Passing the Torch, The Legacy of a Spiritual Journalist. by Da Mica O’Bryant
Truth seeker. Culture keeper. Firebrand. Defender of Faith. She is a living testament. Master artisan. Black history aficionado. Biblical scholar. Empowered industrialist. Political science nerd. A student of the world, really. An intellectual. A theological pragmatist. Mentor. Sister-Friend. A torchbearer. What do you do when the fire that forged you begins to temper?
I first met Rev. Barbara Woods when her voice rang out to me from a Bennett College balcony: “You. Yes, you. Come on up here. I have work for you to do.” From 1988 to 1992, she became my teacher, chaplain, and the architect of my womanhood. Today, the campus chaplaincy sits vacant – a void that explains the diminished spiritual pulse of today’s Bennett Belles – but I remember when that office was our epicenter. Rev. Woods never waited for permission to build; she bypassed the administration to ignite the Student Christian Fellowship, the Belles of Harmony Gospel Choir, and our legendary Christian Coffee House. She envisioned, organized, and executed it all to perfection, and without provision.
To write a weekly column for nineteen years – unpaid, unbothered, and unyielding – places her in the pantheon of the Black Press elite, walking in the historical lineage of Ethel Payne and Mildred Dee Brown. The woman who once pastored a Brooklyn congregation and navigated the global church as both a Deacon and an Elder has completely outgrown institutional labels. “I am a truth seeker, no longer a Christian,” says she, directly confronting the divisions that fracture modern religion. Pulling from theologian Paul Tillich, faith is no longer defined by traditional checklists or denominational dogma, but as “ultimate concern.”
She burns with righteous indignation regarding the current state of the Black Church: its cowardly surrender of moral and spiritual authority to the state during the pandemic, its systemic failure to minister effectively across all five living generations, and its patriarchal structures that have long kept Black women as the backbone of the church, but not often the “head” (Spoiler alert: It’s our own fault). Rev. Woods lives the Sermon on the Mount. For her, the text is not a weapon to split us into factions based on gender or proximity to power. It is both an indictment and an invitation. She bypasses the “holy friction” of theological trends to look squarely at Jesus, demanding an undivided truth.
When Jesus is the ultimate liberator of the oppressed, Rev. Woods argues, modern liberation theology must be anchored in that same Sermon and executed through our collective capital, with an aggressive defense and spiritual mandate to protect and preserve our ancestral land from gentrification and dispossession. Yet, her column isn’t some shallow, prosperity-gospel placebo. It is a rigorous, linguistic excavation, leaving no doubt that the spiritual columnists’ work is not only to provide comfort to the afflicted, but also to afflict the comfortable.
As a true “Renaissance Woman” who treats the pulpit and the sewing machine with reverence, her artistry is a fiery intensification of her ministry. While many see preaching the Gospel and quilting as separate spheres, for a woman born of a multi-generational lineage of garment makers, they are one sermon. Through her brands –The Rev’s Denim and Pieces of History Tees, she works intentionally with 100% cotton, staring directly into the plant’s brutal, blood-stained past with U.S. Chattel Slavery, and reclaiming it as a premium, sustainable medium for beauty, justice, and radical economic relief in Black market spaces. She recently stitched a monumental four-quilt series featuring all 101 HBCUs, weaving ancestral resilience into the fabric of our future.
At this 1,000-column milestone, Rev. Woods issues a mandate to those of us running in her wake: bring your whole, multifaceted, economically astute selves into the sanctuary and the public square. Bring your science, your art, your intellect, your administration, your raging fire, your truth, and your “ultimate concern.” Do it without permission. Find the provision. She is passing the torch to a new generation, hoping that we possess the courage to not just hold the light, but to fan the embers until we catch fire.
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