“Thursdays in Black” in Lent

Post Author: Lydia Posselt

It’s Thursday morning, and I look in my closet for something to wear. I grab something black (not hard for a pastor) because it’s Thursday. Wait, what? Why does this day have a special meaning over the others? 

Most weeks I participate in a movement called “Thursdays in Black.” The idea seems pretty simple: Wear black on Thursdays, snap a selfie, post it on any social media with #Thursdaysinblack. I usually also include an explanation, something like:  “I wear black on Thursdays to stand in solidarity with women around the world facing gender-based violence like rape and harassment. We wear black until there is no more violence. Join me.”

I first learned about this global movement from a suggested packing list. Thanks to a preaching contest hosted by LWF that year, I attended Lutheran World Federation’s Twelfth Assembly in Windhoek, Namibia in 2017 and preached at the closing worship. Our instructions included an invitation to pack black clothing to wear on Thursday, along with some information about the Thursdays in Black movement. This was new to me, and I was intrigued. Thursday of the LWF Assembly came, and sure enough, a large portion of us participated, and I have participated off and on ever since.

While in Namibia, I learned that this is a global movement that began in the 1970s, calling attention to the horrors of rape, discrimination, assault, harassment, and violence that women and girls face daily. Starting in Argentina before selfies were a “thing,” women began to wear black on Thursdays. Decades later, “Thursdays in Black” has been championed by the World Council of Churches and progressed to be a widespread social media movement, inspiring many around the world to post selfies every Thursday, myself included, using the hashtag #Thursdaysinblack. 

Just as Thursday comes around every seven days, this movement has come around in my life, over and over again. In 2019, during the ELCA National Churchwide Assembly in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, delegates wore black on Thursday to participate and learn more about the movement, and it became “adopted” and officially memorialized by the ELCA. In fact, many annual Young Clergy Women International conferences have participated by taking a photo and posting it on all our social media handles and on the website. During the most recent YCWI conference in DC, a group of us spent time in House Chaplain Margaret Kibben’s office and took a group photo, which was on a Thursday. If you see that picture with many of us wearing black, now you know the reason! 

Sometimes life gets in the way, and I miss it, but I know that it will always come around again. Just as Thursday appears every seven days, the season of Lent is a rhythm in our year that causes us to pause and take stock, both of the state of the world and of ourselves. In addition, both the season of Lent and the Thursdays in Black movement challenge our negative associates with darkness and the color black. Yes, during Lent, the daylight is getting longer. But Lent is also a time to embrace the simplicity of darkness. We can clothe ourselves in the more somber tones of black as to embody the gifts of endings and death, in order to truly appreciate the gifts and signs of new life in our midst. Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book Learning to Walk in the Dark, so wisely writes of how new life begins both in the darkness of the womb and in the darkness of a tomb. In a similar vein, the World Council of Churches declares on their website about Thursdays in Black: “Often black has been used with negative racial connotations. In this campaign, Black is used as a color of resistance and resilience.”

Lent can also be a fast of resistance and resilience. After all, God spoke in the book of Isaiah, saying “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice…  to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:6 NRSV)

When I am able to wear black on Thursdays, and to share a picture on social media, I do it to speak up, even when it feels like it’s not breaking any yokes of oppression. But it is more important than ever to speak up in any way we are able. Not just for women around the world who are facing threats of sex trafficking, rape as a weapon of war, and honor killings. I participate to speak up for women closer to home, like my friend who was harassed in seminary and who was never believed. I do it for my female pastor colleagues who are the recipient of inappropriate behavior. I do it because women still aren’t believed or taken seriously. I do it because some of our sisters live their own personal Lent and feel they have no Easter to look forward to. 

Sometimes I forget to post, or not a single person notices. But I notice. I remember my friends, neighbors, my sisters around the world. We will remember until there is no more rape and violence against women anymore. The world may not notice Lent, either, but we do. Just so, we remember Lent and Holy Week every time they come around, hoping for the resurrection to come, until death is also no more.