By Gaorutwe Moabi, 19^th Episcopal District

On November 30, 2025, I was suspended from the Young People and Children’s Division by the 19^thEpiscopal District Supervisor for attending the 40^th Session of the Mokone Annual Conference that convened on 14-17 October 2024, and for the article that I submitted to The Christian Recorder (TCR) titled, “An advocate call for Constitutional Revision, Reform, and Transformation in the YPD”.

The said article is mistaken for having been one speaking on behalf of the 19^th Episcopal District, its leadership, or any of its organizations, including the WMS and YPD.

Having provided this background, in this article, I seek to highlight the constant erasures of restorative justice expressed through prolonged silence, silencing, neutrality, and bias, because the matter of my suspension has been under investigation, yet no follow-up and procedures have been heeded to, and no action has been taken so far. We are drawing nearly four months and there is still a louding silence that is devoid of justice.

The silence of the church shows the torn garments that are worn by a hermeneutically ignorant system of the AME Church and a paralyzing process where my reputation, frustrations, and anger, continue to get ignored. There is dire failure and lack of epistemic competence from the church leaders to judge my experience accurately and intervene in a manner that leads to my restoration.  Instead, I have and continue to endure credibility deficit owing to the bias and prejudice that flourish on ignorance or oblivion.

When young people like myself speak up on their injustices, they are called hysterical and disrespectful rather than civil and righteous; we are called uppity and aggressive, and have an attitude. Our anger gets pathologized and it gets robbed off its epistemic friction. In my case, I feel that my testimony is being isolated, neutralized, and is regarded to be limping and having an unrecognizable form.

What I see put in place is not just a hermeneutically-malnourished system, it is also a systemic barrier that shapes our demise as young people, and it manifests itself in the form of a muddy suspension. My situation, suchlike a self-named and self-defined suspension that is not guided and whose credibility is not informed by the Doctrine and Discipline of the AME Church, renders the Doctrine and Discipline useless and directionless. Such ignorance empties the Doctrine and Discipline its substance. 

I have sat mindfully with my anger, and I am now compelled to make a move by writing. This is my alternative. The unfortunate thing we would hate to see as the AME Church is seeing young people walking out of the church to seek alternative epistemic terrains and homes that will not hesitate to afford their concerns a serious uptake.

The suspension led to the denial of my participation in the elections of the 19^th Episcopal District Presidency, and the pro-longed silence from the church shows that the church does not mind taking the side of the oppressor.

On a closing note: GOD IS ON THE SIDE OF THE OPPRESSED!