Editorial Philosophy

When God Became the Spokesperson for Empire: Policy, Desire, and the Theology of Consent

The Path Was Never Scattered — It Was Strategic

When I first started my public work, folks moved quickly to discredit me for lack of seminary training.

It’s not always understood how my path led from Africana Studies (Georgia State university, 2011) to Public Policy (Georgia State University, 2013) to Public Theology. But public theology is my perfect alibi.

How Power Narrates Itself

Africana Studies taught me how power narrates itself. It trained me to see how race is constructed and how domination survives. It taught me to ask: Who benefits from oppression socialized as normalcy?

How Power Operationalizes Itself

Public Policy taught me how power operationalizes itself.

The incrementalism of policy work preserves existing power while claiming neutrality and sets the agenda before options are considered or debated.

Here’s the ugly secret: policy does not respond to desire.

Policy doesn’t just manage outcomes — it manages imagination.
Policy manufactures desire, then cites it as consent.

Theology as the Ultimate Policy Engine

And theology? That is the most powerful policy shaper of all.

It governs not just behavior, but desire and conscience — all while claiming divine neutrality.

This is how supremacist theologies survive institutions that were once sites of resistance.

Supremacist theology works because it:

• trains people to want what harms them
• sanctifies hierarchy as “order”
• reframes obedience as holiness
• calls suffering “God’s will”

So when policy harms, theology says:
This is right.
This is natural.
This is God.

That’s not coincidence.
That’s power.

The Manufacture of Consent

U.S. policy is informed by social attitudes — and those attitudes are orchestrated by political structures to align the public with elite interests while convincing people it was their idea all along.

Public policy masquerades as a response to public wanting while actively creating the wanting.

Consent is engineered.

Why Liberation Theology Is Marked as Dangerous

That is why liberationist theologies like mine — and the lineage of thought that precedes me — are dismissed as heretical or reduced to “race idolatry.”

Not because they distort faith. Because they expose power.

Black Christianity is not stupid, weak, or sinful.

Black Christianity as structured by empire is how people are taught to love what dominates them.

Making Theology Dangerous Again

I didn’t fall into theology.

My path was never scattered or unclear. It is tight.

I work to make theology dangerous again — in the best way.

Because once God is no longer the spokesperson for empire, people will no longer consent to its instruction.

And when consent breaks, imagination returns.

That is how we recover the capacity to live free.

That’s how I landed here.

A Traditional: Editorial Philosophy

Black Affairs is an independent Black-led public affairs and sociopolitical education publication dedicated to advancing civic literacy through rigorous, historically grounded analysis of the political, cultural, economic, and theological forces shaping Black communities in the United States and across the African diaspora.

The publication centers structural power rather than isolated events, examining how public policy, media narratives, religious institutions, and economic systems interact to shape social outcomes and public consciousness. Black Affairs prioritizes longform narrative journalism and interdisciplinary scholarship to contextualize contemporary issues within broader historical patterns of race, empire, and inequality.

Grounded in traditions of Africana Studies, public policy analysis, liberation theology, cultural criticism, and political economy, Black Affairs seeks to make complex systems of power accessible and legible to a broad public audience. Our work emphasizes how consent is manufactured, how inequality is normalized, and how institutional structures influence public imagination and civic participation.

By rebuilding independent Black public education infrastructure in the digital age, Black Affairs aims to support informed community engagement, strengthen democratic participation, and foster critical analysis beyond algorithm-driven media ecosystems.

This editorial philosophy guides all content produced by Black Affairs.