The Bible for Normal People
Tamice Spencer-Helms
Dear Readers, Colleagues and Friends,
We’re sharing this episode of The Bible for Normal People which features Tamice Spencer-Helms. She shares her journey as a a Black queer Christian woman. She further explores what she considers to be toxic theologies.
What is your take on toxic theologies? How do you identify those theological statements which are hard truths versus toxic behaviors which cause harm?
We’d love to hear from you!
The Misogynoir to Mishpat (M2M) Research Network © 2024
Tamice Spencer-Helms joins Jared in this episode of Faith for Normal People for a conversation about the integration of faith and identity. Tamice shares their journey of navigating life as a queer and Black Christian, emphasizing the power of authenticity and agency in leaving toxic theologies behind. Join them as they explore the following questions:
What has Tamice’s faith journey been like?
When did the thread start to unravel for Tamice in terms of realizing that their theology couldn’t hold up the reality of racial injustice?
Whose voices inspired Tamice to integrate their faith and race?
Why does Tamice talk about whiteness as being like leaven?
How might we learn how to practice faith out of an experience of Blackness or queerness?
How did living at intersections change Tamice’s faith experience?
What is Tamice’s response to people who assert that you can’t be queer and Christian at the same time?
How can we gain confidence to acknowledge our own experiences, to be grounded and confident in those?
What practical advice does Tamice have for those who have been told to abdicate their agency in order to be Christian?
Tweetables
Pithy, shareable, sometimes-less-than-280-character statements from the episode you can share.
What I’d been given in terms of a worldview and a way to cope was not working because it doesn’t speak to this reality of being Black in this society. — @TamiceNamae @theb4np
I went on a journey of leaving white evangelicalism and hearing from voices that loved God and did God talk with their Blackness in tow. And I was given some beautiful pictures and ways to think about God after that. — @TamiceNamae @theb4np
A lot of my friends who started to wake up to this around the time of George Floyd started to realize that there was a corpus of work of people who were bringing their lived experience to the faith and really wrestling with God in that place. — @TamiceNamae @theb4np
It requires a relative amount of humility to say, I never knew about this theology. I never knew that you could think about or talk about God or relate to God this way. — @TamiceNamae @theb4np
There’s been a relative amount of figuring out how to be authentic in my queerness and in my love for the divine, and in the ways that I try to live out what I think that means and should look like. — @TamiceNamae @theb4np
If we don’t tell stories and hear about God and learn about God from the margins, then our ability to navigate and be resilient in the world is going to be really small. — @TamiceNamae @theb4np
No matter how arbitrary race is, I still experience the world as a Black person. And so there needs to be a perspective of God from that place for me. — @TamiceNamae @theb4np
Where I see goodness and where I see light and where I see ethical spirituality, I grab a hold of it. I say yes to it. I celebrate it. — @TamiceNamae @theb4np
I’m very thankful for my tradition because it grounds me in these stories about Jesus that I’ve always loved, and where I came to really love God and develop a relationship with the divine through these stories about Jesus. — @TamiceNamae @theb4np
I think of it like a twin sheet on a king-sized mattress. The pursuit of God in this frame was not big enough to contain life in reality. I could pretend that the bed is not king-sized, or I could just try to figure something else out. — @TamiceNamae @theb4np
We cannot abdicate our agency. We cannot outsource intuition anymore. God gave it to us. God gave it to us for a reason. — @TamiceNamae @theb4np
At the end of the day, I get to do this faith. It needs to involve me, all of me, and who I actually truly am. Otherwise, what are we doing? — @TamiceNamae @theb4np
Mentioned in This Episode
Class: May class “The Bible and Multivocality” taught by Pete Enns
Join: The Society of Normal People community
Support: www.thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give
https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/episode-38-tamice-spencer-helms-grounding-our-faith-in-our-experiences/