We need to talk about Kirk Franklin

One of the defining realizations that caused me to leave Christianity as a religion was one very sobering fact: the God of the Bible as presented in my church, and the God of the mainstream Black Church specifically, seemed like a raging Narcissist.

Apparently, Kirk Franklin has been acting like one too behind closed doors.

But, contrary to the title of this piece, this isn’t actually about Kirk Franklin. This is about survivors and a culture of silence that keeps us dissociated from our pain and disconnected from our souls. Kirk Franklin’s son courageously recorded and posted a snippet of his hidden abuse, likely in a last ditch effort to 1) validate his own reality but also 2) expose to others what they could not even imagine.

In a short snippet of a phone call, Kirk Franklin goes into a rage attack after he perceives a challenge and disrespect to his parental authority. I use the word rage intentionally because the level at which he is screaming in that clip can only be described as coming from a vulnerable and deeply primal place. A place of fear. One that folks with highly narcissistic traits know all too well, and will do anything to protect. Even if that includes verbally abusing the people closest to them.

The consensus response to what happened is a disturbing chorus of “that’s none of my business.” The problem is that it actually is our business. On every level, this is very much the core of our “business.” If we don’t overcome this specific type of abuse and abuse apology (i.e., narcissistic abuse, wetiko), souls will be doomed to experience this and perpetrate it against others over and over again.

Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents in the Black Church

There is something particularly insidious about being the child of narcissistic, emotionally immature and abusive parents who are also highly visible leaders in the Black church. As Christian children. we are already indoctrinated into believing we’re “born in sin” and “worthless” without “God,” the OG raging Narcissist. However, there is also this unwritten rule that as children of church leaders, we are a direct reflection of their image. That means our sins are our business only. No walking down the aisle to confess our personal shortcomings and indiscretions to the Pastor as a testimony. No, not when the Pastor or Church leader is your parent. No, not when you could become the center of church gossip, or worse, the reason someone in church leadership’s character is questioned. No, you learn very early to keep up the image. Keep your secrets to yourself and play happy family, atleast while others are watching.

My father had deep, dark secrets. After years of therapy and waking up to my repressed trauma and memories, I finally could see that the charismatic preacher and other times loving, doting father I was raised by, was also someone who molested girls, and a rage-aholic. Never having touched alcohol due to the alcoholism of his own parents, my preacher father instead dumped his anger on the family. He would smile and laugh and present as a gentle, kind pastor - and that is one part of him, but behind closed doors, the emotional abuse and endless raging was terrifying .

My inner children still flench when he raises his voice. What he always justified as “passion,” was actually an extremely painful pattern of narcissistic rage that could happen at any moment. My father has screamed at me in open restaurants and other people just looked away. Someone even shook hands with my dad agreeing with him as he raged at me for not praying over my food during a family dinner out. During a celebratory dinner in my honor for graduating law school, my father screamed at me in the middle of the restaurant calling me a “disrespectful ingrate,” and no one did anything. And just like the overwhelming reaction to Kirk Franklin’s expletive-filled rage, I learned that my abuse was no one’s business. Even the adults in my family who knew how he could get still refused to get involved or reach out to find ways to help us.

I say all of this, not to condemn, but to speak honestly and vulnerably about what it’s like to have your abuse go unsaid and unseen for so long. My story is one of too many stories of silenced adult children of narcissistic parents who are told that their normalized and hidden abuse is nothing to complain about. We are told in your silence and inaction that we are making a big deal out of nothing.

Dissociative Identity

This is why some of us have coped by splitting off from the innocent child we once were. The child that was overwhelmed by the rage attacks. Dissociated from that hurt, we become whoever we need to be to survive our family. I survived by chasing perfection. I survived by chasing normal by any means necessary. My cracks were never allowed to show. I suppressed my creative dreams and chased academic achievements to prove that there was nothing wrong with my childhood. How could I have been abused if I continued to bring home straight A’s, got into prestigious schools, and became a trailblazer through my accelerated path to my career as a civil rights attorney? “I” was abused, but “I” (my true Self) was no longer at the front of my consciousness. She sunk into the deepest of sunken places in my mind and new selves, also called “alters,” took her place to go on through life without memories or knowledge the pain of what was going on at home. My father’s hidden abuse triggered splits in me that I am still healing and integrating to become some version of whole.

Demiurge and the Matrix

This all gets a bit esoteric when we zoom out to the macrocosm of humanity as a whole, but stay with me. There’s Nothing Wrong with You was born out of an innocent child’s painful realization that she was not emotionally, physically, or even spiritually safe with her parents. What I posit here is that humanity as a whole is suffering from a comparable reality of not being spiritually safe from our Universal “parent,” and this entity/energy has gone by many different names from ancient times to the present. Mainstream Christianity just calls him “God.” I’ll just to refer to this world soul energy as the creator of this Matrix, our collective handler if you will. This deeply narcissistic energy/entity and embodied minions know exactly how to keep our souls enslaved and trapped in this inverted world. The same world where abuse is either hidden or normalized, and survivors are often labeled “crazy” and further abused in carceral systems (mental institutions, jails, prisons etc.,) for calling it out or presenting outward symptoms from the abuse. What Christianity and other sects, secret societies, cults are worshipping is a bastardized version of the true Benevolent, Unconditional Loving God our souls originate from. Instead, we get the raging version that rejects, murders, rapes, etc and calls it love. It’s the God that glamorizes suffering and encourages cannibal-lite blood sacrifice rituals each Sunday to remember.

It really doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to create and buy in to this reality.

Divine Sparks

There is a core part of us that we have to tune back in with to truly grasp what has happened to us collectively and individually. The only way that you can laugh at abuse, for instance, like the woman in the clip of Kirk Franklin raging at his son, is if you are numb or disconnected from the innocence at your core. The unconditionally loving, creative DIVINE consciousness that never deserved to be told things like they weren’t enough or threatened that their neck would be broken. This is core of who we are, the real us, not the illusion we have built up to survive this world. That self is perfect. There is nothing wrong with us. We have been forced to identify with an illusory self, a self that excuses the inexcusable.

Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. Luke 17:21

As more and more survivors wake up to their experiences and take the brave step to share and expose it to the world, my hope and prayer is that we hold space and see it for the divine opportunity it is. My hope is that it lifts the veil on this type of abuse, and that it makes us more compassionate for the parts of ourselves that we lose when we are deeply hurt by other humans.

So, yes, we need to talk about Kirk Franklin, the part of him that raged at and emotionally abused his son. Then, we need to talk about who he really is at his core and what happened to have him stray so far from that. In the meantime, I send love to Kerrion and survivors like him in hopes that he too knows that there is nothing wrong with him, whether he gets the healthy, unconditional love from his father that he deserved or not.

To freedom.