Dear Church Folk: I Wish Y’all Would STFU About Ancestor Veneration

It’s been awhile since I’ve penned a blog post, I know. If you’ve missed my musings, you ought to be following the official brand Facebook page, my personal profile, and my Instagram. Now, let’s have a discussion that’s going to fill the Deep Saints with rage. 

As of late, there is a growing communal conversation on ancestral veneration. Particularly, many Black Christians are taking to social media to demonize the practices of African traditional religions and visuals of such practices. Recent targets include Beyoncé’s “Black is King”, the song “Black Parade”, and menstrual hygiene brand Honeypot. These responses are neither new nor unusual. They’re littered with hollow rebukes, declarations of spiritual authority through Jesus, and massive amounts of uninformed superstition. 

Honestly, I’m exhausted. I’m tired of how obtuse hyper-religious folks are. I’m frustrated that traditional religious spaces perpetuate this ignorance to their financial benefit but congregational deficit. While I’d never diminish the grounding that a relationship with Jesus gives, I’m tired of Black folks ignoring that profession of Christian faith alone has not helped us overcome the perils of anti-blackness in or out of the church.

Convincing us to recognize our inherited spiritual practices as demonic is literally the greatest trick white supremacy has ever pulled on us. Yet, we continue to be willing participants in the stripping and invalidation of our spiritual tools and power. 

What then does the bible say to these things? Is Christianity compatible with ancestral veneration? Let’s just go to the text. 

Hebrews 12:1 states, “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”

The word “therefore” implies that the writer is coming to conclusion from a previous statement. In this case, the author is concluding their story from Hebrews 11, also known as the FAITH chapter. Yanno, the one that opens with “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” But who exactly is the great cloud of witnesses that are described in Hebrews 12:1?

Well, if you read the entire text of Hebrews 11 beyond the “shouting cue” definition of faith, we’re told all about those witnesses of faith. They’re summarily broken into four categories: Those from before the flood — Abel, Enoch, and Noah; Those before Moses: Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, Jacob, Joseph; Then the mosaic period of Moses himself and finally, the post-mosaic period of the succeeding generations including Rahab who is named among others. 

What all these people have in common at this point of the text is that they have all passed from the earthy plane. Yet, the writer saw fit to venerate, or regard with great respect, their lives and testimonies of God’s acts in and through their lives. The author reveres them so deeply that they go on to describe them as the great cloud of witnesses that inspire and influence we the living the continue our own faith race.

Ancestral veneration is not a contradiction to Christian theology, particularly the resurrection of Christ as the redeemer. If we’re honest, it’s dishonest for we as BLACK folks, to deny our ancestors in favor of “new eyes” and “new mind” in being washed white as snow by conquered Christianity. Our lives as marginalized people make us perfectly capable of understanding the impact of Christ’s sacrifice WITHOUT the trope of new eyes and minds. 

Our “old eyes” have seen enough mothers who, like Mary, mother of Jesus, watched their sons be murdered by the state. We’ve seen enough of those in positions of power disenfranchise us from rightful equity while using and abusing us to take more of the lion’s share.

These eyes have watched a nation buckle under the weight of mismanaged pandemic response, deeming many of the Black working poor as essential workers and leading our community to account for a third of all US COVID deaths.

Old eyes have watched Black folks become 3.6 times more likely to die from COVID while this country’s executive leadership pressed for reopening businesses, schools, and churches with no plans of safety. These eyes have watched Black folks play into our own demise at the hands of Massa’s favorite tool: our unquestioned devotion to a conquered Christ. 

But I digress. 

To honor your ancestors means that you honor the example of their lives as a source of inspiration and influence for our own faith journey until we join them as ancestors for future generations. The prayers, petitions, hopes, dreams, and invocations of our bloodline that have gone before us still carries, covers, and protests all of us. We know what God can do because we’ve seen Her perform not only in our lives but those before us. A great cloud of witnesses. 

Your praying grandmother, mama, auntie, and cousin ‘nem have lives and memories worth keeping alive so that you can run your race.  So yes, I invoke the presence and guidance of my ancestors in my daily practice. I maintain my altar, I call upon them for protection, I look to their lives when my faith in God is both tested and tried. I use their guidance in divination work. I believe that the prayers of my ancestors are the prayers of the saints in Revelation 5:8. 

Taking it out of the religious context for a moment, it is difficult to logically reconcile that these “demonic” practices were used to protect my people from the mutilation and assault of the “others.” It just seems awfully convenient that there’s such an effort to convince a community of people that their power is evil and should be done away with. We shouldn’t accept this as an unquestioned truth, we owe it to ourselves to ask the necessary whys here. It saddens me that so many of us do not. 

Still, we haven’t parted with many other pieces of the same practices we demonize. Black church folks love to talk about witchcraft, but see no problem with turning around 3,5, or 7 times and “watch God do it” for them. We worry about “opening portals” through rituals, but do a blood ritual of communion at least monthly.

We get up in arms about sage, palo santo, and candle magic while also praying over Pompeian olive oil and water to use for anointing and blessing.

We are spirit possessed by the “Holy Ghost” into chanting (tarrying), dancing (shouting), and unknown tongues but bristle at the mention of ancestral veneration and spirit guides.

We engage bibliomancy (foretelling the future by interpreting a randomly chosen passage from a book, especially the Bible) and prophecy lines (especially in exchange for money), but the opening of demonic gateways is in tarot and scrying (water) divination? 

In the words of Gabrielle Union in Bring it On, “I know you ain’t think a white girl made that shit up.” These practices come from the very same source ancestral veneration is pulled from. And if these things were to become absent from your typical Black church service, you’d be calling it a dead church.

I can’t keep up with the contradictions — and I refuse to live my life measured by them. Fact is, I’m not seeking permission to love and be loved by those whose blood runs warm in my veins. Especially not for the sake of affirming the chokehold of white supremacy over my Black body. And that’s on letting the ghosts chit chat.

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