The Beyoncé Mass places black women’s stories at the center—and proclaims God’s love
The music gets people in the door. Yolanda Norton’s preaching might be what sticks to their bones.
Growing up in the 1970s as an African American woman in the South, my widowed Baptist mother was not playin’ when it came to waking up her children and ensuring we were properly dressed and prepared for church. She had rules for us: Take your Bible. Pay attention. You better not misbehave (talk, laugh, chew gum, or fall asleep—especially fall asleep).
It seemed brutal to me, as a kid, to sit still and listen to someone talk for an hour, especially the older preacher with no degrees after his name who called the biblical juniper tree the “Jennifer tree” and the virtuous woman the “virgin woman.”
Per Mama’s rules, we also couldn’t “listen to the blues” on Sunday—this meant any secular music. Sundays, above all days, were sacred.
