Churches are burning in the South, and now I have one more reason to be afraid for my family. For a little context, my entire extended family lives in Georgia and Florida, and just about all of them are churchgoers

Once upon a time, I used to think that I might someday end up being a pastor. It was a path well trodden by other members of my family and as a black man growing up in the church, a highly valued position. My granddaddy is the pastor at Welcome Baptist Church in La Grange, GA. He’s been doing it for as long as I can remember and obviously for much longer than that. Most of my uncles on my mother’s side are also pastors.

I love my uncles and granddaddy, but more importantly I respect the work they do because they occupy key positions in a world lacking in positive black male role models. Typically, in most black communities, spiritual leaders including pastors and other clergymen (e.g. deacons, ushers Sunday school teachers, choir leaders) fill this roll. These leaders embodied elements of black culture that weren't and aren't valued in other spheres

Such leaders had to be educated in order to be able to preach the word of God to their congregations. They had to develop and cultivate wisdom to be effective leaders of their communities. As I continue to follow my own spiritual path, the lessons these men have imparted to me remain invaluable as my understanding of the world deepens and I learn how better to be a black man.

What is the importance of the black church?

The term itself is a misnomer. There is no single black church, just as there is no monolith of any similar type of institution. Black Methodists, black Catholics, and every other permutation of Christian ideology are represented in the different ways black people worship.

And yet, in America there is a thread that ties all of these institutions together. A struggle against systemic racism in our country makes it so that the black spaces of worship become spaces of cultural, educational, spiritual, and civic importance.

“For many African-American Christians, regardless of their denominational differences, Black Churches have always represented their religion, community, and home. Scholars have repeatedly asserted that Black history and Black church history overlap enough to be virtually identical.” Marvin Andrew McMickle in An Encyclopedia of African American Christian Heritage

Historically churches have been one of the few viable spaces and theaters of black autonomy in America. Black churches, since their inception, represented a threat to the existing power structures of their times. White slave-owners introduced to Christianity their slaves and, consequently, churches were the first pieces of land blacks were allowed to own. Simultaneously, they were also a place that inspired fear in the hearts of the slave owners, as did any and all organized groups of black folk. The entirety of the civil rights movement took place within black churches, and it was church leaders that carried the torch.

“In a segregated society, church was the place where people fulfilled their human potential, developed their God-given talents, made corporate decisions, voted for their officers, owned property, created benevolent societies, raised money for schools and scholarships, celebrated their marriages, blessed their babies, mourned their loved ones’ deaths and even learned how to read.” -Black Churches and the Role of Empowerment By the Rev. DeForest Soaries, Jr

When I was coming up in Wichita, KS, church was the only time I’d interact with other black folks, with the exception of sports. Church was one of the few places where my intelligence wasn't seen as a deformity. I loved the fact that knowing the answer in bible study would reflect well upon me. At school, whenever I was in classes with other black students, I would get snide looks and terms like egghead and four-eyes would be thrown around liberally. Even though most of these jibes were meant in jest, the lesson I learned in these interactions was that being intelligent wasn't something I could express with people who looked like me.

The first time I played the saxophone by myself in front of a crowd was at my granddaddy’s church. The first time I sang in a choir was at Sunday services when my family would travel down to La Grange from Atlanta. The first song I ever wrote I performed at my granddaddy’s 80th birthday celebration. At that event, I sat in the audience and listened to many black men get up and speak to the effect that my granddaddy Reverend Ware had on their lives. After learning under him, they went on to be strong voices in their own respective communities. For these men the church didn't just house and protect black men, it apprenticed them to go on to do bigger and better things.

All of the things that are core to who I am as a person, for good or for ill have come out of my experiences in black churches. They are the few places where I've felt at home, where I've felt safe. I have memories of me and my cousins playing around in the sanctuary, running between the pews, and hiding in closets. I remember there always being food after services- fried chicken, deviled eggs, red drink (I never did figure out what the contents of that drink were, but I'd be astonished if the red 40 percentage was less than 50%).

Before writing this, before reading the news of all of the shit that’s been going on in South Carolina and in the rest of the south, I had pushed many of these memories and experiences to the back of my mind. This part of my life was undoubtedly important, but being so far away from my roots, it was far too easy to take these experiences for granted. These weren't things my mind dwelled on.

And now all I can see are those memories going up in smoke. While people are making comparisons to the church burnings of the civil rights era, all I can think about is what would I do if Welcome Baptist Church was one of them? What would I do if one of the nine Charleston victims had been my granddaddy or one of my uncles? And then of course I think to the version of myself that ended up being a preacher. Very easily I could imagine myself as one of those leaders who lost the important symbolic space for their communities. I easily could've been one of those people who lost their lives.

Of the eight churches that have burned in the week following the Charleston attack, only three have been ruled as arson. The jury is still out on whether these are hate crimes. For the other churches factors such as lightning strikes, poor building construction, and criminal mischief have been cited. If it turns out these burnings are just a series of random happenstance, all that would prove that violence towards black people and their communities have become so prevalent and ingrained in the minds of people in the south, said violence doesn't even need ill intent behind it to be effective.

But more to the point, even if it is coincidence it’s interesting to note how easy it is to imagine this type of violence towards black people. The main reason people are reluctant to see the pattern this way is because, as a society, black or otherwise, we aren't ready to believe that the struggles of the civil rights era are relevant to us. At best these “isolated incidents” are a reminder of the history we as a country have done our best to brush under the rug, at worst a wake-up call to how fragile all the progress we've made since the last string of church burnings in the 60s really is.

Seeing a burned black church is more than looking at a burned building. A burned black church signifies a loss of one of the most important symbols of black culture, history, and safety. Personally, I don’t care if it’s an act of terror, or just random coincidences. All I know is that little by little symbols of my childhood are continuing to burn and I’m helpless to do anything about it.