The Clearing: A Place for Black Queer Spiritual Discovery and Exploration
Where do Black Queer people go to explore God, spirituality, and the sacred when traditional religious spaces have not always made room for the fullness of who we are?
Scarritt Bennett Center’s Racial Justice Ministries, in partnership with MashUp Nashville, presents The Clearing, a monthly spiritual gathering created for and centered on Black Queer people.
The Clearing offers Black Queer people intentional space outside of traditional religious structures to encounter the Divine, explore our relationships to and with God, ask questions, wrestle with faith, and discover spiritual practices and wisdom that honor the fullness of our identities and lived experiences.
For generations, Black people have encountered the Divine far beyond the walls of churches and traditional religious institutions—in literature and music, around kitchen tables, through movement and storytelling, in nature, through ancestral wisdom, and in community. Black Queer people are part of that sacred tradition. The Clearing draws upon that inheritance while making room for the particular experiences, questions, wisdom, creativity, and spiritual lives of Black Queer people.
Each month, we will gather around a selected work of mass media—literature, film, television, music, visual art, and other cultural texts—and use it as a doorway into deeper conversations about God, spirituality, identity, liberation, healing, embodiment, love, and wholeness. Rather than beginning with doctrine or asking participants to conform to a particular religious tradition, we begin with Black Queer lives and experiences and explore what they reveal about the sacred.
Our First Clearing: Toni Morrison’s Beloved
On Monday, September 21, we begin with Toni Morrison’s Beloved and “The Sermon in the Clearing,” the powerful passage in which Baby Suggs calls Black people to love their flesh—their hands, mouths, hearts, bodies, and very selves.
Together, we will consider what Morrison’s words offer Black Queer people seeking to reclaim our bodies, nurture our spirits, practice radical self-love, pursue wholeness, and deepen our relationships with the Divine.
The Clearing is for Black Queer people. You do not need to belong to a church, practice a particular religion, have certainty about what you believe, or even know exactly what you believe about God. Bring your questions, your experiences, your curiosity, and your whole self.
Monday, September 21, 2026 | 6:00–7:30 p.m.
Scarritt Bennett Center
1027 18th Avenue South, Nashville
Light fare and childcare provided.
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