CURATOR’S NOTE
Two teenagers stood bathed in television lights, opened their mouths and the world stopped.
The studio audience sat transfixed. Some weeping. Others leaned forward as if watching rare birds in flight. Their faces reflecting stage lights.
The cameras lingered. Zoomed. Captured every gesture. The way his hand moved through the air, carrying what lived in the bones of generations of Black preachers. The way her voice climbed scales that had never been written.
They were guests and specimens. Welcomed and displayed. Living proof that divine talent didn't respect racial lines.
Satellites carried them across continents. Into suburban living rooms where families paused over dinner. Into high rise apartments, where strangers leaned closer to small screens. Around the world, people listened to something they couldn't name but recognized instantly.
In a living room in Richardson Heights, a little girl was captivated.
She had seen holiness in stained glass windows. A.L. Lewis in ruby light. Richard L. Brown in emerald. A. Philip Randolph in amber. Those windows had taught her that sacred power wore familiar faces, that divinity flowed through veins that carried the memory of cotton fields and freedom songs.
But this was different.
I was raised in a family of educators and theologians. We moved seamlessly between hermeneutics and history lessons. Church wasn't just Sunday morning. It was Tuesday evening. Wednesday night. Thursday. Saturday afternoon. There wasn't a day without God, without the assumption that Heaven could be witnessed in the everyday. In the way my grandmother sang "His Eye Is On the Sparrow" while arranging Gladiolus and Birds of Paradise, in theological discussions during Sunday suppers, in the Saturday morning soundtrack for weekend cleaning.
Yet something about this television moment felt like those moments after lightning strikes.
A class at the Candler School of Theology laid everything on the altar in 2006.
Dr. James Cone's words hit like revelation. What I'd known instinctively about faith and race was clear. Here was a theologian, a Black man, who dared to insist that God was Black, that Christ had always stood on the side of the oppressed.
For this truth, James Cone paid. Death threats found him in the morning mail, tucked between theological journals and student papers. Critics and supremacists called his Black Liberation Theology dangerous, divisive, a betrayal of everything holy.
Nevertheless, he persisted; challenging not a monolith, but a complex network of denominations across racial and theological lines, each wrestling with questions of faith and liberation in their own way.
The groundwork had been laid decades earlier. Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux commanded 25 million listeners by 1934. His voice crackled through Depression-era radios. You could hear him in beauty parlors and barbershops, in domestic workers' kitchens and tenant farmers' backyards. When Michaux's star faded, Rev. Ike inherited those frequencies, promising divine wealth with a slickness that made silk feel coarse.
The empire crumbled on television screens in the 1980s. Televangelists collapsed in sequence, each scandal triggering the next: tears, handcuffs, bankruptcies performed for the same cameras that had once blessed them. The crystal cathedrals that had promised prosperity became monuments to scandal. The business of faith had become spectacle, and spectacle had rotted from within.
But even as the preachers of prosperity met their public shame, two voices emerged.
BeBe and CeCe Winans rose from the wreckage with harmonies that transcended denomination. The teenagers who once stood bathed in television lights inherited megachurch stages, their sound blending sacred tradition and contemporary spectacle.
Where others had built empires on promises of divine wealth, the Winans siblings carried something unfakeable. Their harmonies held the memory of wooden church pews and worn hymnal pages.
Bishop Carlton Pearson saw the potential in what was happening, Black spiritual authority claiming mainstream platforms without apology.
He had navigated between the white evangelical university that shaped him and the Black theological innovation that claimed him. His AZUSA conferences became gathering places where spiritual authority didn't need to apologize for its skin, where Bishop T.D. Jakes could preach next to Kirk Franklin, where prosperity and liberation theologies might find common ground, at least within the growing megachurch movement.
But Pearson pushed beyond the prosperity his contemporaries preached. While others promised divine wealth for the faithful, he declared divine love for everyone: Buddhists, Muslims, the unbaptized, the unrepentant. His Gospel of Inclusion emptied hell, expanded heaven, suggested God's mercy flowed wider than human doctrine could contain.
For daring to believe Heaven belonged to everyone, he lost everything.
The excommunication unfolded with surgical precision. His mentor's public denunciation. Protégés condemning the theology that had birthed their own platforms. The Joint College of African-American Pentecostal Bishops declaring him heretic. That ancient word, heavy with centuries of exile. It had been hurled at mystics and prophets since the church learned to fear its own revelations. It had been hurled at Cone, too.
Churches emptied. Disciples scattered. Television networks dropped his programs.
Pearson had committed the unforgivable sin: taking Jesus at his word. When the son of God said "God so loved the world," Pearson believed it meant the whole world. The institutions that claimed to follow that same Jesus could not forgive such literal faith.
He spent his final decades wandering in theological exile, cast out by the very kingdom he had helped build. He died in November 2023, dangerous to those who preferred a God who sorted souls rather than saved them all.
The pattern had revealed itself before. Mattie Moss Clark faced COGIC's bishops when The Clark Sisters performed at the Grammy Awards. James Cleveland watched his genius questioned, his sexuality weaponized, when he carried gospel into spaces where people danced instead of shouted.
Frantz Fanon understood what happened in those television studios How the lights that seemed to celebrate also searched. How applause could bcomes another kind of chain, making the blessed hunger for stages that would never truly belong to them. The most insidious violence wasn't physical. It was the moment when the colonized soul learned to see itself through the conqueror's eyes.
Toni Morrison knew. She had watched how the white gaze turned authentic expression into performance. How it made writers perform their pain instead of heal it. How it taught Black voices to explain themselves instead of simply singing.
On July 6, Sarah Jakes Roberts stood before thousands at The Potter's House. She accepted the mantle her father had built over three decades. The sanctuary's seats stretched before her as she knelt for blessing, then rose to ask: “Shall we unleash glory on earth?”
Roberts inherits a church pulled between liberation and comfort, between prophetic voice and profitable silence. She was bequeathed not just a megachurch but the question that haunted Cone, that drove Pearson into exile: What does an authentic Black Church look like when liberation theology accommodates itself to prosperity's embrace?
Her father built an empire from sermons and self-help, packaging salvation for mass consumption. Paula McGee saw what was happening: salvation packaged and priced, grace mass-produced for suburban consumption, the mystery of faith reduced to inventory that could be stocked and sold.
Roberts question to the Potter’s House congregation marked a new beginning. But revolutions don't always announce themselves. Sometimes they begin with a woman standing at a pulpit, refusing to pretend that prosperity theology is without cost, that the Black Church hasn't sometimes chosen comfort over confrontation.
We live in an era where democracy fractures around us: voting rights dismantled, affirmative action erased, Black bodies still presumed guilty in their own neighborhoods. The question is ancient but urgent: will Black churches resist or accommodate? Will they remember that the Kingdom of God belongs to the poor in spirit, or crown prosperity as proof of divine favor?
I was 5 years old the day I knew God was Black.
Now I watch as Roberts stands in a pulpit, inheriting her father's 30,000-member congregation and its contradictions. She was once cast out. Now she inherits the stage where those decisions are made.
The faithful are watching.
—Khalilah L. Liptrot
Curator, The Black Third
ONGOING EXHIBITIONS
Jax Contemporary
The Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville | Through November 9, 2025
Fresh off its centennial, MOCA Jacksonville launches Jax Contemporary, a triennial exhibition spotlighting the depth and diversity of artistic talent across Northeast Florida. More than a showcase, the initiative deepens the museum’s relationship with its local arts community, offering professional development, curatorial dialogue, and a platform for exchange. Among the 64 artists featured are Deshonna Buchanan, Christopher Clark, Keith Doles, Overstreet Ducasse, Lenny Foster, Dustin Harewood, Marsha Hatcher, Erin Kendrick, Michael Rakim, and Princess Simpson Rashid—each bringing a distinct perspective to the region’s evolving visual language. With artist talks and public programs built into the run of the exhibition, Jax Contemporary opens space not only for viewing, but for conversation. In connecting the city’s creative voices to broader networks, the initiative affirms what MOCA has long believed: that contemporary art thrives when rooted in community—and when artists are seen not just as contributors to culture, but as architects of it.
Access:
Tuesday-Sunday, 11 AM-5 PM
Location: 333 North Laura Street
Jacksonville’s Norman Studios: Movie Posters from the Permanent Collection
Cummer Museum of Arts & Gardens | Through December 6, 2026
Before Hollywood's rise, Florida was a hub for the early film industry, thanks to its favorable conditions. In the 1920s, Jacksonville native Richard Norman seized this opportunity, producing films featuring Black casts and protagonists that boldly challenged the status quo. Norman's innovative studio complex, now a historic landmark, stands as a testament to his trailblazing contributions to American cinema.
Access:
The museum opens at 12 PM Sunday
The museum is open until 9 PM Tuesday
Wednesday-Saturday, 11 AM-4 PM
Location: 829 Riverside Avenue
Contact: (904) 356-6857
The Museum Space
A.L. Lewis Museum at American Beach
The A.L. Lewis Museum showcases both permanent and rotating exhibits highlighting African American culture, history, and civil rights. Visitors can explore artifacts, photographs, and documents that illuminate the local community's profound influence on American history. Guided tours are highly recommended for a deeper understanding of the exhibits and the history they represent.
Access:
Friday-Saturday, 10 AM-2 PM
Sunday, 1 PM-5 PM
Visitors are encouraged to check the museum's website or call ahead for any schedule changes
Location: 1600 Julia St, American Beach
Contact: (904) 510-7036
The Road to Black History Runs Through Lincolnville
Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center
Step into over 450 years of history at the Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center, located within the heart of St. Augustine's historic Lincolnville District—once home to a community of freedmen who shaped the city's cultural landscape after the Civil War. Here, the rich story of Black history in Florida unfolds, from the ancient empires of West Africa to the early Black presence in colonial Florida, through to the powerful movements of the 20th century.
Access:
Sunday-Monday, 1 PM-4:30 PM
Tuesday-Saturday, 10:30 AM-4:30 PM
Location: 102 M. L. King Avenue, St. Augustine
Contact: (904) 824-1191
Lift Ev’ry Voice
Ritz Theatre & Museum
Discover the story behind "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," the beloved anthem composed by Jacksonville natives James Weldon and John Rosamond Johnson. Step into the vibrant "Harlem of the South" nightlife captured by photographer Ellie L. Weems. Experience the quiet resolve of Civil Rights protesters at a Woolworth's sit-in. These immersive encounters at the Ritz Museum connect you to the rich tapestry of Jacksonville's African American history and heritage.
Access:
Tuesday-Friday, 10 AM-4 PM (tickets must be purchased by 3 PM)
The museum is open until 8 PM Thursday
Location: 829 North Davis Street
Contact: (904) 632-5555
Eartha M. M. White Historical Museum and Gardens
Clara White Mission
The Eartha M. M. White Historical Museum and Gardens celebrates the legacy of Dr. Eartha White and her mother, Clara English White, two African American women who dedicated their lives to community service. Located in the historic Globe Theatre in LaVilla, the museum showcases Eartha White's lifelong work to empower underserved communities, featuring portraits, personal memorabilia, and artifacts from her numerous initiatives. The museum continues Dr. White's vision by preserving and sharing Black history and culture.
Access:
Location: 613 W. Ashley Street
Contact: (904) 354-4162
Works on Paper
Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens
The Cummer Museum's collection of works on paper and photographs numbers approximately 2,200 objects, nearly a quarter of which are part of the Cornelia Morse Carithers Print Collection. Featuring works by celebrated artists, the collection includes the powerful visual narrative of Jacob Lawrence's The Migrants Cast their Ballots (1974).
Access:
The museum opens at 12 PM Sunday
The museum is open until 9 PM Tuesday
Wednesday-Saturday, 11 AM-4 PM
Location: 829 Riverside Avenue
Contact: (904) 356-6857
COMMUNITY SUBMISSIONS
Share details of your upcoming events here.
Deadline: Wednesdays at 5 PM
My grandmother, who raised us on my mother's side, was an Italian woman of faith. On my wall, high above the light switch, was a picture of a man with golden blonde hair, a mustache, and a beard, with blue eyes. My grandmother told me it was God.
She had a beautiful Bible that we only took out around the holidays. I used to sneak into her room (when it was not the holidays) to look through it. I came across a picture of what her Bible told me was God, and that person looked nothing like the man above my light switch.
A picture can be an instant education.
You spoke a word! I am not churchy at all. While I attended Catholic schools and received a radical education in them, I am no longer a practicing Catholic or a church goer.
When I taught World History on 3 college campuses, I gave my History students the right to critique religion. Few people know what Yeshu’a ben Yosef was charged with: Sedition and Heresy. He was delivered to Roman authorities after Jewish authorities charged him with heresy.
I also let my students know that around 180 C.E. the Bishop of Lyon whose name was Irenaeus chose 4 Gospels out of over 30 to be included in the Christian Bible: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
The historian in me won’t let me believe in any Bible that has been tampered with and edited to the point where one cannot be sure of what is/was deliberately edited out.