Churches are, by definition, public spaces. They should be the ultimate examples of placemaking. Yet, so many people walk into a sanctuary and feel like they absolutely do not belong.
We found a church, and for the first time in a long time, my soul isn’t braced for impact. It’s an ELCA Lutheran Church (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America). I like to think of us as the Christians other people actually like—the ones more likely to be arrested at a protest or running an illegal homeless shelter than policing your life choices from the safety of a cushioned pew.
But finding a spiritual home in 2026 isn’t just about a nice choir or a good sermon; it’s about the politics of space.
The Definitions: Placemaking vs. Placekeeping
In the art and urban planning worlds, we’ve been hearing these terms for years. But let’s get the “official,” citable definitions straight, because words matter:
- Placemaking: The intentional creation of physical, public spaces where people feel a sense of belonging and connection.
- Placekeeping: The active honoring and preservation of the people, history, and spirit that already exist within a physical place.
Ten to twenty years ago—during the first Trump administration and well before that—artists and organizers were already screaming about this. As Cara Page poignantly notes in her chapter Spiritual Conditions within the Healing Justice Lineages framework, these concepts were a direct response to the erasure of our bodies and histories.
Now, the rest of the nation is finally catching on. We’re seeing different sectors finally realize that you can’t “fix” a neighborhood if you aren’t addressing the spiritual and social health of the people in it.
When Tradition Becomes a Weapon
Here’s the rub: Churches are, by definition, public spaces. They should be the ultimate examples of placemaking. Yet, so many people walk into a sanctuary and feel like they absolutely do not belong.
Often, in the name of “Placekeeping”—or what the church calls “Tradition”—institutions actively exclude the very people who are genuinely curious about a relationship with the Creator. They use the language of the oppressed to perpetuate oppression. They claim they are “preserving the sanctity of the space” when they are actually just “spiritually gentrifying” it—pushing out the “marginalized” to keep the pews comfortable for the “established.”
The “Welcoming vs. Affirming” Trap
We experienced this firsthand in Oakland. We were at a church that was LGBT-welcoming, but not LGBT-affirming.
To the casual observer, that sounds like a semantic “church-folk” distinction. But when you are a Black lesbian raising three children in Christ, that distinction is everything. “Welcoming” is a guest pass; “Affirming” is a deed to the house. If a space honors the “spirit” of a place (Placekeeping) but excludes the literal bodies of the people currently living there, it isn’t a sanctuary—it’s a museum.
May’s Home Run
God moves in mysterious—and often geographic—ways. When our family moved further from Oakland, the Sunday morning trek became a “Labor Pain” we could no longer endure. My wife, May, took the lead on finding us a new home.
May grew up COGIC (Church of God in Christ), and she carries her own “church hurt” from years of being told her identity and her faith couldn’t occupy the same space. But she knocked it out of the park. She found an ELCA church nearby that doesn’t just “make space” for us; they “keep space” for us.
Why This Matters in 2026
We are closing out the first month of 2026, a year of monumental, tectonic shifts in humanity. We in America believed we would never experience fascism as a state police. Then, ICE deported our neighbors and killed our family and friends. If we don’t know what we believe at a fundamental level—if we cannot articulate what we value and what we are willing to die for—we will be swallowed whole.
My children are now in a space where they aren’t just “tolerated” as a diversity statistic. It is why they are in school in West Oakland, California, not the suburbs of South Colonie, New York. They are learning their faith and history in a place that understands that placekeeping means protecting the souls of the living, not just the traditions of an oppressive, privileged class.
In my Labor Pains series later this week, I’ll be diving deeper into how these concepts of space and belonging dictate our quality of life. But for today, I’m just grateful we finally found a place where we don’t have to shrink our spirits to fit through the door.
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