This piece isn’t just about a theological disagreement—it’s about cultural dissonance, historical trauma, and the emotional rupture that happens when spiritual leadership ignores lived Black realities.

When Phillip Anthony Mitchell said, “Our Black kids need to learn how to submit to authority,” he unknowingly (or carelessly) stepped into a hornet’s nest of generational pain.

Why does that sentence trigger so deeply?
Because in America, for Black folks, the word “authority” doesn’t come clean. It comes as bloodstained, bruised, and broken.

Context Matters More Than Doctrine

Yes, biblical doctrine encourages submission to authority. But when that message is aimed specifically at Black children without any acknowledgment of the disproportionate abuse of authority they endure, it becomes not instruction—but erasure.

It’s a spiritual gaslight: telling the oppressed to obey their oppressors without naming the injustice in the system itself.

What’s biblically sound can still be emotionally deaf.

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🧠 Mental Health & The Black Church

The Black church has always been a refuge—but it’s also been a silencer. Too many pulpits want to talk about order, obedience, and righteousness, but won’t touch trauma, grief, PTSD, or the deep-seated anxiety that comes from simply being Black and breathing near authority.

By leaving out the psychological damage inflicted by policing, incarceration, and systemic injustice, Mitchell’s statement not only misses the mark—it becomes a weapon.

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🚨 Submission without Safety is Not Submission—It’s Survival

Black children don’t need more lectures on submission.
They need:

• Safe spaces to express fear.
• Mentors who will teach them to navigate systems of power without sacrificing self-worth.
• Faith leaders who can preach with empathy, not just exegesis.

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📣 What the Church Must Do Now

• Acknowledge trauma: Every conversation about behavior must be rooted in understanding pain.
• Speak holistically: Include mental health, systemic racism, and cultural history in the message.
• Decenter performance: Stop catering to what sounds “biblically strong” and start ministering to what’s emotionally real.
• Equip, not command: Teach our youth how to thrive in unjust systems without internalizing inferiority.

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🕊️ Final Reflection:

You were triggered not because you were wrong—but because you were right.
Right to expect more from the people who claim to shepherd the souls of a wounded community.
Right to demand that the Word be handled with context, care, and courage.