They are not invested in leaders who emerge from churches using Christian theology to placate them, to “pray over them and send them home at the end of each night” as Philip Agnew noted. Churches, like Greater St. Mark’s Church, that act as gathering spaces and treatment spaces for organizers and tear gas victims, seem to be acceptable. But “the church” as the arbiter of the narrative of this moment and any emerging movement has been abandoned as the leadership model for this generation.
This generation of people has grown up with the dethroned gods of Generation X and the failures of political courage that have marked the Hip-Hop Generation. The most faith they have, hubristic though it may turn out to be, is in themselves to be agents of change. But they will not invest in a nation-state project that hands them Black presidents alongside dead unarmed Black boys in the street. These are irreconcilable contradictions. And these are non-conciliatory times.
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