Dethroning Whiteness - Part Two - The Birth of Brazil's Historic Black Church

Aug 06, 2025

Cross-posted from
Freedom Road

Enegrecer means “to become Black” in Portuguese. June 21, 2025 I spoke at the Enegrecer Conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil with a celebrated host of Black Brazilian and international theologians, ethicists, and justice practitioners. Convened by Brazil’s Black Evangelical Network and hosted by the largest church in South America, Igreja Batista de Agua Branca (IBAB), Enegrecer brought together 500 in-person attendees and thousands that streamed online from every corner of the continent. To understand the significance of this moment you must first understand how race works in Brazil.

On Brazil’s Census, there are 37 racial designations to count oneself as a shade of Black, but not Black. Meanwhile, there is only one designation for White. By consolidating White power and disaggregating Blackness, Brazil’s Census is designed to protect the power of the former slave-holding class. The disaggregation of Blackness also plays on the internalized white supremacy within the souls of descendants of the most heinous slavocracy ever to exist on planet Earth; offering them 37 ways to avoid the stigma of blackness.

Consider this for perspective: Less than 400,000 Africans were hauled into U.S. ports over the course of the 246-year U.S. slave trade. Yet, at the time of our abolition, 4 million people of African descent were enslaved in the U.S.. This exponential population growth is largely due to the institution of “slave farms” after the outlawing of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Worthy of its own in-depth examination, this heinous history brings its own intergenerational trauma. Consider the impact of one rape on one family system. Now, imagine the impact of systematized rape of multiple generations of women. Now, compound the pain by the forced separation of the children born from that trauma. Add to that the pain of the whip and the shackles, themselves. Slavocracy in the U.S. was evil to the core.

Let’s pivot to Brazil—by the numbers: Brazil hauled 4.8 million Africans from West African nations over the course of its 365-year slavocracy—10 times the number brought to the U.S., over one hundred years more. Yet, upon abolition in 1888, the last slavocracy on the planet only had 4 million people of African descent—the same amount as the U.S.. These numbers tell a story. The story’s title is: Death. Black Brazilians labored under treacherous conditions on Sugar plantations that lined Brazil’s eastern coast. Death by disease and systematic torture constantly depleted Brazil’s enslaved population. But Brazil is the closest nation to the continent of Africa in the Western Hemisphere. The Middle Passage to Brazil was crossed in only 1-2 weeks, compared with 6-8 weeks to the U.S..

So, while the U.S. bred enslaved people, Brazil used them up and went back for more.

Blackness was and is exploitable in the U.S. It was and is expendable in Brazil.

Blackness was and is exploitable in the U.S. It was and is expendable in Brazil.

Some Black Brazilians defied white hegemony. Self-emancipated men and women escaped deep into forests and mountain regions where they established Quilombos—maroon societies—free Black towns off the grid. Quilombo faith typically brought Christianity into conversation with various African spiritualities present in the communities; forsaking imperial faith, exercising reparative sovereignty over African identity, and restoring healing practices and values located in African indigenous ways.

Following slavery, eugenics took hold and shaped Brazilian public policy. Black Brazilians were forced into the hills and outer edges of society in ungoverned shanty towns called favelas. Appeals went out to European nations to immigrate to Brazil and “whiten” the population. Whiteness was formally celebrated while Blackness was contained.

White missionaries declared African faith systems “demonic,” leaving only the white Catholic church—the seat of the former slaveholding establishment—and white Protestant churches—the seat of Confederate faith (see “Dethroning Whiteness” Part 1)—as the only legitimate spaces for Black spiritual formation in Brazil. Spiritual formation outside of these white and western supremacist structures was shamed and the people who practiced them were socially, economically, and politically disenfranchised.

On the heels of eugenics came “Racial Democracy”—a corrective without correction. Conceived by white elites, Racial Democracy imagined and declared a color-blind Brazil, within which all people groups could thrive. A corrective by degrees to the erasure of ethnic cleansing, color-blindness allows the people to remain, while erasing from public view the oppressive situation the people survive every day.

Thus, under Brazil’s brut and cunning brand of racism, the nation never experienced the birth of the most critical corrective force to rise up within the U.S.—the Historic Black Church. Black consciousness was only allowed to live within the contained ones who practiced African religions. No Black Church rose up and demand abolition in Brazilian history—no Absalom Jones, no Richard Allen, and no James Forten rose to establish separate incorporated and empowered churches and denominations within which Black people could discover their own unique relationship with Brown, Colonized Jesus. No Black Church rose up to form Freedmen’s Bureaus, Historic Black Colleges and Universities, the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Council, the Congress on Racial Equality, and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—all of which were powered by Black faith and faith communities.

Black people in Brazil were subsumed within the white Catholic Church—immersed in White imperial consciousness. As a result, uniquely liberative Black Christianity was never conceived in the land of Racial Democracy—until now.

In fact, within Brazilian Christianity, there was no recognition of Jesus’ North African/West Asian brown flesh. There was no recognition of the serial enslavement and colonization of his people. There was no recognition of the fact that not one word of the Bible was written by Europeans—not one word. And none of it written in the Enlightenment era—the era of Transatlantic slavocracy. No. Instead, Black people in Brazil were subsumed within the white Catholic Church—immersed in white imperial consciousness. As a result, uniquely liberative Black Christianity was never conceived in the land of Racial Democracy—until now.

Monday night, June 24. I joined the Black Consciousness Forum’s Leadership Council of IBAB Church. This vibrant ministry was established in the wake of Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-Black scourge. Filled with powerhouse Black leaders from across Sao Paulo the Black Consciousness Forum invited me to speak with them about the Thresholds of Black Consciousness. I shared from my own experience and from treasures offered within womanist thought. This community of Black Brazilian men and women whose ancestors survived the most heinous enslavement the world has ever seen—this beautiful collective whose families endured eugenics and favelas—this powerful band of Black faith-full was overcome with emotion as we read the words of Toni Morrison’s Baby Suggs Holy in her seminal book, Beloved.

To the community of Black flesh gathered in the sacred Clearing, Baby Suggs Holy, a formerly enslaved Auntie of sorts to the next generation of emancipated families, admonished them: “Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it.”

This beautiful community of Black faith gathered at IBAB had experienced the devaluing of their flesh, their work, their spirits, but on this night, the space became a Clearing and we sat in it—soaked in bountiful Blackness.

I experienced similar soaking with another newer evangelical church, Por Amor, which brought me to speak to its leadership—mostly Black, about how to decolonize our faith. And I experienced it when I spoke with an intimate group that gathered at Casa Sueli Carneiro, a hub of Black feminist theology; established in celebration of Dr. Sueli Carneiro, Brazil’s equivalent to our Angela Davis. And I experienced the Clearing when I spoke to hundreds gathered for the Enegrecer Conference, then sat and listened to scores of Black Brazilian theologians, pastors, and educators—all calling us to recenter ourselves in our own story.

Baby Suggs Holy concluded her Beloved exhortation with this command: “More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.”

Dr. Jackson August, the leader of Brazil’s Black Evangelical Network (MNE), sat on the other side of my Zoom screen one week later. He explained the title of his conference, Enegrecer—to become Black. He shared the story of the recent swell of Black consciousness throughout Brazil—the celebration of natural hair styles, the rivers of people of African descent forsaking the other 37 racial designations on the Brazilian Census to claim “Black” as their identity in a subversive aggregation of political power, the active decolonization of Afro-Asiatic Jesus faith, and the rise of formal Black Protestant faith networks. As Dr. August shared the story, images of my time with Brazilians becoming Black washed over me. I saw Black roots embracing bedrock African identity, while Black branches waved unabashed arms in worship of a decolonizing Jesus. And it occurred to me: We are bearing witness to the birth of the Historic Black Church in Brazil right now. And it is beautiful.