The Black Church tradition begins in the hush harbors.

Our Project

The future of the Church will also be found hidden away in hush harbors, communities of revolutionaries working against the currents of Empire.

Liberating Church Project began with a hunger to learn from models of church designed and led by Black people and other people of color that were actively seeking liberation from systems of domination and oppression in both the world and inside the Church. We ask questions like:

• How did underground models of church change the fundamental structure of how we organize church?

• What is faith-rooted community organizing?

• How did underground models of church utilize faith-rooted community organizing?

• How did these models cultivate contemplative/spiritual practices (including Indigenous ones) and their connection to social change?

• Did hush harbors and other underground models of church ever shift to the more dominant models of church? If so, when and why did this shift occur?

• How do we apply this insight to today’s context?

After a literature review and discussion of hush harbors, decolonial theory, and other voices and traditions, we discerned EIGHT interdependent marks of a Liberating Church: Steal Away, North Star, All God's Children Got Shoes, Sankofa, Talking Book, Ubuntu, Joy Unspeakable, and Stay Woke.

Using these marks as a framework, the Liberating Church Project has engaged in ethnographic research, interviewing and immersing in 8-10 sites that we suspect are 21st century Hush Harbors. Now that the ethnographic research step is complete, we hope to soon share what we've gleaned through hosting group gatherings and published materials.