March is Women’s History Month, a time meant to honor the women whose leadership and sacrifice helped build our institutions. Yet in many churches today, the very women who sustained ministries for decades now sit quietly in pews or remain at home while inexperienced leadership rises around them. When seasoned voices are replaced with convenient loyalty, the church does not move forward. It begins to lose its memory, its balance, and ultimately the sound doctrine that once he

The Black Church did not emerge in comfort. It was built during slavery, expanded under racial terror, and institutionalized during Reconstruction and Jim Crow. Through land ownership, disciplined governance, and collective sacrifice, it became the foundation of Black civic, economic, and spiritual resilience in America.

A reflection on how historic segregation in sacred spaces may be resurfacing today through silence, hierarchy, and the marginalization of the very builders who sustained the Black church. During Black History Month, I want to talk about something many people have never been taught. In many white churches in the 18th and 19th centuries, the upper balcony was not just extra seating. It was often a forced separation. Enslaved people and free Black worshippers were pushed into lo

“Without Their Sacrifice: Aging and Accountability in the Black Church” The aging population within the Black Church represents a generation that constructed, financed, and sustained religious institutions during Jim Crow, World War I, World War II, and the pre-Civil Rights era. These churches were not simply houses of worship. They were centers of education, political organizing, economic cooperation, and physical protection at a time when broader American systems excluded B