A California church in Nancy Pelosi’s district seat of San Francisco is holding a ‘Beyoncé Mass’ next week.
And no, this is not fake news. This is happening.
According to the Huffington Post, the service will commemorate “black female spirituality,” using the often marginally-clad pop star as its primary muse.
San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral is planning to host a Beyoncé Mass on April 25, using the pop icon’s music to celebrate black female spirituality.
The Wednesday evening service is part of The Vine, a weekly contemporary gathering organized by Grace for San Francisco’s “urbanites and spiritual seekers.” The Beyoncé Mass promises to help attendees discover how the musician’s art “opens a window into the lives of the marginalized and forgotten ― particularly black females.”
“In this year where there’s been so much conversation about the role of women and communities of color, we felt a need to lift up the voices that the church has traditionally suppressed,” the Rev. Jude Harmon, founding pastor of the Vine, told SFGate.
Of course, a strong argument could be made that the Christian church has suppressed open Beyoncé worship not because she’s black, but because a) she's not the Lord and b) the lyrics to her songs include things like:
"Can you lick my Skittles, it's the sweetest in the middle / Pink is the flavor, solve the riddle"
...and...
"He bucked all my buttons, he ripped my blouse / He Monica Lewinski'd all on my gown"
(In case you were wondering about this "church," Grace Cathedral is an Episcopal church that openly touts a "progressive theology." They also hold things like "Yoga for Change" classes and weird "labyrinths" for spiritual walks.)
Oh, but it gets better. The mass sermon will be given by Rev. Yolanda Norton, a professor at San Francisco Theological Seminary who teaches a class called “Beyoncé and the Bible” and which she “uses the life, persona and music of Beyoncé as a medium to explore black female sexuality and motherhood, as well as stigmas created around black women.”
I’m assuming there’s a little David and Goliath or something thrown in there for good measure.
The mass will supposedly "center Black women as beings created in the image of God, to name our struggles, and affirm our Christian witness," Norton says.
Of course, Beyoncé isn’t exactly a shining pillar of the "Christian witness" herself, as evidenced by her graphic, sex-saturated lyrics and her penchant for strutting around in nothing but glitter and a few strategically-placed tea doilies.
But I guess there was that one time when she posed half-naked as the Virgin Mary with her newborn twins, so hey, praise the Lord and pass the communion wafers.