How Black Queer Artists are Creating a New Gospel Through Ballroom Culture

The quintessential Black Church experience is incomplete without one central component: Gospel music. It is the sacred blending of negro spirituals, hymns, jazz, and soul, coupled with the rhythmic cries of a people longing for liberation, that distinguishes the soundscape of Black Christian faith.

Gospel music has been the soundtrack of movements for Black liberation — from the hush harbors subversively tended to by enslaved Africans to ground zero of the Civil Rights movement. This distinct genre of music has been celebrated by world-renowned institutions such as the Library of Congress, Smithsonian Museums, the White House, and even the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — each acknowledging the music’s unique contributions to Black life and American culture.

Embedded within this sacred musical tradition is a truth that is hard for many in the Black Church to reconcile: LGBTQ+ writers, composers, singers, and pew-talkers are at the heart and soul of Gospel music. While the LGBTQ+ community is affirmed by none of the eight historically Black denominations, we continue to contribute to the life, legacy, and music of the Black Church. And where can we be found? The music ministry.

It might be the organist who knows the keys like the back of their hand, the favorite congregational soloist who brings the house down every Sunday, or the choir member whose presence is larger than life. Our queerness is rarely acknowledged publicly, but its imprint is on every stanza, every arrangement, and every intonation.

The music ministry is the one place wherein queerness is, albeit reluctantly and at times haphazardly, accepted by congregants. Their tolerance of what can often be a flamboyant presentation of queerness is buoyed by the divine’s undeniable presence in the lives, fingers, and musical genius of those who, by bigoted logic, have been deemed “abominations” at best and hell-bound at worst. Even still, we play, we sing, we direct, and we join the chorus of God’s sun-kissed children to offer our gifts. Sadly, this comes with the sobering recognition that this space — our spiritual home — will extract our labor while ignoring the reality of our humanity. Consequently, many of us are forced to choose between spiritual expression or self-preservation. A choice heavy with the possibility of betraying familial legacy, financial stability, and even our sense of spiritual duty.

Yet we make that impossible choice, leaving the constraining sanctuary where silence is the price of admission, for more expansive spaces that see our sexuality as a gift. Not a curse, nor something to pray away. One such space, a spiritual innovation of Black trans women and Black same-gender-loving men, is colloquially known as the Ballroom.

Like the Black Church, Ballroom culture emerged underground and away from dominant cultures and ideologies that rejected queer and trans communities. Then and now, it serves as a sanctuary and site of resistance, where cultural stewards don new familial names, build bonds of communal kinship and chosen family, and create resource networks that meet their immediate material needs.

The Black Church was forged by enslaved people who were denied humanity and religious autonomy. Fearing that enslaved people would understand themselves as equal if they converted to Christianity, many colonies declared that baptism did not equate to freedom. For those who did become Christian, heavy restrictions forbade them from attending church or prayer meetings. So, in secret gatherings where beautifully, heartbreakingly distinctive styles of worship developed, faith became resistance, and commodified bodies were reclaimed as divine.

Ballroom is a space that does not demand strict adherence to normative sexual or gender expression. Here, social constructs such as beauty, gender performance, and sexuality are not only interrogated and critiqued but also exaggerated and reimagined through the creation of categories. The Houses that comprise Ballroom compete to win these categories, walking the runway — voguing, duck walking, and dipping — as acts of resistance, reclaiming dignity, and defying the social constructions that seek to bind rather than liberate.

For many, Ballroom becomes the sanctuary their spiritual homes did not provide. In this space, filled to the brim with glitter, glamour, and grandeur, queer and trans communities are invited to showcase their artistic brilliance and creative sensibilities for the benefit of themselves and their communities. This invitation is not riddled with caveats that require abandoning authentic self-expression. Ballroom goers are not asked to make themselves small, less visible, or less gay to service someone else’s comfort. No — in Ballroom, taking up space is rewarded. Displays and delusions of grandeur are welcomed, and bold, unapologetic expressions are expected. Anything less necessitates a chop and zeros across the board.

On its face, the uninitiated might see Ballroom as a vain, material enterprise. They might think it pompous, grandiose, and frivolous. But undergirding these performances and gravity-defying dance moves is a robust critique of spiritual spaces that extract our gifts while ignoring the spiritual legacies of queer and trans identities.

By creating this third space, LGBTQ+ communities are reimagining what it means to be saved, sanctified, and set free. Salvation in the Ballroom is not found in sexual repression, self-sacrifice, and a life devoid of pleasure. Instead, salvation is found in truth. Truth sets us free. Truth saves us. Truth sanctifies us. It offers safety, belonging, and new homes — filled with people who want nothing more from us than to see the beauty of queer and trans bodies. And the creative genius that flows from them.

Those familiar with Ballroom understand that it is not a material endeavor void of spiritual meaning. It is, in fact, a spiritual practice. One that provides a connection to community, to spirit, and self in deeply transformative ways through authentic artistic expression. In essence, Ballroom is creating a new kind of Gospel: The Gospel according to Ballroom.

This Gospel disrupts normative theological frameworks that see queer and trans people as sinners to be saved. Instead, the Gospel, according to Ballroom, sees us as children of God who have been endowed with creative genius, artistic prowess, and sanctified fabulosity. Wherein mainstream theologies claim queerness is a barrier to accessing the divine, this Gospel unapologetically asserts that queerness is divine. The Gospel, According to Ballroom, rejects the insidious notion that trans communities are subverting God’s will. Instead, it insists that the trans experience is a form of divine revelation.

Voguing is not simply a dance move; it is a spiritual practice. Walking the runway is not just a way to take up space; it is a sermon in motion. The collective cheers of a rowdy and rambunctious crowd when a performer flawlessly lands a dip are not chaotic noise but rather a chorus bearing witness to the Spirit at work.

Ballroom itself is a kind of church — a safe space where new rituals emerge, the runway is the altar and LGBTQ+ communities are the texts we hold sacred. In Ballroom, the holy cannon is not scripture alone. Queer and trans people are sacred texts, too. Texts from which we draw strength and wisdom. Sages from whom we seek inspiration and direction. In the absence of cleric-collared preachers and sanctified church mothers, house fathers and house mothers become the proverbial silver-haired elders, keeping the tradition alive.

In my work advocating for Black queer and trans communities as the leader of nonprofit Pride in the Pews, I have the privilege of journeying with house leaders in Chicago’s Ballroom community. One house father, Joel Jackson of Haus of Balmain, describes Ballroom as “a community that allows individuals to connect with something greater than themselves. [It’s] a haven for Black and Brown members of the community.” And it enables them to pursue liberation on their terms and in their truth.

At the heart of Ballroom, arguably, is the downright immutable notion that Black queer and trans people deserve to be free and to flourish — on the runway, at work, at home, and in society at large. In radical defiance, in a world wherein spaces that reflect this commitment are far, and few between, Ballroom is filling the gap. Caretakers and stewards become architects of new worlds capable of honoring and holding the divine dynamism of Black queer and trans communities.

For many in Ballroom, the church may be where our love for the arts began. But Ballroom is the place where it was cultivated and permitted to flourish unencumbered by death-dealing doctrines. Ballroom emboldened the mind, body, and spirit to co-mingle on the runway in a beautiful dance with the divine and with community, making way for a new kind of Gospel.

As a queer son of the Black Church, I can say without reservation: “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the House of the Lord.” And with equal vigor, I can say: “I was glad when the community said unto me, let us go to the ball.” For it is in both of these places where I — and many others — find sanctuary.

Perhaps one day, both will sing a similar song on the two and four. A song of unadulterated, sacred liberation that sets captives of heteronormativity and normative gender constructs free.

By Don Abram