The Rev. Jamal Bryant Problem: When Protest Turns Into Performance
Last week’s debate over the Target boycott quickly turned into something bigger than a dispute about where people shop.
When Rev. Jamal Bryant announced that the fast and boycott were over, thousands of Black consumers responded online that no single pastor had the authority to make that call. The backlash revealed a deeper tension inside Black political life. It revealed the tension between older traditions of church-based movement leadership and a new era of decentralized activism shaped by social media, grassroots networks, and growing skepticism toward celebrity pastors who claim to speak for the community.
For much of the 20th century, boycotts didn’t simply begin or end because one leader said so. They emerged from organized campaigns with clear demands, and they ended only after communities collectively decided that those demands had been met. When prominent figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, or Fred Shuttlesworth spoke during moments of protest, they were not out there freelancing. They were speaking on behalf of organized coalitions that had spent months or years building relationships, infrastructure, and shared strategy. In that era, leadership functioned as representation, not declaration.
What happened last week looked very different. Instead, a single, highly visible pastor, Jamal Bryant, stepped forward and announced that the fast and boycott against Target had ended. But many people participating in the protest did not feel they had collectively agreed to that decision. What sounded like the closing of a campaign to Bryant sounded to many others like a unilateral declaration.
And so the strangeness was the visible mismatch between proclaimed leadership and actual public consent.
But the internet made that mismatch instantly visible. Within minutes, thousands of people publicly rejected the idea that anyone had the authority to call the boycott off on their behalf. In earlier eras, that kind of disagreement might have happened quietly inside churches, meetings, or organizing spaces. Today, it happens in memes and TikToks.
Across social media, thousands of Black consumers pushed back. “I’m still not going back to Target.” “Nobody told me the boycott was over.” “Rev. Jamal Bryant ain’t the boss of me.”
People joked that they had somehow missed the meeting where Rev. Bryant was apparently appointed the CEO of Black consumer decisions. Others asked a more serious question: who exactly authorized him to declare the protest over in the first place?
In earlier eras, such disagreements might have unfolded quietly within church meetings, organizing committees, or activist circles. Today, they happen instantly and publicly across social media. But looking back on the week of backlash, the deeper issue wasn’t Target. What really unfolded wasn’t just a debate about Target. It was a debate about leadership, strategy, and the difference between protest as disciplined movement work and protest as media spectacle.
Rev. Bryant has framed the end of the fast as a strategic victory that produced investments in Black institutions. But Bryant does not stand in the lineage of civil rights-era pastors like Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, or Fred Shuttlesworth, whose boycotts were rooted in mass organizing, economic leverage, and clear demands for structural change. Bryant is a different kind of figure entirely. He’s a pop-culture pastor whose activism often moves at the speed of viral moments and public spectacle. The messy backlash unfolding online suggests many people are no longer sure that style of leadership can produce the kind of power earlier movements built.
For many Black observers, Jamal Bryant has long been a complicated messenger. During his years leading the Empowerment Temple in Baltimore, Bryant built a reputation as a charismatic preacher and highly visible political voice. But his tenure there was also punctuated by scandals that complicated his public authority. In 2007, Bryant publicly acknowledged fathering a child outside his marriage after reports surfaced about an affair with a member of his congregation. The revelation led to a very public divorce from his then-wife, Gizelle Bryant, who later discussed the breakdown of the marriage on television after becoming a cast member of The Real Housewives of Potomac.
The episode wasn’t simply gossip. For many churchgoers and observers in Baltimore’s Black political circles, it reinforced a long-running tension surrounding Bryant’s leadership. His sermons often invoked moral authority and social justice, yet his personal life regularly produced the kind of tabloid spectacle usually associated with celebrity culture rather than pastoral accountability. At the time, some members of his church community questioned whether a pastor facing that level of public scandal could still claim the moral authority he often invoked in his preaching and activism.
Another controversy that followed Rev. Bryant into the national spotlight involved his comments about LGBTQ people. In a 2012 sermon condemning same-sex relationships, Bryant described homosexuality as “a sin” and criticized then-President Barack Obama for supporting same-sex marriage, saying Obama was “Black and wrong” and “out of order.” The remarks circulated widely online and sparked backlash from LGBTQ advocates and some younger Black Christians.
The controversy resurfaced several years later when LGBTQ rights groups protested Bryant’s appearance as a keynote speaker at a Martin Luther King Jr. event in Florida, arguing that his previous comments about homosexuality were inconsistent with King’s message of inclusion.
Bryant later attempted to soften his public posture toward LGBTQ people and, in more recent years, has even acknowledged that the Black church owes LGBTQ communities “an apology” for the harm caused by earlier rhetoric.
Bryant also drew criticism from grassroots activists during moments of protest politics. During the wave of demonstrations following the police killing of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015, Bryant was a visible media presence. Some organizers appreciated his willingness to amplify the issue. Others complained that national media outlets often turned to high-profile clergy for commentary while overlooking local activists who had been doing the long-term work on police accountability. Some local activists berated him on camera and told him to leave Baltimore.
Then there is the broader reputation Bryant has cultivated as a highly media-savvy “celebrity pastor.” After leaving Baltimore in 2018, he accepted the call to lead New Birth Missionary Baptist Church outside Atlanta, a congregation with a long history of charismatic leadership and controversy of its own. Rev. Bryant quickly reestablished himself as a prominent political voice, appearing regularly on cable news and social media to comment on national racial justice issues.
None of these episodes by themselves disqualifies Rev. Bryant from activism or leadership. Leaders are not morally perfect. The Black freedom struggle has always included leaders with complicated personal lives and imperfect records. But when a leader has a public history of scandals, controversial statements, or conflicts with grassroots organizers, it doesn’t necessarily disqualify them from activism. But it can weaken the perception that they represent a disciplined movement or that they are accountable to a broad base.
In Rev. Bryant’s case, the combination of personal scandals, provocative sermons, and a reputation as a media-savvy “celebrity pastor” has created an image that some observers associate more with spectacle than with the kind of slow, coalition-based organizing that historically sustained boycotts.
And that history is part of the reason last week’s debate over the Target boycott unfolded the way it did. When Rev. Bryant stepped forward to declare the campaign finished, many people were already predisposed to question whether he had the credibility, or the collective mandate, to make that call.
The civil rights era pastors people often invoke in moments like this were not simply charismatic clergy. Their authority rested on deep organizing infrastructures. They were embedded in networks of churches, community groups, legal teams, transportation systems, and local activists who collectively sustained campaigns for months or even years.
For example, when the Montgomery Bus Boycott launched in 1955, it was not the spontaneous declaration of a single preacher. It emerged from months of planning by activists, including the Montgomery Improvement Association and networks of women organizers who had been laying the groundwork long before national cameras arrived.
The boycott worked because it had infrastructure. Carpools were organized. Money was raised. Churches coordinated communication. Neighborhood networks ensured that people could sustain the economic pressure. It wasn’t just a protest; it was strategy. And strategy requires trust. That’s part of what felt shaky last week.
Almost immediately after Rev. Bryant announced the end of the boycott, speculation began spreading online about what had actually taken place behind the scenes. Some folks asked whether there had been private negotiations between Bryant and corporate leaders. Others went further, speculating, without evidence, that Bryant might have struck some kind of personal financial arrangement. There is currently no verified reporting supporting those claims, and Bryant himself has openly denied them.
But the speed with which those suspicions circulated revealed something important. When communities lack confidence in a leader’s credibility, rumors fill the vacuum. The speculation itself is not the story, but the trust deficit is. And that deficit points back to the larger question driving this entire debate: what does effective protest look like inside a 21st-century racial capitalist system?
Boycotts once functioned as disciplined economic pressure campaigns. They were built around clear demands and sustained collective sacrifice. Activists understood where leverage existed and how long it might take to apply it.
Today, many boycott calls spread rapidly through social media and generate enormous visibility and emotional energy in a short amount of time. But visibility alone does not automatically translate into economic leverage. A viral moment is not the same thing as an organized movement. And that’s the lesson many people seemed to be wrestling with last week.
The backlash to Rev. Bryant’s announcement wasn’t simply people clowning a preacher online. It was a public referendum on the kind of leadership people believe can actually produce change.
The old model of movement authority, where a charismatic pastor could speak from the pulpit and the community would automatically follow, has been eroding for years. Younger generations organize through decentralized networks, grassroots coalitions, and digital communities that do not answer to a single figure.
There’s a deeper story behind the jokes about Rev. Jamal Bryant. People weren’t just rejecting the end of a boycott. They were rejecting the assumption that anyone gets to call it off on their behalf. Black communities are still hungry for economic justice. People still want corporations held accountable, and they still believe in the power of collective action. But they are increasingly skeptical of personalities who claim to lead movements without the organizing infrastructure to sustain them.
Because in a racial capitalist system that has spent centuries perfecting the art of extracting wealth from Black communities, protest theater will always be easier than structural change. Real economic power is slow, coordinated, and built on credibility. And right now, that credibility is exactly what many people feel is missing.
Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist and author of “Spare The Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America” and the forthcoming “Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Children In Jim Crow America.” Read her Substack here.
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