Rev. Stephen Green On Faith, Justice, And The Liberating Gospel Of Jesus
Rev. Stephen Green of Greater Allen AME Cathedral discusses faith-based organizing, the liberating gospel, and the Black church's 200+ year legacy of resistance in Queens, NY.
Black News 
At a time when some weaponize faith for political gain, Rev. Stephen A. Green offers a compelling vision of community, accountability, and radical love through the liberating gospel of Jesus. Serving as senior pastor of The Greater Allen A.M.E Cathedral of New York, Rev. Green unpacked what it means to bring “the Bible and the newspaper together.”
During our conversation, Rev. Green merged spiritual conviction with social action in ways that honor the Black church’s 200+ year legacy of resistance and resilience.
Rev. Green’s journey to the pulpit began as a child in Orlando, FL, where his father served as a pastor before being elected a bishop in the A.M.E. Church. By the age of 17, Rev. Green accepted his call to preach—but that calling extended beyond Sunday sermons.
“I felt God calling me not just to preach, but also to minister as an activist,” Rev. Green shared. “The calling has been larger than just the pulpit, but also to the public square.”
From Morehouse College to the University of Chicago Divinity School to serving as the NAACP’s National Youth Director, Rev. Green said his faith and activism were “part of the same source.”
The Liberating Gospel vs. White Christian Nationalism
Drawing a sharp distinction between following the liberatory gospel of Jesus and the white Christian nationalist ideology that dominates much of today’s religious-political discourse.
“What we see is white Christian nationalist ideology trying to masquerade as the Jesus of the Gospels,” he explained. “The same gospel has been used to justify slavery in this country. It was Christian practices that said that slavery would become the moral fabric of the society.”
He pointed to Jesus’s first sermon in Luke 4, reading from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, to preach good news to the poor, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to give recovery of sight to the blind, to set the captives free.”
For Green, the message is clear. He said that everything we see from white evangelical Christian leaders needs to be considered alongside what Jesus actually said and did.
“And we’ll find out they’re very distant from what Jesus Christ has said about the poor, about the oppressed, about the migrant, about the needy,” he said.
The Black Church: 200+ Years of Organizing Infrastructure
Reflecting on the role of Greater Allen A.M.E. as a site of organizing and resilience, Rev. Green said the Black Church is firmly rooted in America’s history. Greater Allen A.M.E. celebrates 192 years of service this year and has served as a space for civic engagement and community training.
The website offers voter registration and absentee ballot tools. And elected officials know that Allen AME isn’t a photo op venue—it’s a place of accountability.
Radical Love as Practice, Not Slogan
Rev. Green also leads from a practice of radical love grounded in the South African concept of Ubuntu: “I am because we are.”
“I believe that we ought to embody and embrace radical love in action,” he said. “My humanity is tied up with the humanity of others. If we’re to be liberated, then all of us are going to have to be liberated together.”
Faith as Resilience in Crisis
Rev. Green also reflected on Black survival through 400 years of theft, slavery, and ongoing attempts to roll back voting rights and DEI protections.
“There’s no other way to describe how God can take a people who have been stolen from their homeland, millions who suffered through the transatlantic slave trade, some died at the bottom of slave ships—and yet here we are as a people still preserved, still able to continue to generate love warriors and truth tellers.”
Even as we face compounded crises under the threat of a war-mongering president, Rev. Green shared that his faith grounds him. But ending on a note of hope, Rev. Green said what brings him joy right now is watching his wife and others step into their leadership and seeing “how the hand of God continues to orchestrate every step.”
“I look forward to continuing to be in conversation,” he said.
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