Aretha Franklin’s Homegoing & Black Church Cultural Norms: A Reckoning

Donney Rose
Sep 1, 2018 · 4 min read

(heading photo from For Harriet Instagram)

September 1, 2018

Yesterday the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, was laid to rest after a marathon of a public service. BET/CNN commentator, Marc Lamont Hill, who moderated BET’s live coverage of the homegoing service, talked with great cultural pride about how the world would get a front row seat to the rituals and customs of how Black people celebrate the passing of our loved ones. Because Aretha Franklin was a 76 year old international icon, daughter of a Baptist preacher and musician whose career was heavily gospel-influenced, the imagery of her service was one that could be expected. Soulful singing. Elaborate church hats. “Old time religion” preachin’. The service gave all of us who grew up in those traditions an emotional surge and those who didn’t a glimpse into a staple of the Black American existence. The Black American homegoing service is often one of sensory overload, encompassing all the pain and love and re-telling of lives that persevered in a country that has always been, at best, tolerant of the transitioned Black life. And when these services are officiated, organized and arranged via “traditional” Black churches, cultural visitors and those who are familiar are engulfed in the nuances of not only the service, but cultural norms/ideologies often aligned with the Black church. Yesterday was a megawatt exposure of those norms, and the Black faith based community would do good to take ownership of some of the less evolved moments of Aretha’s homegoing as a tool of awareness/reconciliation of the kind of blindspots that has driven away parishioners in the 21st century .


The most glaring aspect of antiquated/problematic Black church norms rests within the unchecked patriarchy that is often a driving force of the Black church. What we witnessed during Aretha’s services were at least two very big moments where Black clergymen demonstrated a disconnect from elevated discourse around respectability politics, rape culture, male privilege and general misogyny. The first came by way of Bishop Charles Ellis’ inappropriate “loving on” of singer, Ariana Grande. Images of Ellis’ fingers landing in a vice grip on the side of Grande’s breasts were alarming. He apologized for the forceful embrace of Grande that led to his hand landing on her body in a likely unintentional sexualized manner, but the “familiarity” that made him entitled to her body is a tale that many young Black women churchgoers can account for as reasoning for their own separation from the church. The unfortunate counterargument to what happened to Ariana Grande rests within the slut shaming/respectability politics mantra many Black churches cling so vehemently to. For many, her outfit was more of a red flag than his groping her body, which is rape culture logic 101. Her ethnicity (Italian) was also used as a means to demonize her choice of outfit/inadvertently scapegoat his actions. In other words, there are Black folks who believe that a Black woman would’ve “known better” than to be coming up in a funeral in a short dress, and therefore Grande warranted the lusting eyes of dignitaries and forceful embrace of clergy. The gag is, there are numbers of Black women, particularly young Black women, who have been shamed out of sanctuaries on account of how they showed up. But all things considered, this moment was not the most damning.


The most damning moment came by way of Franklin’s eulogy from Rev. Jasper Williams who came through with a bullet point list of regressive tropes, that again highlighted a level of dissonance between the Black church and modern Black culture. His first sin was lamenting about the inability of single Black women to raise Black boys, which was ironic because it was being delivered at the service of an incredible Black woman WHO INDEPENDENTLY RAISED HER SONS. The patriarchal assessment that either men raise boys or boys will turn out to be shit, runs deep in Black church ideology. It is rooted in a history of Black families being broken against their will, so the logic seems correct. But there are successful, loving, responsible Black men who every day praise the efforts of their single Black mothers, so the theory of all or nothing is flawed. Williams also delved into the tired trope of “black on black crime” being either equivalent to or a conduit for police violence against Black bodies. Which beyond being foolish in principle, seemed out of place for the eulogizing of someone who used their resources to fight against institutional racism. Williams using his moment to regurgitate lazy talking points of “what’s wrong with Black folks” isn’t at all surprising. It is often the go-to rhetoric of Black leaders, specifically Black male leaders who assume moral authority. That assumption of moral authority gets no higher than the language of Black clergymen. Language that is most often a hindrance to the progression of Black people in thought and action.


Studies have shown a reduction in church attendance from younger Black people. If nothing else, the blindspots espoused by some of the clergymen at Aretha Franklin’s service, highlights a deep generational divide between the Black church that is steadfast in its convictions and a young adult generation that expects more than a “do as I say, not as I do” response to navigating our existence. Again, if we pivot back to the focal point of what we witnessed, we know that Aretha consistently pushed the needle of evolution in her personhood, activism, career and philanthropy. We would all be wise to put some more RESPECT on her efforts to help evolve the culture.

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I am a poet, educator, essayist, activist & cultural critic from Baton Rouge. I write things so that things make sense even when they don't.

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