Conceptualizing Emotional Agency: How Black Millennials Use Religion to Manage Socio-Emotional Conflict during Black Lives Matter

Scholars of social movements have examined how emotions impact social change efforts at the structural level but less is known about the ways individuals among the younger generations leverage emotions when cultivating their political ideologies and engaging civically. What role are emotions playing in the current and on-ongoing Black Lives Matter Movement? How do Black Lives Matter activists maneuver when these emotions conflict? What role does religion play, if any, throughout these processes? The present study explores these questions by analyzing how Black Christian Millennials who are engaged with the Black Lives Matter movement responded to the Botham Jean murder trial, a prominent yet unique and thus lesser-explored case of police brutality. Drawing on qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 65 Black Christian Millennials (born between 1981-1996), I find that study participants use three filters when emotionally responded to this trial: 1) Black Rage- The Racialized Emotions Filter in which they leaned on their racial subjectivities, 2) Christian Forgiveness- The Spiritualized Emotions Filter where they centered their religious convictions, and 3) Righteous Indignation- The Intersectional Emotions Filter which harmonized these presumably competing emotions. Altogether, this study reveals a process, I refer to as Emotional Agency. Emotional agency offers a framework that helps us to better understand the strategies employed by Black Millennial activists when cultivating religio-political stances. I conclude with a discussion of why more scholarly attention should be paid to socio-emotional lives of youth and emerging adults and why continued focus on the spiritual and emotional elements of social movements is necessary.