The Christian behyive is abuzz over Beyoncé's 'Church Girl' that blends the secular and sacred
By Eve Greene // Music // EEW Magazine Online
Illustration By EEW Magazine/ Photo By Rafael Pavarotti/Vogue
Liberated church girls rejoice! You can be in the center of God’s will and in the center of the dance floor gyrating to secular music at the club – thanks to permission from your favorite global superstar.
Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter’s “Church Girl,” from her newly released seventh studio album, Renaissance, samples the gospel song, “Center of Thy Will,” penned by Elbernita “Twinkie” Clark and performed by iconic gospel group, The Clark Sisters.
Twinkie Clark’s “Center of Thy Will” is sampled on Beyoncé's 'Church Girl' from her seventh studio release, Renaissance.
But just because the preeminent musical diva of our generation selects God-focused lyrics to play in the background doesn’t mean they fit harmoniously with the booty-shaking anthem booming in the foreground.
The cognitive dissonance is deafening though not surprising.
Throughout Beyoncé’s illustrious career beginning in the late 90s, the 28-time Grammy winner has pushed the envelope and continues to do so decades later by blending the secular and sacred, prayerful and profane, spiritual and sensual.
While tatted, twerking church girls everywhere cut a rug, there is a remnant, standing still as stone, that equates true liberty to submitting to the law of Christ and not surrendering to the lure of pop culture.
Though few would argue that 40-year-old Yoncé slays, conquers, sets standards and plays by her own rules in the earthly realm, in the heavenly domain, God sets the standards and judges the subjects.
Beyoncé levitates in a church adorned in a lime lace mermaid Alaïa gown. (Credit : Mason Poole)
While church girls are aware of God’s standards, women of God who are the church represent the Kingdom of God by living those standards.
There is a difference.
Differences aside, few can deny Bey’s dominance, dismiss her dedication to elevating the image, awareness, and esteem of Black women, or dispute her status as queen of the charts.
Soaring on wings of airwaves and soundwaves, her royal highness’s sultry voice glides, riffs and rhymes its way through the bouncy track, at one point crooning, “You know you got church in the morning,” while encouraging the “free” church girl to shake her body and feel no shame in “acting loose.”
Bucking biblical themes of modesty, self-restraint, and supernatural rebirth, Beyoncé declares, “I was born free” as a natural state of being rather than a spiritual process of becoming.
Despite offending the ears of certain sectors of Christianity with themes antithetical to Scripture, make no mistake, church girls aplenty are bopping and bouncing to the catchy sounds that harken back to 2006’s “Get Me Bodied” from the artist’s second studio album, B’Day.
The spirited Christian beyhive is all abuzz, taking the multihyphenate’s advice to “let it out girl,” since “nobody can judge me but me.”
Notwithstanding, there is another army rising with conviction rivaling Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the book of Daniel. They are in divine formation refusing to bow down to the golden image of Queen Bey, a modern-day emblem of the once powerful Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.
Yet the Houston-bred tour de force consistently commands quite the loyal and royal army of her own and has again extended her musical scepter to make her megachurch congregation “pop it” and “drop it” just “like a thotty.”
Suffice it to say, hard-nose conservatives won’t be attending the church of Beyoncé who defines “doing God’s work” as partying hearty and twerking “like you came up out the south.” They will likely be too busy preaching against her pernicious influence on today’s generation and casting the twerking demon out.
Theological divergence aside, we would all do well to remember that Beyoncé “ain't tryna hurt nobody.”
On the contrary, just like any other church girl, “She just tryna do the best she can,” and encourage other women – sanctified and sexified – to be happy.
