Description
In this moving, passionate reflection upon his own life and ministry, Ralph Basui Watkins examines his relative privilege experienced while growing up in a culture that valued strong masculinity, as exemplified by boys like him. But more than that, he compares his experiences to those of the LGBTQ+ community, deeply considering what it may have been like to grow up without a support system or role models in the church. He shares how he journeyed from a tradition that denied community and belongingness to LGBTQ+ people to a faith-driven acceptance and love for all. He encourages the church to better support all members of the Kingdom of God by focusing on the liberative and loving messages of the Gospel.
Reviews
“Praise for Ralph Watkins’ Inclusive Love: Seeing the Black Church in the Rainbow! In this compelling odyssey, Watkins bares his soul regarding his transformation from a homophobic, sexist youth and heterosexual supremacist pastor to a Christian ally with women and gay men. This powerful narrative—interwoven with research, experience, and personal relationships within LGBTQ communities—invites each of us to reconsider what it means to love neighbor as oneself. This is a must-read for anyone, especially heterosexual men in Black churches, serious about shedding the sins of sexism, homophobia, and heterosexual supremacy and living within Jesus’ Gospel mandate of inclusion, equality, and justice.”—The Rev. Dr. Horace L. Griffin, Episcopal priest and chaplain, pastoral theologian in gender, sexuality, and narrative studies, and author of To Have and To Hold: Same Gender Marriage in the Household of God. (2006 Lambda Book Award winner, Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians and Gays in Black Churches).
“Nakedly biographical, emotionally stirring, intellectually engaging, and theologically challenging, Inclusive Love by Ralph Watkins humbly, but forcefully, beckons every member of African American churches and communities to honestly wrestle with the question, “Am I my LGBTQ+ siblings’ keeper?” This work makes a significant contribution to the crucial conversation on religion and sexuality.”—Aaron L. Parker, Pastor, Zion Hill Baptist Church, Associate Professor of Religion, Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia
“Walking through a personal testimony guided by a scholar is a rare event. Dr. Watkins shares his pain, contemplation, theological navigation, moral centering, and eventual spiritual revelation. Such a book should be read not only in academic circles but also in churches, book clubs, and as a text for dinner-table conversation for all families who need resources to understand how to embrace a child struggling to accept their “different shade of blue.”—Otis Moss III, Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago IL
“Ralph Watkins’ Inclusive Love shows how God still speaks to us. His memoir is a master class in deconstructing faith, and his moving personal account of his shifts as a husband, pastor, scholar, and advocate gives clear insight to all those who are also trying to do no harm to our LGBTQ+ siblings. His vulnerability is a beacon for all who are wrestling with their theological beliefs. No matter where you are in your journey, this book models a way of showing God’s love and being the church the world needs.”—Monique Moultrie, author of Hidden Histories: Faith and Black Lesbian Leadership
“Inclusive Love: Seeing the Black Church in the Rainbow confronts the enduring exclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the Black church and offers a bold reimagining of faithful belonging within God’s kin-dom. With theological rigor, pastoral honesty, and courageous vulnerability, Ralph Basui Watkins chronicles a transformative journey that models how inherited doctrines can be interrogated without abandoning love for the Black church. Timely and uncompromising, this book calls the church toward repentance, healing, and justice, and is essential reading for pastors, theologians, seminarians, and church leaders committed to cultivating inclusive, liberative faith communities.”—Valerie L. Jackson, DMin, Womanist Homilitician and Social Justice Faith Leader, Senior Pastor, Park Hill United Methodist Church, Denver, Colorado
“With brutal honesty and vulnerable truth-telling, Ralph Basui Watkins’s memoir Inclusive Love narrates a double consciousness of being torn between the privileged life of a “Black blue boy” who constantly missed his hypermasculine father and being the proud son of the talented, smart, and courageous community leader, Ms. Earline Watkins of Eatonville, Florida. Anyone shaped by and indoctrinated to worship at the altar of a hypermasculine, misogynistic, homophobic God who frowns on critical thinking and who stopped speaking after the creation of the Bible should read this book. Witness Watkins’s complex, torturous journey from abandonment to empowerment and from fear, silence, shame, and hypocrisy to love and unapologetic advocacy for the sacredness of all marginalized lives.”— Mitzi J. Smith, author of Not Wanting a Thing to Be the Thing: An African American Woman Biblical Scholar’s Stroke Memoir.
“We learn best through stories, and Ralph Watkins’ story gently invites us all—pastors, seminary professors, Bible students, and curious laypeople seeking deeper faith and a fuller understanding of justice—into a more loving way of seeing our LGBTQ+ siblings. His message is both tender and prophetic, calling us toward a faith shaped not by fear, but by compassion. Inclusive Love invites those of us in the Black Church community and beyond to live more fully into the truth that the heart of God is revealed through grace and mercy for all—without exception. Through honest, thoughtful conversation, the book offers theological and biblical pathways forward as we rethink inclusion and reimagine God’s kindom. This is a courageous work, written for reflection, growth, and change. In discovering new possibilities and deepening our understanding of the gospel, we find the very essence of faithful living.”—Nancy Lynne Westfield, Ph.D., Director, Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
“Ralph Basui Watkins is a religious sociologist who is a captivating storyteller. His memoir will consume you as you journey with him in the making and unmaking of himself as a hyper-masculine homophobe, as revealed through the words he uses. I could "see" the moments about which he writes. What Dr. Watkins experiences is not reform, but repentance, complete with the work of repair as a cisgender heterosexual man whose pastoral heart shines through for his Queer* kin. The book is a lesson in ongoing Christian conversion and change, a guide to a conversation that I hope all who love the Black Church and the church at large will read, study, and learn from, whether men's groups, youth groups, the church's bible study groups, book clubs, and more. I would also recommend that seminaries teaching practical theology use it, and the books of his conversation partners. What a gift Dr. Watkins has given us with his unflinching confessional book.”—Rev. Valerie Bridgeman, Ph.D., Dean and Vice President of Academic Affairs, Associate Professor of Homiletics & Hebrew Bible, Methodist Theological School in Ohio
Author Bio
Rev. Dr. Ralph Watkins, PhD, DMin, MA, is the Pastor of Wheat Street Baptist Church and the Associate Professor of Evangelism and Church Growth at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA. He was the assistant dean of the African American Church Studies Program and associate professor of society, religion, and Africana studies in the School of Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary.
With over 20 years of pastoral, teaching, and administrative experience, Dr. Ralph Watkins is an active teaching scholar with over 250 publications and conference presentations to his credit, including five books.
In recent years, Watkins has received a Governor's Teaching Fellowship, Lilly Teaching Fellowship, Fulbright Hayes Fellowship for a study in Ghana, a Wabash Teaching Fellowship, and various awards and study grants to study in Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, Mexico, and Ethiopia. He is ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) denomination and served as the executive pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles under Rev. Dr. John J. Hunter. Prior to FAME he served as Director of Ecclesia / Executive Pastor at The City of Refuge under Bishop Noel Jones in Gardena California.