Race, Sexuality and Faith – Reclaiming a New Story

This Black History Month, we continue to reflect on the theme ‘Reclaiming Narratives’ by sharing the story of gospel musician, writer, entrepreneur, and team member of Oasis St Martin’s Village, Seth Pinnock.

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A Tidal Wave

“For too long, society, we have all suffered / For too long – all truth – we both kept covered.” Words from a poem that has caused a social, political, and theological tidal wave since it was first published in July earlier this year.

Black History Month is all about sharing the voices of Black folks who have changed the world. Seth Pinnock, the gospel musician, writer, and entrepreneur, is one of these people and the author of the poem Watch Night, to which these powerful words belong.

In his poem, Seth shared, amongst other things, that he was gay. This was significant because of Seth’s background. “I grew up in the Black Pentecostal church, and my whole world has been that space – all my income, my leverage, my influence, my community, my family. The places that I would do my music were churches or church events. My whole ecosystem was the Christian space. I’m the poster child of this space,” Seth told The Guardian in July.

Introduced to the beauty of gospel music and his Christian faith but also taught that his sexual orientation was immoral and wrong, Seth was both nourished and challenged by his tradition. As a result, Seth “knew that, in making this big announcement, there was a lot I could lose – practically, personally, and professionally.” But for Seth, coming out was a “matter of life or death.” He could not continue with the pain and internal rejection he felt – struggling with drug addiction over several years to “escape the torture” of his life.

In coming out publicly, Seth was reclaiming a narrative that he was forced to keep hidden. But Seth’s story is not just about sexuality – it’s also intertwined with race and theology.

Intertwining Stories

“I grew up in a church community learning that our lives should be laid down for Jesus, and that all we should do is what He calls us to do. It didn’t matter how you felt inside. As a result, I saw people staying in abusive marriages and toxic church cultures,” said Seth. In the face of this, “I needed to reclaim the narrative of being fearfully and wonderfully made.”

But to do this, Seth says, “I had to go on a journey to deconstruct and decolonise myself. It was through doing this that I realised that white colonial narratives had overridden older narratives in Black cultures and communities that had a more empowering view of gender and sexuality.”

Seth remembers, “I’d been told by my Black pastors growing up that gayness is a European idea. But, as I began my journey of exploration, decolonisation, and deconstruction, I learnt that there has always been a spectrum of sexualities in African cultures.”

Seth says this was made particularly clear to him when he visited an Ethiopian church that traced its lineage back to the Ethiopian eunuch mentioned in the Book of Acts – the first person, they believed, to share the Christian faith with people in Africa. As such, Christianity, in its earliest form in Africa, was articulated from the perspective not of a white European but of a Black sexual minority.

For Seth, reclaiming this narrative involved support from progressive pastors who “helped me unlearn and relearn scripture, and to see this as a justice issue. I realised this was bigger than me, and that the platform I have means I could help change the trajectory of someone’s life.” Seth is now calling for more churches to be inclusive of LGBT+ people and working as a voice for future generations of LGBT+ Christians.

The Act Itself

However, all of this has not been without cost.

Seth is the co-founder of Symphony, an organisation that works with young people offering music and arts classes alongside extra GCSE tuition. With a network of over 300 volunteers and 10 staff members before coming out, Seth lost almost everyone involved after publishing Watch Night.

Yet perhaps it’s not so much Seth’s expression of his sexuality, Blackness, or Christian faith that caused such disruption, but rather the fact that, as Seth says, “I was reclaiming and owning my story.” It’s not just the narratives that we reclaim that are disruptive, but the very act of reclamation itself – not in an abstract historical sense but embodied in a human life with physical and emotional impact.

A Future of Belonging

Seth joined the Oasis family a couple of months ago as part of Oasis St Martin’s Village in Tulse Hill, South London. Seth will be leading sessions hosted by Symphony – recently named ‘Charity of the Year’ at the esteemed Black Talent Awards – offering music, arts and extra GCSE tuition programmes for young people struggling in mainstream education.

Seth’s story highlights not just the narratives and histories that have been kept hidden from view, whether it’s a colonised understanding of sexuality, race, or faith, but also that reclaiming a narrative is always bound up in other narratives. It is this beautiful and complex web of stories that makes us who we are.

To learn more about Seth and Symphony, click here: https://wearesymphony.co/ourstory

To learn more about Oasis St Martin’s, click here: https://www.oasisuk.org/oasis-st-martins-village/

Please Note: Some quotations are taken from The Guardian article entitled, ‘This is right, this is the future of the church’: gay black evangelist on coming out’, written by Harriet Sherwood: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/28/gay-black-evangelist-seth-pinnock-on-coming-out?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other