Faith After the Storm

Prayer in Practice

When we first published this conversation between Amirio Freeman and Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. in our 2022 magazine, Black & Native Attention as Miracle, many readers shared how meaningful it was to explore faith in the context of environmental justice.

After the election, we’ve found ourselves revisiting this interview for a new perspective on what it might mean to be moral in this moment. For some of us, the idea of ‘faith’ can be activating. But regardless of whether or not you consider yourself spiritual, we believe that there are many insights in this conversation worth weighing.

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Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. (or just Rev) has one prayer for future generations: “that they can be free and they can have life” that’s not diminished by the disastrous aftermath of our current dependency on fossil fuels. As the archive of the climate crisis, and of our lack of collective action, continues to grow, Rev. Yearwood reminds us that our global path forward, for the sake of our planet’s present and future, must be driven by a whole lot of urgency — and even more faith.

For the minister, community activist, and President & CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus — a national nonprofit organization that uses the power of cultural expression to support communities disproportionately impacted by racial, economic, and environmental injustice — a belief in something bigger than ourselves, from a belief in God to a belief in the capacity of humans to rebuke the corrupt gospel of the fossil fuel industry, will be vital to our collective survival.

After storms, both figurative and climate change-driven, faith will be what gets us through, says Rev.

In conversation with Amirio Freeman, Rev. Yearwood shares more about the liberatory potential of the Black Church, what happens when higher powers become weaponized by forces like the Koch brothers, and why faith and activism must work hand in hand.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. (LYJ): My name is Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. I go by Rev as a first name for a lot of different reasons. One reason is that I've been involved with hip hop, so Rev became a kind of hip hop name. I think in hip hop everyone has to have a name, no matter what it is. You’re either given one or you find one. Rev was the one that really fit me because I am actually clergy and I’ve utilized my faith to create change. I'm an activist. I am a lover of my people. I want to see them succeed.

I am the president and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus, which is an amazing organization that will turn 18 this year. And that's important, because for an organization that is for Black, Brown, Indigenous, male, female, straight, gay, theist, atheist folks — for humanity — and that uses culture for change, I think we've done a pretty good job of meeting our mission. I think we've been very inviting and successful in what we've tried to do, and we've learned a lot from being in both the hip hop and mainstream progressive movements. We've learned a lot about what it means to fight for our people and do this work. That's me.

Amirio Freeman (AF): You're a minister. I know you graduated from the Howard University School of Divinity. I want to unpack how your religious and spiritual lives shaped and activated your life as an advocate, organizer, and activist.

Let’s start from the very beginning: How did religion and spirituality show up in your household and community when you were growing up?

LYJ: I was born in Louisiana and have deep roots there. My mother and my father are both from the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago; being from there and having large families, many of their family members were a part of the Christian church. My mother was very rooted in that tradition, along with many of her brothers and sisters. My father? Not so much.

My father came to the United States because he was in the '68 Olympics. That had an impact on him and our family. He saw Tommie Smith and John Carlos with their fists raised. As an athlete, he had two thoughts. He said, one, Wow, those Americans are crazy. And two, I want to go to America. That just shows the importance of symbolism; it literally is what brought him and my family to this country.

He would go on to get his degrees and then become the Dean of African American Studies at Howard University, so he had a different perspective on religion and spirituality. He was a socialist. He was someone who dealt with pan-Africanism, so his viewpoint of spirituality was not only rooted in the Christian faith. He had an acknowledgment of and respect for Christianity — and still does — and he had respect for African traditions. Traditions from places like Haiti. I got all of that growing up. I got a chance to get the more traditional Black Church experience, too. That combination of influences is what drew me into this work.

When I was becoming a minister, a lot of my colleagues were going into a more capitalist model of spirituality. That wasn't my thing, to be honest. I had this outlook that the church is a place where people can come and be free and talk about certain things — so I am probably a throwback in that regard. I’m really fond of the Black Church as a mechanism of liberation and survival.

If you look at my work, faith is utilized to accomplish it. Whatever your faith is, it should help propel you to keep pushing on. You have to pull on something outside of yourself. I believe if you don’t, you will become consumed. You can't do this work if you're jaded or bitter or cynical; faith helps to cut through all of that.

From an old-fashioned faith perspective, there’s this idea that the battle is not yours, but the Lord's. That idea relieves someone from having to carry the burden of having to win all the time and be successful, and it describes a communal, collective type of spirituality that involves being connected to humanity. From humanity of the past — the ancestors — to humanity to come. When you understand that you're in this relay race, it changes your thoughts. And you believe that you have a power that can help you be successful against evil and injustice.

AF: Can you talk more about being from and living in Louisiana? What was the religious, spiritual tenor of that state like growing up?

LYJ: The traditional Black Church is a place where, despite all that has gone on in society, particularly for Black people — from segregation to racism, white supremacy, Jim Crow, police brutality — you can find safety. It’s also a place where trauma can be released. In the Black Church, people deal with things that are, to be honest, unspeakable. Things in their lives, from being the last one hired, the first one fired. Dealing with subtle racism, dealing with things in their home, dealing with a spouse or a partner who is abusive. Some people are trying to raise children with very limited resources. And the church is the place they can come to — and you can see the magic, the connectedness, of people.

There's a great scripture that says, Where there are two or three gathered, the Almighty is in the midst, and that's what you see happen in the church. Where there are two or three gathered, you see the releasing of trauma.

Obviously, culture is a part of the church. Family and music are critical. And then good old-fashioned preaching. Getting up there and putting together a word, as they would say. All of that was a part of the church experience I was accustomed to.

The church was a safe haven — and that goes back to the days of John Brown and Harriet Tubman. I think it's still that kind of place.

AF: Thank you for mentioning the power of gathering. One of my favorite words is conspiracy because it’s derived from the Latin word conspirare — which relates to the idea of “breathing together.” With conspiracy, there’s a feeling of being in alignment with the same mission or goal. I’m excited thinking about the Black Church as a site of conspiracy for the sake of people and the planet.

You were talking about this intersection of faith and your work. Let’s discuss your time in seminary and the process of becoming a minister. What was that journey like, and what were some of the tools and lessons you had to learn that later informed what you've done with the Hip Hop Caucus and the other threads of your advocacy life?

LYJ: I was a very gifted student—

AF: —I love the humblebrag. (laughs)

LYJ: (laughs) I was! It was very hard to be a teacher's assistant. You had to really go through a lot; you earned bragging rights if you could just get one of those positions. I was a New Testament and Old Testament teacher's assistant.

I was in seminary at the beginning of the 21st century and the end of the 20th century, between 1998 and 2002. At that time, there was a different type of mentality in the Black Church. For some, the goal was to get a big church or a megachurch; a T. D. Jakes, Creflo Dollar mindset was present. I was very much against that and could have gone that route — but I didn't. I chose to be an activist.

Earlier in my life, I joined the U.S. Air Force and was in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, in the Chaplain Corps. During that time, I experienced different faiths — not just my own, which was Pentecostal at the time — Islam, Judaism. And I enjoyed that. Because of that exposure, I began to speak out against the war in Iraq.

I also began to speak out on a number of things that were going on within my church. I was in the Church of God in Christ. I began to speak out for women. At that time, women weren't allowed to preach. I began to make sure to mention people who were trans or gay in my sermons — and some people didn't like that. They would tell me to not mention certain things. Why do you got to say that word?

When I began to speak out against the war in Iraq, it became very difficult. I got in trouble for speaking out. I was still in the military while speaking out against the war. I would go to antiwar rallies. At those rallies, most of the people were white. I began to be like, Well, where are all the Black people at?

At the time, I was also doing some work with Georgetown, and I began to work with some young people. At one point, Dr. Ben Chavis, a dear friend, gave me a call and he said, Well, we're doing something with hip hop, and you're really good at grassroots organizing. Why don't you join us? That's how everything connected. And I will say this: My reading of the Bible, and other sacred texts, has changed tremendously because of that shift.

All that tribulation helped crystallize who I am today. Now, I hope that I can use what I've learned to help another generation and have younger people see certain things differently. And, most importantly, I hope they feel me. Young people, in particular, can read and feel you. I think my spirit sometimes goes before me, so people can feel a certain kind of energy from me and be like, Wow. I don't know what it is about Rev. I know it ain't me — it's just a certain kind of spirit that comes forth because of what I've been through.

PHOTO BY AERAN SQUIRES

AF: So much of what you're saying reminds me of my own questions on how we all can subscribe to a new sense of morality at this moment that will get us to the kinds of worlds that we want to live in.

In past conversations, you’ve talked about our extreme dependency on the fossil fuel industry. It’s as if we've subscribed to morality that's rooted in a theology of dominion — a theology of whiteness — that's based on pillars of extraction, extreme growth, and urgency over people, over solidarity, and over interdependence. What’s on the other side of those theologies? What could we subscribe to that's beyond a theology of dominion or whiteness?

I keep coming back to an article, “Courting the End of the World: Heeding James Baldwin’s Invitation to take up a Dangerous Morality”, by J.T. Roane. In that text, J.T. talks about the need to create and abide by a “dangerous morality” that they describe as taking up the call to "serenade ourselves with something other than the death hymn of Manifest Destiny,” “feed each other and love up on one another,” and “reclaim our intimacies from exploitation, our communities from cages, our cities from corporate takeovers, and our government from goons.”

What you've described over the course of this conversation feels like your own sense of a “dangerous morality.” If you had to define what your version of a “dangerous morality” is, that we need at this moment, what would it be? What would be the core tenets?

LYJ: I want to backtrack a little bit because I know that throughout the pandemic, people discussed a “dangerous morality” that supported, for instance, opening everything up more quickly than we needed to — and that was their moral compass. They thought that was important because people, from their standpoint, were hurting. The moral fiber in that doesn’t fit with my beliefs. I wouldn't sit with that. Morality can change depending on the perspective.

My morality is based on justice, and it's about making sure there's fairness. My core tenets are justice, fairness, equality, and making sure that everyone is striving. There should be a morality that pushes us that way, and we should be willing to give up everything for it.

One of the things that I tease my team about is that we, as a caucus, try to do things with character in everything we do. We have “pathological integrity.” With “pathological integrity,” however, we have to be mindful of where we're going with it. In other words, we have to ask where is our morality — our integrity — taking us, and where is it taking our people and our community?

AF: I want to pivot back to your work, specifically your work with the Hip Hop Caucus. What does the Caucus do, and how does your specific version of a “dangerous morality” show up in the organization’s day-to-day?

LYJ: The Hip Hop Caucus is an organization that started in 2004, primarily around the issue of democracy. There were a number of hip-hop organizations doing get-out-the-vote campaigns in 2003 and 2004. Later, it was decided we needed to continue that work. We couldn't let everything end with the electoral cycle. We had this ability to bring people together. Using one's cultural expression to shape one's political experience was critical, so we needed to keep the momentum going.

On April 4, 2004, we decided we would pull all these entities together. There were efforts being done by many other groups. And we said, Listen, we're going to bring together a caucus. We chose the word caucus because we appreciate the Congressional Black Caucus.

We were going to start the Hip Hop Caucus that September, during the Congressional Black Caucus’s conference. However, at the time, hip hop wasn't looked upon in a positive way. So, the Congressional Black Caucus wouldn't allow us to have our original gathering at their conference. We had to go down the street to Howard University.

From there, the goal of the Hip Hop Caucus was really clear. Because of our culture, we were protected from white liberalism. White liberals couldn't just take it over or say whatever. We used our culture to keep pushing forward. The next year, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina happened. Hurricane Katrina hit and we moved into action. That really gave the caucus its DNA.

I believe, with the deaths of our people on the Gulf Coast, the spirit and the soul of the organization were created. The events of Katrina became the organization’s heartbeat.

After that disaster, we began to take on all the things that hurt those people, which were the fossil fuel industry, racism, white supremacy, economic injustice, health injustice. We began to take those issues on — and grow. That's how the Hip Hop Caucus grew into an organization that’s now based in DC and Los Angeles. It's done amazing work. It's won so many awards. It’s won awards for its work on democracy. It's won awards for Katrina. It won the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, which is like the Nobel Peace Prize for nonprofits. It has won numerous awards for its creative expertise.

Most importantly, the Hip Hop Caucus has become an organization that’s run predominantly by women, including women of color. We have Muslims, we have Christians, we have straight individuals, we have gay individuals, we have trans individuals — everybody. Everybody works there. And everybody is mostly Black; we've got different kinds of people, and most of them Black.

That's the Hip Hop Caucus, and I'm excited about the future. I'm excited about next year because hip hop as a culture will turn 50. We turn 18 as an organization this year, so I'm excited about us continuing to fight for justice. We're excited about bringing together folks who really focus on liberation, and being in a space that's free to do that.

In a way, I'm coming full circle. Way back when, I saw the Black Church as being a space for thinkers, liberation, and conversation. I feel I've created that kind of space with the Hip Hop Caucus: it's a space where we can come, and it's for everyone in our community to have solace and communion.

AF: Hip hop is such a perfect complement for this kind of work. There’s a specific divinity in that culture. I'm thinking about hip-hop culture back in the day: DJs and MCs felt like ministerial figures who engaged in their kind of performance; sampling feels like its own form of worship. An audience at a hip-hop show is a congregation. There's something that’s very parallel.

I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier: You discussed being in seminary and being around folks who were potentially going down a path that could be considered capitalist. Faith is a powerful tool, and I want your thoughts on when faith becomes weaponized. I'm thinking about folks who proselytize the “prosperity gospel,” which can operate in service of capitalism and be used to justify poverty. I'm also thinking about the Koch brothers. I'm from Hampton Roads in Virginia. I'll never forget reading a Grist piece that highlighted how the Koch brothers sponsored a Richmond event catered to Christians where several speakers and events proselytized the gospel of oil and natural gas production.

How do you process moments of faith being weaponized in service of bringing us further away from climate justice and social justice as a whole — and how can we disrupt those moments? What are the tools we need?

LYJ: Doing this work and being in ministry for so many years, I have unfortunately seen faith weaponized in a very brutal way. I've seen ministers take money from the church. In a larger sense, we're seeing white supremacy being utilized to endorse a certain type of white supremacy religion, like with the Koch brothers. We're seeing people allowing their money to take away their faith and ability to speak truth to power.

If I can speak to my citizen brothers who are also in the clergy or in faith: I think one of the reasons why some of you get caught up is because you get far away from the people. You get closer to charity and away from solidarity. I think that gap allows you to focus more on yourself and to be self-centered, and then you begin to hurt those around you. When you're in solidarity, you realize that your sister, your brother, or your nonbinary cousin are all one. And then when you realize you’re one, you don’t want to hurt them because you wouldn’t hurt yourself.

I have a lot of young people who come to me who don't see the church as a viable tool for them. A lot of Gen Zers, and even some young Millennials, don't see the church: They see the pomp and circumstance, but they don't feel the spirituality — and that's unfortunate. But, I always tell them that God, to me, is everywhere. Spirituality can’t be contained in no building. You'll find it by the beach, in the forest, in your home, with your friends — you'll see the divine very, very clearly.

AF: How do you stay connected to spirit, divinity, and sacredness — within yourself, in other people, in the more-than-human world? How do you continue to stay anchored in that? What keeps you rooted there? It can be easy to be led astray, in a sense.

LYJ: One, in my place, you won't find any TVs. I think you should be very, very careful about what's coming into your spirit. Normally, which is on right now, I have music that plays. Usually jazz. You would hear it if you came into my house. And then I have water. I'm in front of it now, but there's a little waterfall; I turned it off for the interview, but there's a waterfall that you can hear. Also, I live next to the woods. I'm next to the forest. I hear the birds constantly.

For me, it's all about protecting my energy and creating a kind of — not a bubble, but a place where I can really feel and take in the divine. Then prayer. I do pray because I'm constantly being told about crises. I'm told about, Oh, man. Did you hear about what's going on here? I'm constantly in a spirit of prayer.

And I think fighting for justice helps. It's a great grounding piece, because you realize what's wrong and you realize that you ain’t really got anything to complain about. It helps me to be rooted.

A new thing for me is doing better with my diet and eating. When I was at the Standing Rock protest, I was amazed by how some of my Indigenous brothers, when they would go out and they would kill, would bless the animals. And they used every part of what they hunted; it was a giving. That taught me how to deal with my food.

Before, I would just go to the market, or I'd just go to a store and buy something. Now, post-Standing Rock, if I'm eating a salad, for example, I remember that the salad is giving me something. I take time to appreciate what is being given to me, and I bless the salad — or whatever is being given, like the water that I have to drink.

AF: I love this thinking around how to stay grounded and close to people — so let’s talk about people.

Thinking about all the work you do around activating cultural narrative shifts around climate change, I feel like we can get so caught up in the science words, the academia of it all, without really rooting climate change in a conversation around how climate justice is really just about showing up for each other, showing up for our neighbors. I also feel like we don't talk enough about how climate devastation impacts us in a structural, macro way that seeps into the most intimate parts of our lives.

Going back to this religious and spiritual lens, climate chaos impacts the moments in which we're gathering and praying. What happens if a hurricane comes through and blows over the mosque that you go to? What happens to that place of congregation and being with each other? If sea levels are rising, and a certain burial ground gets flooded, what happens to us being able to participate in rituals of saying goodbye, of homegoing, of grieving?

What have you seen in terms of climate change’s impact on our ability to pray, worship, grieve, and be together — within your congregation, within other communities of faith?

LYJ: First, I want to say that there is a climate villain. There is someone who is creating the chaos. So we can begin to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. That’s important. We need to deal with that. There's a timeframe saying that we won't be able to make many more changes, but right now, while we still can make changes, I think we need to realize that there is an entity that is based upon greed and destruction. That is literally taking away not only our existence but the existence of future generations.

Now, in regards to what happens from that chaos, I’ve seen the destruction. I’ve seen people separated from their places of worship; I've seen places of worship be wiped out by wildfires. We have folks who are refugees, who are now wandering. We have climate wars that are now happening. There is a tremendous amount of chaos. How do you then still connect? How do you see the divine in those situations, when you're going through that?

It’s an interesting thing: It is in those moments when you are the most connected. It is in those moments when you're going through the most horrible things in life that you are the most connected to the spiritual, the divine, and the sacred. I don't know why we humans are that way. I've seen more prayers during a hurricane or tornado. They say there’s no atheists in foxholes. That's the old line. We're in a time when things will be disrupted and things are not going to ever be “normal” — but this is a time when people will be even more connected.

Our bodies, in my faith tradition, are ephemeral. Nobody's going to be here forever. In 2122, for instance, 100 years from now, none of us are going to be here. If you're reading this right now, there's a 99.9% chance that you will not be here, because none of us are going to be living to 130, 140, or 150 years old. And because of that, what will be here will not be your physical presence but, rather, the words, the energy, and the love you leave. Those things will live forever, and that's the most amazing thing. In 2122, if future generations have clean air and clean water, that means that those of us now, who are on this side of the Jordan, were successful. If they don't have clean air and clean water, that means that the other people won. That's the battle, and that's the thing we need everyone to help us with. So that future generations can say, thank you.

My belief is that future generations will have clean air and clean water. Prayerfully and hopefully, they will then look back upon us and they won't care who was president. They won't care what our money looked like. They won't care what our houses were. They won't care about what was going on.

I look back upon the Harriet Tubmans and the Frederick Douglasses, as a Black man, and I tell them, Thank you, because there was no way you could know I would exist, but I do. And because you existed, I am free. And that is our goal for the next generation: that they can be free and they can have life.

AF: Prayer has been invoked so much throughout this conversation, so I think it's appropriate to end on one. If you could provide the briefest prayer for the times we're living in right now, what would that prayer be?

LYJ: That prayer would be, Almighty, continue to give us love, insight, and wisdom to do your will. Amen.