Priscilla Shirer, star of the 2015 film “War Room” and author of many Christian books, recently spoke at an event where she encouraged Christians to focus on their identity in Christ before they focus on anything else, which for her includes not describing herself as a “black” woman.
In a Facebook video shared by Chuck Bernal, the founder and lead pastor of Lifepointe Church, the actress declares, “I do not describe myself as a black woman because that gives too much power to my blackness.”
https://www.facebook.com/chuckbernal/videos/10156776390602915/
“I don’t want my race to be the describing adjective of who I am as a woman. I am not a black woman. I am a Christian woman who happens to be black,” Shirer adds.
She encourages all people to look at how they identify themselves, pushing them to question if they identify more with their race, ethnicity or gender over their relationship with God.
“It’s the job of your adjective to describe the noun of who you are,” she explains. “If there’s gonna be an adjective describing me it’s not gonna be my race, it’s going to be I’m a woman who believes in every single thing that my God has declared to be true. And I will stand firmly on the promises of His word because I will be girded in truth.”
The video of Shirer has been viewed over 5.8 million times and has been shared over a hundred thousand times since it was posted on Sept. 26.
“This is one of the best statements on a Christian perspective regarding RACE and POLITICS that I have ever heard. Priscilla Shirer speaks truth!” Bernal wrote, describing the clip.
Shirer notes in the video that this battle of identity also applies to political beliefs. All too often Christians place themselves in a political party and allow it to slowly determine their faith, instead of the opposite way around.
“So you may be a black woman, a black man, a white woman, a white man, but that should not define you. So if your race or if your political group is going in a different direction than the Word of God, you don’t choose your blackness or whiteness or whatever culture you are. You do not choose that or your political persuasion over what God declares to be true,” she said.
“I hate to tell you this, but God doesn’t ride the backs of donkeys or elephants,” she added. “He did not come to take sides. He came to take over.”
Shirer is not the first person to speak out about Christian identity crises, as pastor and author Tim Keller has been extremely vocal about this topic for the past couple of years.
Tim Keller: Christianity Does Not Fit Into America’s Two-Party System
As the Christian Post reported, Keller argued in 2016 that Christians needed to check their identities:
“All across the world there is a lot of political fragmentation … there is more and more political fragmentation in so many countries, and unfortunately Christians might be tempted to be fragmented right along,” the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City warned. “We might start getting divided politically instead of remembering that you’re Christian first and you’re white, black, Asian, Hispanic, second. You’re a Christian first and you’re American, or you’re British and you’re African second.”
(H/T: Christian Post)