S1 E5: Dr. Carl Kenney
TIME STAMPS
1:14 - Dr. Kenney's Life Journey
11:20 - Learning to Be A Liberated Black Community
17:13 - A Journalist, Street Prophet, & Social Critic
18:38 - Theology & Anthropology
DESCRIPTION
In this episode of South to America, Kendall & Erin Dooley sits down with Reverend Dr. Carl Kenney, a seasoned pastor, journalist, and social critic, for a thought-provoking conversation on faith, power, and the evolving role of the Black church. With over 40 years of ministry experience, Dr. Kenney reflects on his journey, the contradictions of faith communities, and the theological shifts needed to foster justice and liberation.
The discussion delves into the intersections of theology and anthropology, theologies that perpetuate violence, and the necessity of reimagining faith as a practice of freedom rather than coercion. Dr. Kenney also shares powerful stories of activism in Durham, from confronting police presence in sacred spaces to reclaiming the legacy of Black self-sufficiency in historic communities like Hayti.
What does it mean to be truly free? How do our theological frameworks shape the way we love, resist, and build community? And what can Durham teach the rest of the country about transformation? This episode offers deep insights, hard truths, and an invitation to think critically about faith and social change.
GUEST
Dr. Carl W. Kenney II is a visionary leader, writer, and prophetic voice at the intersection of faith and social justice. As the former founder of Liberation Station NC, home of Underground Church, he mobilizes communities toward spiritual and material liberation through advocacy, solidarity, and celebration. An award-winning columnist and novelist, his works—including Preacha’ Man and My Daddy’s Promise—weave theology, storytelling, and radical love. His voice resonates through publications like The Washington Post and Christian Century, and his pastoral leadership has left a lasting impact. We believe Dr. Carl Kenney is a magical witness of God's love and are privileged to call him a new friend in Durham, NC.
TRANSCRIPT
Dooley: Well, we'll go ahead and get started then.
Kenney: Let's do it.
Dooley: Reverend Dr. Carl Kenney, thank you so much for joining us on the South to America podcast.
Kenney: Well, it's good to be here. I respect both of you and your work and am excited for your coming to this wonderful place called Durham and participating in the ongoing grappling to bear witness to life on the other side of the river. We're trying to get on the other side of the river.
Dooley: We ain't there yet.
Kenney: You know, we're trying to cross that Mississippi.
Dooley: Yeah. For us, it's going back towards freedom crossing the middle.
Kenney: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I guess perspective does matter.
Dooley: Yeah. Would love to hear your answer to—who is Reverend Dr. Carl Kenney? Would love to hear your life journey and your story.
Kenney: You know, yeah, I think when it comes to that question, it's easy to get locked into an answer that doesn't take into consideration the journey. You could easily say who I am in this moment, in this season, without pondering how you got to this point in life.
I'm really grateful for my life journey. And I think the biggest gift to me in my journey has been my willingness to be honest and transparent around my mistakes. I think we learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes.
So there's this dialogue with me and my work in ministry that is supported and complicated by my work as a journalist—the simultaneous movement toward the good and the bad news.
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: You know, when you investigate, report on the bad news or the not-so-good news and sometimes the good news that's in public space, you have to hold that up in relationship with the gospel. As Karl Barth talked about, good preaching is holding in one hand the newspaper and in the other hand the Bible.
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: So it's that constant exchange between what takes place in public space and how we interpret that from a faith lens.
That is my ongoing story, and it's a story that is measured by confronting the contradictions of faith community. It’s also the ongoing contemplation of the question of theodicy—you know, why do bad things happen to good people?
Dooley: Right.
Kenney: And I think for sojourners of the Black faith tradition, we continue to ask the question, "How long, Lord?"
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: You know, for me, it's been a lifelong journey. I just celebrated—God knows—I just celebrated 40 years as a pastor.
Dooley: Wow.
Kenney: Yeah. That means two things: One, I’m old as hell.
Dooley: Wow.
Kenney: And two, I have witnessed over 40 years a radical shift in the way the Black church functions while also having to contend again with some of the deep theological hypocrisies of the Black faith tradition.
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: So I think, in a nutshell, that’s who I am and who I continue to become. I see myself becoming something new.
One of the conversations I recently had at a coffee house—I have a friend who's transgender, and it’s an excellence process, by the way. You can't tell that he was Ashi at one point.
Dooley: Wow.
Kenney: He reached out to me for advice on writing a book about how his personal life story is impacted by theology. And during that conversation, one of the things that came to mind for me is this ongoing dialogue with marginalized people about how to create space that is safe, healing, and empowering beyond our particularity.
Theo Witlief, the Dutch theologian, talks about the juxtaposition between the particular and the universal.
Dooley: Uh-huh.
Kenney: How do we uplift this idea of faith as a universal call? You know, Jesus blesses all the same while also embracing the particular struggles of different communities.
For me, the most recent journey has been the building of Black-Brown coalition work, especially here in Durham, where right now we are grieving the suicide of a 14-year-old middle school student.
Dooley: I heard about that.
Kenney: Yeah. And recently, I went and blessed the holy ground of a local church. I won’t name the church, but there was a conversation about how they allowed their sanctuary to be used for training by ICE. Turns out it wasn’t ICE, it was the police department.
Dooley: Oh, wow.
Kenney: And in my mind, it’s the same thing. When you open up your sacred, safe space for law enforcement to be trained on whatever it is they’re being trained to do, it struck a level of fear in the undocumented community in Durham.
There’s a very large population of undocumented residents here, many of whom are faithful members of that congregation. And I received a call from one about their fear of going back to church.
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: The idea of being snatched up and taken away—taken back to wherever they came from, right?
Dooley: Wow.
Kenney: That is the climate we live in. The idea prior to the action we took two weeks ago was to do a protest in front of the church. The church’s response was to send forth a cease and desist order.
Dooley: Yes.
Kenney: Some others you know—Alexandria, a former council member, a former member of the board of education—they got cease and desist orders, right?
Dooley: Wow.
Kenney: And that was followed by what felt like a threat: "If y'all show up, we're going to put your ass in jail."
So, it came to me, and I said, "What we're going to do is a pop-up church."
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: We showed up in front of the church and held a service where we named that ground as sacred.
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: And as I was sitting there meditating on the significance of the moment, the thing that came to mind was the Tower of Babel.
Dooley: Wow.
Kenney: I talked about the desire to build temples that reach the heavens, that put us above and beyond the people on the ground. The obsession with self leads to believing we have the right to get closer and closer to God than the people who stand on sacred ground.
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: And then I lifted up the reversal of the curse of the Tower of Babel—the day of Pentecost.
Dooley: Mhm.
Kenney: Where they gathered from all over the world, speaking different languages, and yet they began to speak something familiar. We are called in this moment to speak a language of love, unity, courage, faith, and commitment to each other.
Dooley: That’s good.
Kenney: But in response, we talked about what it means to be a community committed to the heartbeat of every person we meet. That’s what we are enduring right now.
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: Yeah. So, we have this historical battle of the Black community to reclaim the excellence of Hayti, right?
Dooley: Yeah. Yeah.
Kenney: We have that ongoing desire to get back to what it used to be—whatever that was—to get back to what is essentially self-sufficiency.
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: It's a community that didn't need the blessing of outsiders to say, "We’re okay."
Dooley: Right.
Kenney: You know? So when I talk about—imagine a movement of transgender, lesbian and gay, straight, Black, white, Asian, Native American—
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: Imagine a gathering of people from different ways of being, thinking, cultures, and expressions, and we all come together and say, We see you.
Dooley: Mhm.
Kenney: And yet, what you want to do is destroy our bond for the sake of your idea, you know?
So, we talked about that a little bit yesterday—well, a couple of days ago, in reference to where we are in this moment. It’s a troubling moment right now for everybody.
(Someone yells in the background.)
Dooley: That’s all right. You’re good.
Kenney: I had to pause in humble submission to the power of the beauty that just passed me by.
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: I mean, I think that’s part of where I am in this moment. And I don’t know about you, but I’m just trying to figure it out.
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: This is different.
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: Yeah, this is a little different than what we’re used to.
Dooley: Yeah. I almost want to jump to our next question because of some of the stuff you mentioned. We had a question about the work you do now, which we could maybe just say in a bio—
Kenney: Hell no.
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: Yeah.
Dooley: But I want to jump more to the question of—what do you feel like, with some of the things that you named, what’s happened in Durham, what’s happening in Durham—what can Durham teach the rest of the country?
Kenney: Well, Durham is a special place, and we often forget it. Durham is a community that is rich in culture and multicultural. We're rich in diversity. We model what other communities should be. But we also have a community that takes a lot of that for granted.
I think what happens in communities with a rich history—a legacy of empowered people—is that we begin to fight each other. Since we’re there, we begin to fight against each other.
I think that right now, in this particular season, we’re having to rename a lot of what we’ve taken for granted.
We have to revisit the language we use and the assumptions we make about what it means to get over—you know, the idea of getting to the promised land.
One of the concerns of my life is that I’m not committed to any institution.
Dooley: Mhm.
Kenney: I’m not committed to a Greek organization. I’m not committed to a faith community right now. I’m not a part of the bougie community when it comes to institutions that define respectability.
Dooley: Mhm.
Kenney: And I think the reason for that is—I’ve never wanted to be part of something that has to give me permission to be me.
Dooley: Mhm.
Kenney: And I think what we’re struggling with right now—what Durham can teach us—is that the assumptions we make about being an empowered community, the decisions we made around the building of a community, can be forfeited quickly.
Especially when those decisions are not rooted in Black pride. They’re not rooted in Black community.
Dooley: Mhm.
Kenney: They’re rooted in a definition of Black excellence that may limit the progress of other people.
So we become a community that is more class-driven than community-driven.
There’s a lot to be learned in Durham. A lot of what we do in Durham is taken for granted, but when we move outside Durham, to other parts of the state, we discover very quickly—it’s scary over there.
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: It’s scary in Newton, North Carolina, where they still have a parade that celebrates the Confederacy. Or in Henderson, North Carolina—
Dooley: Huh?
Kenney: Until very recently, there was a KKK hotline that was managed in Henderson.
Dooley: Huh?
Kenney: Or other parts of the state where racism is out in your face. It’s not covered.
So there’s a lot to be learned about Durham. And your coming here is perfect timing, because I think we’re embarking on a different conversation now.
Dooley: Mhm.
Kenney: The conversation has been—if you want to get a little bit of this pie, then this is what you got to do to get it.
And what that looked like was:
Go to high school, get a good education.
Go to college, get a better education.
Act like you got some sense.
Pull your pants up.
Wear your suit and tie.
Join this organization over here to prove to people that you’re networking with the who’s who.
And the idea has been that if you play by those rules of respectability, you will be successful.
What we’re discovering right now is—it’s not working.
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: Because the game has changed.
In the midst of DEI conversations and some of the other things we’re witnessing, it’s not the same as what many of us grew up with.
So I think in Durham, what we’re about to witness is a deep grappling of the soul around what it means to be a liberated Black community.
Dooley: Mhm.
Kenney: A community that is really invested in the success of everyone. And again, I think that’s part of what we lost with Hayti.
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: That you could learn from each other. There are lessons for communities across the country that had a Black Wall Street.
The question is—what did we lose?
And in addition, the conversation has to also be about—what was our participation in what was lost?
That’s why I preface this conversation with—I’m becoming something different.
Dooley: Mhm.
Kenney: You asked a question about my work. My work has essentially been—again, I like to think of myself as a street prophet. You know, I like to think of myself as—am I Jeremiah? Isaiah? Someone else? Which of the prophets?
Dooley: Yeah.
Kenney: Elijah?
Dooley: Elisha—who called out the mayors.
Kenney: I’m really enamored most with John the Baptist. And Elijah, because of the anti-establishment focus.
I don’t see myself as a temple prophet. Nah, I don’t want that.
I see myself as a combination of the prophets of the Bible and a social critic—like James Baldwin.
Dooley: Mhm.
Kenney: Someone who used the pen to be courageous.
Dooley: So, I think when we consider creation, the creation story speaks to that as well. There’s a way of talking about creation as a spiritual task. One of the challenges when I talk about marriage is that we don’t understand it.
Kenney: Because we make marriage about a power play, but it’s actually God’s statement about the ability to build something greater. So, it’s not about the submission of the woman. It’s about the mutual submission of both. That leads to the question—what’s the purpose of creation?
And when we think about that within the context of African religion and spirituality, we often miss something important when considering the world—nature itself. What is the role of humanity in protecting, loving, and celebrating the world as God's gift?
The question you’re pondering is powerful. But for me, it starts with this: What is creation? What is its purpose?
That question shows up in many theological conversations, including those about gender identity. We can shift the conversation away from asking, What is our role in creation? and instead ask, How do we partner with a person who is conflicted about their gender identity?
Because that conversation isn’t about me. Their struggle with gender identity isn’t a statement about my faith. It’s a conversation about my response to their faith struggle.
My responsibility, as part of creation, is to ask: God, what do I do in loving and being present with this person who is battling something I don’t fully understand?
Dooley: That’s good. That was all my questions. Do you have any more?
I know we’ve talked before about theology and formation—how much violence can show up when people hold onto theologies that allow or even promote violence.
You asked a good question earlier: What are the theologies that need to shift in Durham?
So I wonder—what are the theologies that need to shift to make Durham less violent?
Kenney: We have misinterpreted theology as being about power. Theology becomes coercion—a weapon used to force an agenda that we claim belongs to God. And when theology is used that way, we lose the power of the gospel.
The message of the gospel is a celebration of freedom. It’s liberation. It frees people from the violence of messages that divide.
When you look at the messaging in the New Testament—even in the letters of the early church—so much of it deals with division and coercion. The original conflict of the church was about circumcision.
Circumcision was interpreted as a symbol of God’s presence. And again, this is why men dominate the way we think about power—because a man had to be circumcised to prove that God was in the community. His circumcision validated his spouse, his children, and everything connected to him.
But in the New Testament, through Paul’s writings, circumcision is minimized. Paul introduces the idea of circumcision of the heart.
So much of what we have to overcome when it comes to theological ideology is the idea that the role of a religious leader is to convince people of one way to think about power. Instead, Paul shows us that true transformation happens in the heart of the believer.
Coercion for power is replaced by the power of love. And the only way you can purely love is if you can identify with the heart of another person.
Jesus modeled this. The witness of Christ is about seeing the heart of the broken and interpreting the human condition.
Jesus doesn’t just talk about morality in the abstract. He understands it within the context of human struggle.
What does it mean to be unable to feed your family while being told, Take your Black behind to church on Sunday, pray to the Lord, and you’ll get a sandwich at the end of the day?
There is a struggle between the frailty of the human person and the ideal of what faith can produce.
Jesus gets to the heart of the person. And Jesus calls us to do the same.
Coercion creates a false divide: good versus bad, sheep versus goats. It defines who is in and who is out.
And we usually base that on some ideal of prosperity.
We say, These are the good Christians—look, he has a good job, a good house, a submissive spouse, and children who behave.
But this other person? The one who just robbed the liquor store to feed his family?
He’s disruptive. He’s immoral.
But we don’t take the time to see his heart. That he loved his family enough to put himself at risk.
This is why theology and ethics are deeply connected.
A lot of what I’m wrestling with now is the deep contradictions that emerge when we place theology above the assumptions we make about faith.
Years ago, I went to a men’s conference at a church in Missouri. I told them, We’re going to talk today about sex.
Because anthropology—how we understand human nature—shapes faith.
Churches have taught people how to think about sex, but they haven’t given space to discuss how it impacts faith.
And that silence has pushed a lot of men away from the church.
So, we had a real conversation. We weren’t trying to judge them. We weren’t trying to tell them what to think. We just gave them space to talk about the contradictions they wrestled with in their hearts.
What happened?
Church leaders—deacons—confessed to extramarital affairs. Others admitted to struggles they never voiced before. There were tears as men were finally able to speak about what they were carrying.
That’s an anthropological conversation.
But we’ve created a culture of silence around these conversations because of the guilt men carry.
And Augustine didn’t help. He taught that we should beat ourselves into submission—beat ourselves into holiness.
But where is the space for accountability?
What would it mean to have a real conversation about accountability among men—outside of the judgment of the church?
I’ll give a personal example.
As a single man, when it comes to practicing my faith in dating, I turn to John Kenny’s definition of fornication: The objectification and manipulation of another for the purpose of self-gratification.
As a man called to be in partnership with women, to uplift the creation of God, I have to consistently ask myself: Am I manipulating a woman for my pleasure?
If I’m only in it to play, what does that mean?
What does it mean when you bring harm to the heart of another person?
It’s not about rules like, You can’t have sex before marriage. It’s deeper than that.
It’s about relationship.
What does it mean when you say something cruel to a woman in your church?
I remember a controversy when I pastored a church that later kicked me out for being too radical.
There was a woman in divinity school, set to be ordained. She became pregnant. The father? Another clergy member, also set to be ordained.
He was ordained without question.
But she was criticized for being visibly pregnant.
I had to make a decision.
I chose to go forward with her ordination.
The congregation criticized me harshly. But I couldn’t tell them why. It wasn’t my story to tell.
I had to protect her story, while also honoring my responsibility in the kingdom of God.
And as I prayed, I heard God say, Why is it that he can be ordained, and she can’t, when they both participated in the same act?
Do we want to make the choice to have a baby a sin?
So, when we put theology at the forefront of our decisions, we reach different conclusions.
Dooley: Absolutely. Dr. Carl Kenney, there you have it. So much to chew on. This has been a deeply meaningful conversation.
Kenney: Oh yeah. I’m so excited you’re coming to Durham.
Dooley: May is coming up quick! Just a couple more months. We’re so grateful for your time.
Kenney: It’s been an hour already? That was good. Get here soon.
Dooley: Yes, sir. We absolutely will.
Kenney: All right.
Dooley: Peace.
RESOURCES
Books by Dr. Carl Kenney
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