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As someone who has engaged critically with church, from within and without, I believe that Christian communities would do well to pay attention to Hamilton.



Amid rap battles, ballads and throwbacks to the hip-hop greats of Biggie, Tupac and Big Pun, Hamilton dares to remind us of the hypocrisy of the claim that all are equal in this nation. We cannot ignore the implications of a black George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Or that the Schuyler sisters—front and center—remind us of women’s instrumental role in the formation of this country. Or that, as the track “Yorktown” declares, it’s immigrants who get the job done.



At a time when the revolution is still not televised (unless it is to demonize victims and vilify the outcry of communities of color) the revolutionaries of Hamilton play on a loop in my head. The revolutionaries are with me in my car and on my runs, and as a black woman fighting against injustice, they remind me how lucky I am to be alive right now.



It’s the soundtrack of my life.



Consider what it means for a group of students to sit in the White House and—in the presence of the first black president and first lady—hear from people of color who tell the origin story of this nation eight times a week.



Envision what it means for people of color to see the founding fathers and mothers represented in a way that celebrates the true diversity of this country. When the system fails to hold people accountable for the deaths of unarmed black and brown people, Hamilton presents a group of revolutionaries akin to the black, brown, queer people in the streets who are fighting today for the same freedoms we sought hundreds of years ago.



Amid the flames of torched black churches, the cries of mothers and fathers burying slain children and the silence of too many white churches, Hamilton reminds us that black and brown lives matter. It reminds me that when the church refuses to speak, the Spirit will bear witness to the truth of God in the most unlikely places—because that is the Spirit’s way.