I learned from my parents that sometimes God calls us to places where even our own communities will question us—not to be accepted or to assimilate, but to liberate. To speak truth into brokenness. To call the Church back to the gospel.
And sometimes—this is the hardest part—God calls us to choose Him over our own people. Not in betrayal. But in obedience. Because He sees the whole picture, and we are just one thread in His larger plan for redemption.
Their example reminds me of Dr. King, who was criticized by some in the Black community for embracing the Beloved Community over Black Nationalism. It reminds me of Frank Snowden, who didn’t write about the African presence in ancient Greece and Rome to elevate one race over another, but to show that in the ancient world, race as we know it didn’t exist. All of humanity intersected.
Sometimes, God calls Black people to leave home and go speak truth to power—and to do so alone.
When I embraced the classical tradition during my PhD journey, I was rejected by many Black colleagues and mentors. No matter how much I quoted Huey Newton, Frederick Douglass, or MLK, they could not see past the tradition’s association with White supremacy. They thought I was betraying my people.
When God called my husband to leave the church my father founded—a powerful, thriving Black church—and join a different church with a multiethnic pastoral team, people didn’t understand. A church with a history of being predominantly White, and a ministry that had long catered to that population. A church where, even as it tried to change, some people left when a Black lead pastor and other diverse leaders were welcomed. A church where people became angry when the White lead pastor publicly confessed the sin of racism and promised to stand against it. People questioned why we would leave a church with a history free from racism and White supremacy—a church whose vision was to educate the Black community about its history—to go to a church that was still fighting to be liberated from that very legacy. People looked at us like we had lost our way. But we were simply following God’s call into unfamiliar territory—into Samaria.
When I left teaching at Howard University, the Mecca where I had been shaped as a scholar, to work at Johns Hopkins and now Catholic University, I was questioned. I had finally achieved my dream of teaching where I grew up, where my father once taught, where I earned both my undergraduate and master’s degrees. But I remember the moment God told me to leave.
On the surface, it looks like I have left the sacred spaces of my community—Howard, my church, the institutions that formed me—but I am simply following a call of God to go.…(Continue to part 3)
Dr. Anika T. Prather 