I Am a Messenger: Spiritual Baptism and the Queer Afterlife of Faith

This essay is a preliminary investigation of the historical and contemporary presence of same-sex desiring and gender nonconforming practitioners in the Spiritual Baptist faith, a spiritual child of the syncretizing contact between black religious communities of the US South and the Southern Caribbean. After offering a brief history of the faith, the piece focuses on the spiritual moorings of one particularly prominent queer Caribbean artist and religious elder. This work is committed to the belief that one of the richest territories of black queer experience has long been our spiritual grounding, despite the fetishization of faithlessness in queer life.