challenge to racism, white feminism is easily grafted onto white supremacy and useful for arguing for equality for white women within a white supremacist context.”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“fact, the more a white person was exposed to the cultural idea of the white christ, the more despicably they treated Blacks.”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“As I awaited the worst, I realized that the terror in my bones was a familiar one. As a Black woman in a white male God's world, I had been a fugitive my entire life.”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“Whatever hospitality the Mall of America officials had extended to us abruptly ended as soon as we began to disrupt capitalism—one of whitemalegod’s prized drugs.”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“As we'll discover in the following chapter, culturally homogeneous churches are adept at targeting and attracting a certain type of person and creating a strong group identity. However, attendees at such churches are at a higher risk for creating the overly simplistic and divisive Right Christian and Wrong Christian labels that dangerously lead to inaccurate perceptions of other Christians as well as hostility and conflict. What often begins as an effective and culturally specific way to reach people for Christ ends up stifling through growth as disciples. Perhaps this is because we often fail to make a distinction between evangelism and discipleship. People can meet God within their cultural context but in order to follow God, they must cross into other cultures because that's what Jesus did in the incarnation and on the cross. Discipleship is crosscultural. When we meet Jesus around people who are just like us and then continue to follow Jesus with people who are just like us, we stifle our growth in Christ and open ourselves up to a world of division. However, when we're rubbing elbows in Christian fellowship with people who are different from us, we can learn from each other and grow more like Christ. Like iron sharpens iron.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“Rather than offering a legitimate critique of my lecture, he fired off a racial-gender slur that cut to the core of my identity as Black and female. Sloppy is a delegitimizing stereotype launched at Black people. Sloppy, dirty, lazy, worthless; these are some of the labels society uses to brand us. And ever since good ol’ Eve in the Garden of Eden, women have been saddled with the mischievous stereotype, especially when we disregard social norms and do unthinkable things like call out a scholar’s racism. Mischievous, deceptive, untrustworthy, morally weak; these”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“can’t tell if you’re sloppy or mischievous. Right off the bat, as if it were already locked-and-loaded, his attack on my Blackness and femaleness was so precise, he might as well have said, I can’t tell if you’re Black or female. I can’t tell if you’re sloppy or mischievous.”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

“Research suggests that diversity initiatives are doomed to fail among Christian groups that idolize their cultural identities. Due to this idolatry, minority group members are not invited as valuable members of the all-inclusive we and their cultural perspectives are not seen as valuable and necessary. Rather, they are seen as threatening and wholly inaccurate simply because they are different from our idolized cultural perspectives. As a result, if they are invited to participate in the organization at all, they are invited to participate as them—subordinate "others" and second-class citizens who are bound to be dissatisfied. This is no good. Until we relativize our cultural identities and adopt an inclusive group identity, our diversity initiatives are doomed to failure because we will never fully appreciate our diverse brothers and sisters and they will not feel appreciated.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“As I stood at the edge of the Black Madonna of Mauriac’s altar, I recalled the numerous beatings I had endured as a Black woman, much like this one: I can’t tell if you’re sloppy or mischievous. Those were the words a male audience member publicly said to me at the end of my academic lecture at Cambridge University.”
― Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman