Alumna expands doctoral research to form Abolitionist Sanctuary

At age 15, Carol conceived a son. Ten years later, she gave birth to a daughter, Nikia. “By the age of 12,” recalled the Rev. Dr. Nikia Smith Robert, “I received my first parcel from prison. It was a Christmas card from my brother in a medium-security prison. … With one son already in prison, our mother did not want the same fate for her daughter.”

Despite incredible odds, Nikia grew up to become an interdisciplinary public scholar, a social activist and an ordained clergywoman in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Today, the 2012 Claremont School of Theology alumna is the founder and executive director of the Abolitionist Sanctuary, a nonprofit, faith-based grassroots organization.

Nikia’s impoverished childhood in Harlem, New York, served as the catalyst for Abolitionist Sanctuary.

“Though my mother was a woman of deep faith and an ardent churchgoer,” Nikia said, “she also exercised moral agency by breaking the law to make a way out of no way.

“For example, my mother forged doctor’s notes to get a day off from work during inconvenient school holidays, when she could not afford backup child care. She manufactured a higher tax refund to secure disposable income to pay bills, including tuition for an after-school program that kept me safe from the drugs and violence that were common in our neighborhood. She also falsified lease-renewal agreements to mitigate astronomical rent increases and the threat of displacement because of gentrification.”

Those survival strategies were her family’s salvation. “Because of her faith and extralegal survival practices,” Nikia said, “we kept a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs.”

Abolitionist Sanctuary honors the narratives of poor Black mothers like Nikia’s “who exercise practical wisdom by violating laws to overcome interlocking systems of racial, gender, and class inequities that impede survival and human flourishing,” Nikia said. “Abolitionist ethics require that we do not punish individuals but seek alternatives, such as communal accountability, and challenge the systemic injustices that create the conditions that lead to lawbreaking in the first place.”

Nikia believes congregations can become “spiritual and legal sanctuaries for Black women, mothers and system-impacted communities,” and she hopes to create a national coalition of churches to fulfill that dream.

She cited the statistics that drive her ministry:

• Black women are 30 percent of all incarcerated women but represent only 13 percent of women in the United States. 
• Nearly 80 percent of incarcerated women are mothers. 
• Single mothers in the U.S. have the highest poverty rates compared with women in all industrialized countries. 
• Eight out of 10 Black mothers are breadwinners, who are either the sole earner or earn at least 40 percent of household income.

Abolitionist Sanctuary soft-launched on Juneteenth, June 19, 2021. An immediate goal is to pilot with five religious institutions, particularly historically Black churches and seminaries. “We want to train religious leaders and laity on how to align liberatory religious values with abolitionist principles,” Nikia said. “An expected outcome is for churches to identify public policies and transformative justice strategies that they can carry forward with tangible programming, procedures and planning to meet the needs of their community and advocate for social flourishing of women, mothers and the dispossessed.”

She continued, “We are currently seeking early partners, volunteers and donors to advance this important work so churches do not have to choose between fiscal restraints and civic engagement. We want to empower churches to join a faith-based abolitionist movement and to imagine a more just and equitable world beyond policing, prisons and punitive responses.” 

Nikia is gratified by the response from congregations big and small, as well as seminaries across denominations. “We have partnered with an organization to offer courses on religion and abolition for credit at leading seminaries,” Nikia said, “as well as a capstone course that certifies churches to become an Abolitionist Sanctuary.”

One congregation that models Abolitionist Sanctuary’s mission, Nikia said, is Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was pastor. She also named two women involved in transformative justice: AME pastor the Rev. Toni Ingram, in Atlanta, and United Methodist clergywoman the Rev. Adrienne Zachary, in Compton, California.

Nikia, who earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in religion with a focus on ethics and public policy from CST, said the seminary was an incubator for her Abolitionist Sanctuary idea. 

“My dissertation committee (namely, Dr. Monica A. Coleman and Dr. Grace Kao), along with my mentor, Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow), urged that I seriously consider moving Abolitionist Sanctuary from concept to reality,” she said. “I am grateful for the strong emphasis that CST places on connecting theory with praxis to make a transformative social impact. Going forward, I look forward to CST’s continued support as an early partner in becoming an Abolitionist Sanctuary in its pedagogies, policies, and practices.

“I envision,” Nikia added, “walking through the doors of the church, peering into an Abolitionist Sanctuary with murals painted in vivid colors capturing stories of survival and liberative life-giving possibilities that starkly contrast the monochromatic and melancholic hues of prison and death-dealing circumstances in the carceral state.”

To learn more, please visit https://nikiasrobert.com/services/abolitionist-sanctuary/.