The missionaries came anyway.
Because that’s what missionaries do.
They go where they believe people are “missing something.”
They arrive not to learn, but to replace.
Not to serve, but to recruit.
And somehow, some way, they have the audacity to build temples on sacred ground they once deemed unworthy.
Not because they’ve repented.
But because colonization always finds a way to look holy.
I didn’t even see the temple in Accra with my own eyes. I just saw it. A picture. A post. A moment. And it made me feel—honestly—sad.
Like something had been taken. Twisted. Used.
There’s a betrayal in it. A desecration.
To know that a church that once called us cursed now courts our membership, our labor, our land, without ever acknowledging its sins—
That’s not reconciliation. That’s strategy. That’s branding.
I remember seeing the Salt Lake temple once, lit up at night like a beacon. White stone shining out of the darkness.
People say it’s beautiful.
But it felt ominous to me.
Like there were secrets buried there.
Like the light wasn’t warm, but watchful.
And I’ve watched how these churches build community. I’ve watched how they gather resources, organize members, track donations like line items on a financial report.
And I’ve asked myself: Is this faith? Or is this a business in a clerical collar?
They speak of community, but refuse to acknowledge fault.
They ask for your soul, but give you silence in return.
A church should be about connection. Healing. Accountability.
Not just tax exemption and pristine buildings on colonized land.
Maybe what I’m mourning…
is not just what they built.
But what they buried to build it.
2. A Gospel Built on Erasure
They call it evangelism.
They call it outreach.
They call it saving souls.
But I’ve seen what it really is.
Proselytizing isn't a neutral act.
It’s not “sharing the good news.”
It’s a strategy of replacement—
of language, of story, of memory, of belonging.
It says:
What you believe isn’t enough.
What you practice isn’t right.
Who you are isn’t worthy—until we make you over in our image.
This is how colonization moves when it’s dressed in scripture.
Not with chains, but with doctrine.
Not with soldiers, but with smiling strangers who knock on your door and ask if you’ve heard about Jesus.
Not with armies, but with mailers, pamphlets, bullhorns, and a church on every corner of someone else’s land.
I’ve seen them stand outside train stations, on college campuses, on street corners downtown.
Sometimes shouting.
Sometimes whispering.
But always claiming. Always assuming they know what’s best for you.
They are less interested in listening than they are in recruiting.
Because this gospel—this version of it—isn’t about love.
It’s about loyalty.
And loyalty means obedience.
Loyalty means giving up your grandmother’s stories for theirs.
Loyalty means denying your identity, your spirit, your whole self so you can belong to something that was never meant for you in the first place.
I’ve watched them target the brokenhearted.
The hungry.
The displaced.
The ones trying to find meaning in a world that keeps shifting under their feet.
Because that’s the most effective place to plant a controlling faith—
In fractured soil.
They don’t bring healing.
They bring amnesia.
And then they call it salvation.
I know this because I’ve lived it.
I’ve been that poor.
The kind of poor where your prayers aren’t poetic—they’re logistical.
Where you’re not just robbing Peter to pay Paul—
you’re praying Paul will let you slide this once.
I remember going to a church for a food box.
Not for a sermon.
Not for membership.
Just for something to feed my family.
But the food came with conditions.
I had to sit. I had to listen. I had to receive the invitation—
not to be fed, but to be converted.
And in that moment, I realized:
I wasn’t being prayed for.
I was being preyed upon.
And look—
I know church helps some people.
I know there’s comfort in ritual, in belonging, in faith that feels like home.
But let’s not lie to ourselves.
The church is also a blade.
It can bless, yes.
But it can also cut.
It can cradle the weary—
or erase the culture that kept them alive until they got there.
And when it replaces ancestral wisdom with righteousness,
When it says your spirit must come through our door to be made whole,
That’s not healing.
That’s colonization in vestments—scripted, sanctified, and still violent.
I know this because it didn’t just happen to me.
It happened to my mother.
3. When the World Refuses to Listen, We Yell Where We Can
My mother never liked church.
Or maybe it’s more honest to say—church never really liked her.
She tried.
She gave it a shot.
I remember us ending up in a prominent white Episcopal church in downtown Atlanta—grand sanctuary, stained glass, quiet rituals.
That’s where I first learned the Stations of the Cross, the liturgy, the language of reverence and repetition.
That’s where I became Episcopalian.
And it’s also where I learned what exclusion wrapped in politeness looks like.
At one point, my mother asked them for help.
We were living with her sister at the time, sharing a bedroom, and tensions were rising. She needed to get out—for her own peace, her own sense of self.
She asked the church if they could help her secure an apartment.
They said no.
And what made it harder to swallow was this:
They helped people.
The church had a soup kitchen.
They held clothing drives.
They handed out toys at Christmas.
They encouraged parishioners to volunteer, to serve, to give.
They preached service from the pulpit.
But when one of their own asked for help—
When a Black woman in their pews, raising a child in that church, came with a need—
She wasn’t “one of theirs.”
She was someone else.
Still set apart.
I know “no” is a full sentence.
But some “no”s carry the weight of not belonging.
They don’t just deny the request—they deny the relationship.
And maybe that’s where her voice started to go quiet.
Maybe that’s when she realized church would always ask more of her than it was willing to give.
That you could light the candles, sing the hymns, bring your child in clean clothes on Sunday morning—
and still not be seen.
But life is a cycle, isn’t it?
Years later, I would find myself in a similar place.
Living with a friend, me and my girls, trying to piece together the next chapter.
I had a job. I had a place lined up.
But I didn’t have the deposit. I didn’t have first month’s rent.
And I didn’t have time.
So I went to a church—different church, different time.
I explained the situation.
And without hesitation, they wrote the check.
They helped us move. They made space.
Even before that—years earlier—I was stranded in an airport with my girls.
I’d missed our flight.
I had no money for new tickets.
And I sat in the chapel office and cried, unsure of what to do.
The chaplain listened.
And then, without ceremony, he marched back to the airline counter and paid to rebook our tickets out of his own pocket.
No questions. No membership forms. No tracts.
Just a decision: this woman and her children will not be left behind.
And maybe that’s why I have a different kind of voice.
Because my mother had one—make no mistake.
She just didn’t get to use it where it might have changed her life.
So it came out in other ways—
In arguments with family.
In sharp words thrown like armor.
In heat that had nowhere else to go.
She was not voiceless.
She was unheard by the very places that claimed to offer sanctuary.
And what the world would not let her say in peace, she shouted in pain.
I carry that with me.
Not as shame. Not as judgment.
But as proof that she was always trying to speak.
And now that I’ve been given a platform she never had—
I will use it.
Not to clean up her legacy,
But to continue it.
4. They Tried to Shape Me
After that white Episcopal church in downtown Atlanta,
My mother found her way into other sanctuaries—
Black churches this time.
Louder. Bolder.
Holy Ghost-filled and soaked in sweat and spirit.
I remember the women especially—
Holy Rollers in their color-coded outfits,
Wide-brimmed hats that reached for heaven.
Trying to outdo each other in praise and presentation.
They courted my mother.
They smiled at me.
They said all the right things.
But it didn’t feel like belonging.
It felt like policing.
I always felt like a square peg in a round hole.
Like there was a mold I was supposed to fit—
one I hadn’t been consulted about.
I looked around and wondered:
What kind of work do they do during the week?
Who are they when the wigs come off and the tambourines stop shaking?
Because even in those pews, filled with people who looked like me,
I didn’t feel seen.
I felt monitored.
They weren’t trying to elevate me.
They were trying to control me.
They didn’t say, “You have a gift.”
They said, “This is how we do things here.”
It wasn’t the Book that bound me—
It was the performance.
The expectation.
The rules unspoken but ever-present.
And even as I served—
as an acolyte, as a volunteer, as a daughter trying to do right—
I felt the edge of my fire pressing against a wall I didn’t build.
I knew even then:
If I ever really let myself speak,
if I ever stepped outside their structure,
I’d shake the whole thing loose.
Because I didn’t come to play church.
I came with questions they couldn’t handle.
I came with truths they weren’t ready for.
They thought I’d sit quietly in the pew.
But what they didn’t realize was—
I came with a mission of my own.
One they didn’t write.
One they couldn’t control.
One they’ll never be able to silence.
5. The Day the Drag Queens Took the Mic Without Saying a Word
It was Pride.
Hot. Loud. A swirl of joy and protest and sweat and glitter.
I was volunteering at a church booth—one of the affirming ones.
We were there to show that some churches make room for queer folks.
That God didn’t abandon us just because the church did.
We had signs.
We had water.
We had presence.
And then—
they showed up.
Two white men with bullhorns.
The ones who always come.
Red-faced and self-righteous, armed with scripture like a weapon,
shouting about “God’s judgment,”
telling queer folks we were going to hell,
telling us love was a sin.
They weren’t preaching.
They were performing.
They weren’t there to save anyone.
They were there to be seen—to dominate, to disrupt, to wound.
And they made a beeline for our booth.
They got in our faces.
Quoted scripture.
Argued until their spittle landed on our skin.
And we tried.
Tried to respond with peace.
Tried to defuse, to de-escalate.
But the heat was rising.
The crowd was growing.
The air got tight.
And then—
they came.
A group of drag queens.
Resplendent. Regal. Radiant.
Towering over everyone in platform heels,
draped in sequins, rhinestones, feathers, and power.
They didn’t argue.
They didn’t raise their voices.
They didn’t quote scripture.
They stood.
Their presence alone—bold, beautiful, unbothered—made the shouting men look small.
Ridiculous.
Like background noise in a holy place they could no longer defile.
The crowd shifted.
The tension broke.
And in that moment, I realized:
This is what church looks like.
This is what sanctuary feels like.
Not silence in a pew—
but protection in the presence of your people.
Not obedience—
but embodiment.
Not the words of angry men—
but the radiance of those who refuse to shrink.
That day, the drag queens didn’t need a mic.
They didn’t need a pulpit.
They didn’t need permission.
Their being was the sermon.
Their standing was the protest.
Their joy was the gospel.
And I swear,
I’ve never felt closer to God
than I did in that glitter-drenched moment of holy righteousness.
6. This Is the Mission Now
I’ve grown up since those days of bullhorns and pews,
of whispered prayers and unanswered requests.
I’ve grown out of asking for belonging.
Out of waiting for someone to hand me a microphone, or a robe, or a pulpit.
I don’t need to be let in anymore.
Because I finally realized—
I am the God.
Or the Goddess, if you prefer.
I am the divine that I was told to seek outside myself.
I am the storm, the stillness, the sanctuary.
The sermon and the silence after.
I didn’t need to be accepted.
I needed to be revealed—
to myself, through my ancestors, through my witchy bloodline,
through the dirt and the moon and the rustle of the trees that know my name.
I needed to unlearn the theology of erasure.
To shake off the guilt of being loud, Black, queer, spiritual, and unruly.
To stop begging for blessings from systems designed to starve me.
I needed to remember that communion can come from the earth.
That healing is in the breath, not the bread.
That holiness is in the dirt, not the doctrine.
I needed more than ritualistic cannibalism and palm branches once a year.
I needed life—rooted, wild, true.
So no, I’m not on their mission.
This is my mission now.
To speak what was once unspeakable.
To tell the truth my mother carried in clenched fists.
To call out every system that tried to silence me with a smile.
To preach in my own voice.
To cast spells instead of sermons.
To build altars out of memory and glitter and grief and resistance.
To reclaim what was stolen and rename what was denied.
And when they come again,
with their bullhorns and their pamphlets,
telling me what God thinks of people like me—
I will not flinch.
I will stand tall.
Drag queen posture. Mother’s fire. Witch's knowing. Ancestor’s rhythm.
And I will say:
Your bullhorn is not the voice of God.
My voice is.
And I’m done whispering
