Bevelyn Beatty, 'Jesus Matters' activist who defaced BLM murals, stabbed outside White House
In July, Bevelyn Beatty, a fiery Christian, conservative and Black woman, got America’s attention when she painted over three Black Lives Matter memorials in New York City to promote “Jesus Matters.” Last week, I spoke with Beatty about her life and her fight to reveal the truth as she sees it about the state of the Black community and Black church.
Then on Election Night, Nov. 3, activists reportedly stabbed Beatty in the back just blocks away from the White House along with three others. Beatty’s injuries are not life threatening. Beatty had earlier that evening posted on social media (it’s now deleted) which bar she was watching the election results at, asking her fans to meet her there. On Nov. 4, she live streamed on Facebook from her hospital bed, writing, “#BlackLivesMatter but they’ll definitely stab a black woman! I’m glad I serve a good God.”
In her Facebook live video, Beatty explained that the encounter happened because she was trying to defend an older White man from the harassment of three Black “kids”. Before the fight, Beatty claims that she tried to reason with them and asked them to stop, to which they then responded with, “Yeah I came out here for smoke. This is what I want, we've been looking for this all night.” Beatty alleges that the young people were Black Lives Matter activists. Currently, no arrests have been made, and the police are looking for two men and a woman. The D.C. Chief of Police Peter Newsham said that if Beatty and the others were attacked because of their affiliations, hate crime charges could be filed. Affiliations of both victims and suspects are still being investigated.
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I want to start by just getting to know who you were as a child. What was your upbringing like?
Bevelyn Beatty. Photo courtesy of Beatty.
Let start at birth. I think the umbilical cord was wrapped around me twice. My mother was encouraged to wait to have the baby because I guess at that time C- sections weren't as popular. Really his concern was more of saving my mother, rather than saving me. So, he wanted to encourage her not to go forward with the birth. My mother said, "no, I’ve been pregnant with her for too long for my baby to die." So, my mom decided to go forward with a C-section, and I was born. So, from the womb, the enemy tried to take me out.
My dad was a Five-Percenter which is a religion birthed out of the Nation of Islam, and it started in Harlem. My mother wasn't really saved. She knew a bit of the gospel, but my mother grew up in a broken family. On my father's side, my grandmother named Margaret was a woman of God filled with the Holy Spirit. My father grew up with both parents in his home, and he was born in Brooklyn raised in Staten Island. That foundation from my father's side in the Lord was rooted there. But you know, my dad was being wronged and he probably felt like his mother was too religious. So, he stayed away, and he chose the Nation of Islam.
Why am I saying this? Because growing up, there was a remnant of the Lord in my life due to my grandmother, which I never met but obviously was a praying woman. So, growing up, my dad was lost, and my mother was lost. My mother was diagnosed as bipolar and my mother entertained drugs, cocaine, things like that. My dad was more of a gangster, he was a street dude. I was born in Staten Island, but we ended up having to move to North Carolina when I was three. I wasn't raised in the church. I came from a very broken home. But what I will say is, there was some type of structure in the household up until my dad left.
My mom and dad broke up when I was five. Even though my dad had his lifestyle one thing he never did was bring his lifestyle home, and he demanded a sense of structure for my mother. When my mom and dad broke up, it was chaos and my dad became in a sense absent in times because he and my mom would get into it. But I can never say I was a fatherless child if that makes sense. So that's basically the foundation there.
When did you get saved? When did you find Jesus?
I first heard of Jesus when I was 7. I remember I had a dream as a kid. It was like a dream and a vision. I walked outside of my apartment building and as I walked outside there were demons everywhere. It was kind of like a zombie movie. They were closing in on me and I had finally heard of who Jesus was. So, something regurgitated out of me. I just called the name of Jesus. I said Jesus help me in anguish, and a sword came out of this sky. The sword came out of the heavens and into my hand. But the sword was so long that I never saw the top of the sword. And I took that sword and I destroyed those demons…
I suffered abuse as a kid, my mom went through her spells. A lot of times she would get very aggressive with all five of us as kids and put her hands on us and just kind of do things that mothers shouldn't do. I kind of grew up as a very angry child just kind of disconnected and depressed. I felt like, "Why am I here, why did I have to be born into this situation?" I was molested as a child. I had three abortions. I just suffered early heartbreak as a child. I was very confused when it came to my mother because one minute is love and the next minute, she is hitting us. So, finally, when I could, I got out of my mother's house, moved to New York and went to school.
I ended up dropping out of college. I got arrested actually because I did a money-laundering scheme for 20 grand from my job. While I was waiting on my dad to bail me out, I met a woman who was prophetic and the woman, she started to talk to me and tell me about certain things about me that only she knew, only God could know and be speaking through her for her to know.
There was a night, I came home from a bar with my friends. I was drinking, partying. When I came home, I went to the bathroom and I turned on the water. So, my roommate couldn't hear me, and I just broke down crying out to the Lord. I was like, "God help me." I was so helpless and so hopeless. Because even though I suffered depression internally, I would never show it on the outside. This woman, she told me about that night and she also told me about this guy I was dating. She said to me, "Listen, if you don’t stop dealing with that boy, something is going to happen to you." She said, "you've experienced everything by death and if you don't surrender your life, that's where you headed." When she told me that, I knew this woman was speaking from God. And I knew I needed to give my life to Christ. So, I walked out of that jail surrendered. I wouldn't say that I was “born again” at that time, nor was I renewed of the mind, but I was surrendered.
You said that's when you surrendered. When was the other time when you actually rededicated your life to Jesus?
The renewal of my mind happened the next year where I met my friend now that I go out and do activism with, Edmee Chavannes. I met her on the street at this time that I was going to a gay church and I was working for a feminist organization. I still believed Jesus was Lord, but my mind was not renewed, as far as seeing the view of the world from his eyes and from his word. I went to a gay church because I felt like if they're born gay God must love them anyway. They're born gay, right? I went to a feminist organization because I felt like, you know, women empowerment. Yeah, cool! God would want something like that, it's good, right? As I met Edmee I pitched to her to donate to the [feminist] organization. She let me do my pitch and then after she said, "Listen, I hear everything you're saying. But I will tell you right now until these people know Jesus, it will serve no purpose. They need to know Jesus.”
She was right. You know, until they know Jesus, what are we doing? I couldn't argue with that. Because for me I knew until I knew Jesus, what was I doing with my life? So, from there two weeks later we connected, and we started doing ministry together.
The next day, we would go to Columbus Circle every Saturday and praise and worship in public, minister in public and just find a way to serve the Lord. Through that time, she just started to disciple me in the word [the Bible]. She really taught me how to read the word and how to dissect righteousness and truth and where [God] stands through the word. So that's where that was as far as the renewing of my mind.
I want to get to the day where the term “Jesus Matters” came. There was a lot of controversy around what happened with the BLM Memorial that you painted over. I just want to know, specifically about that day, how did it go down? What were you thinking and why did you do it?
When Black Lives Matter things started to really rise up, I would try and people would try to debunk it with "All Lives Matter.” People would try to debunk all of these different explanations as to it just can't be about Black lives, right? So, one day I am running, I'm jogging, and I hear “Jesus Matters.” Wait a minute, if you can argue that Jesus matters over all things, you basically expose your heart. If you can debate Black Lives Matter over Jesus Matters, you are basically telling me what is [in your heart]. It’s as simple as that. I already know where you're at spiritually because even a Christian who truly knows Jesus is Lord is not going to debate that Jesus matters.
Bevelyn Beatty. Photo from her Facebook page.
The same way when Edmee met me, and I was pitching to her about a feminist organization, the moment she said until Jesus matters, what's the point? I couldn't debate that because I knew he's King. So, for me, the Lord dropped all of that back in my head, and when I came home, I made a video and I said, "You know what, from now on, we're going to counter Black Lives Matter with Jesus Matters.” So that's where Jesus Matters came from. I just started hashtagging it on my page. People started hashtagging it and that's where the movement was birthed. Edmee and me got T-shirts made and we just wanted to strategically counter Black Lives Matter. “All Lives Matter” can't counter Jesus because the reality is all lives won't matter till Jesus matters. Husbands, marriages, kids’ clothes, cars, shoes— nothing matters until Jesus matters in your life.
So, we decided we will wear T-shirts and all of that and we'll just promote it. Then Edmee started to make the design for the shirt. I said, "Edmee the next time we go and do an event or activist event we will wear those shirts.” Now we ended up going to Florida to visit family. Before we went to go to Florida, we had realized that we found out that Mayor De Blasio painted Black Lives Matter in front of the Trump Tower. I remember saying, “Okay, you know what, he thinks he cute, but we aren’t going to do nothing now we are going to let them simmer. We're going to let him think he got it and we going to hit him when he least expects it." So, you had different people who wanted to do the paint, that did the paint job. You had, you know, LGBT trans activists and stuff like that, who did the paint job. They did that in the name of LGBTQ, and you know we aren't cosigned to that.
Initially, I wanted to go at night, and I just wanted to paint over “Black”, and then leave “Lives Matter.” That was my initial thought. And I wanted to do it at night. I didn't want to do it publicly. I just wanted to kind of be low-key about it. Then Edmee was like, "you know Bevelyn, I'm not at peace with going at night because we're not criminals. We need to do this in the day time and everybody needs to see it. Because the truth has to be exposed." I said, “you know what Edmee you are right, let's do it.” So we got our T-shirts. We got our cans of paint and we went and threw that paint.
Before we did that, we went to the precinct and we spoke to one of the officers. We spoke to her because she complimented us on our shirt. She starts talking about how she was on the phone with her mother today just praying. Because she was like, "Mom, where's the church?" All the looting, all the rioting, all the stuff going on. So then, when she told us that, we said, "Wow, this is such favor from the Lord because we wanted to come and tell you that we are the church, and we're coming to stand and step up for righteousness." We told her we were going to paint on the mural. And then she said "Okay, listen, just don't tell my Chief. Just go and do it. And just know I got you."
So then after that, we went to the mural. We got to paint it as seen on the camera, and we threw it. We knew the favor that God would give us would be the confirmation that this was his will. And God literally opened up favor from beginning to end from the police officers. We should have got worse charges than what we got. We just got a criminal mischief charge, okay. A police officer got hurt on the job. I could have been charged with assault on a police officer. Other police were so grateful and so thankful for what we did and made sure to take care of us. They helped me wash the paint off of my hands. These cops did that, they showed favor to me, and that was the Lord's confirmation to this being his will because that's what we prayed for. Even from the beginning just constant favor, even down to the police officer giving us the ticket to park wherever you wanted to park in the city before we even did it total favor. That was our confirmation from the Lord that this was his will.
How do you feel about them (BLM) when it comes to the betterment of Black people? Do you think they have been detrimental? What are your thoughts about that?
We want to talk about the betterment of Black people, but what's the betterment of Black people? The betterment of Black people is first and foremost family structures: not single mothers and single fathers, but men that understand their position as a leader and women that understand their position as a leader, as well as a helpmate in their marriage. And not depending on welfare. The welfare system becomes the daddy to a lot of these families. They support LGBTQ, trans situations. Basically, you encourage a man to be a woman and a woman to be a man. That's the problem we have now, half of our men act like straight-up females, and half of our women act like men, and basically take on a masculine Jezebel spirit. It's distorted. This is not the way God designed it. Why am I saying this?
Black Lives Matter is a snake and because Black people are so emotional, they're not taking the time to cut the grass, so that they can see the snake. They are not seeing that and the reason why we are not seeing that is because we've made being Black Lord, over Jesus. Because Jesus speaks on a fatherless home. The Bible says that a man who does not take care of his family is worse than an infidel. The Bible says that a man that does not work does not eat. The Bible never speaks about the government feeding them. The Bible says when God gives a man his talents, he's called to multiply them, and if he doesn't multiply, even what he has will be taken from him. This is what the Bible says. The Bible says that older women are supposed to raise young women up to respect their husbands to be a good, submissive wife. The Bible also says that a husband is supposed to love his wife as Christ loves the church. These are the foundations of the gospel. The Democratic party and BLM speak totally opposite of that. And that's the reason why Black people are in the position that they are in now.
So, I identify as a Child of God who happens to be a Black woman. But what I see in a lot of the culture right now is this ideology or push against the Black church and what it means to be a Black Christian. What is your take on the Black church and the divide in it with people leaving, and claiming that this is the White man's religion?
Well, the reality is that the Black church set themselves up for that to happen. You want to know why? Because the Black church was never supposed to identify with the Black church, the Black church was supposed to identify with THE church. The Bible says cursed are you if you teach anything different outside of this gospel. It doesn't change because of color. The Bible says, in the body of Christ, there is no Jew, Gentile, male or female. But why are we still holding onto Black? Either you're Christian, or you're not.
First of all, why are we even holding on to ancestry and color? When [God] said, you are my child, you're a direct descendant of me. So now people are like, "do you know your heritage?” I say, "sweetie I don't need to know it." My daddy is the Lord of Lords, sitting on the throne. He owns everything. That means I'm a queen under him. I'm the boss by default. Why am I going to worry about a small country like Nigeria or Senegal when my God owns the heavens and the earth?
The Black church has set themselves up for that because the Black church has to repent. The Black church has been in sin. The Black church needs to turn back and go to their first love, which is Christ Jesus, the one who eradicated them. Let me tell you something. The Black man has a gift. The Black man can persevere through anything. But the Black man has been so ungrateful-- all the Black man knows how to do is whine and complain about everything he's been through, but still will not take the time to thank the Lord for everything that God has brought him through. There are people that have stepped into government office positions in a time where it was impossible, but we did it. We are the only people in a country to once be slaves and now be equal and can sit at the king's [God’s] table. We are the only people in the country of the USA too busy complaining about what we went through rather than celebrating what we've gone through and that we made it through. The Black church has turned its back on God.
What are your thoughts about Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd during this time?
I love that you asked that. The reality is this, I don't know where you come from as far as your background and crime. But I'm going to tell you something, there was a time where I lived a life of sin. Let's just say I probably used to lie, steal, and cheat from this person and that person and I got away with it. What would happen is I would get away with it on that end, but eventually I might get accused of something that I actually didn't even do, get in trouble for something I’m actually innocent of. For me personally, I will always remember the seed I have sown. The reality is we reap what we sow.
So, think about this for a second. In the Black community, we take up 11% of the population, yet, we take up 40% of abortion. The death started in the womb for our community, but it's manifested in our neighborhoods. It's manifested with the police; it's manifested with drugs. We have been in sin, and the sin has been manifesting itself. Was Breonna Taylor innocent in that instant when she died? Yes. But are they innocent in totality? No. The wages of sin are death, and what goes up must come down.
First of all, Breonna Taylor, they said she wanted to be a nurse, correct? Yet she was rolling with a guy who’s a drug dealer. Me personally, as a woman of God, I don't hang with thugs. Now I go and minister to them, but I don't hang with thugs. A thug can't be my boyfriend, he can't be my husband. It's not happening because I don't roll like that. Why am I saying all of this? This is the reality with the Black community-- we have sowed discord in our own communities. Now what we're seeing with the murder and deaths is the reaping of what we have sown on a massive scale.
The issue is, we want to continuously address the issue on a massive scale. But when are we going to take the time to address the issue going on in our own communities on a personal level? Let's be real. I don't feel safe going to my own communities. I'm not going to my own community wearing Gucci, Louis Vuitton and jewelry. Cops killing Black folks is really a small percent, it's less than 5% of the Black men dying. Most of the Black men dying are due to Black on Black crime. We are 11% of the nation, but we take up 55% of violent crime. So, there's an issue in the Black community that's not being addressed. We constantly point the finger at everybody but never check ourselves.
I want to know your views on white liberalism and Black Christianity. Do you feel that sometimes that community pushes progressiveness on us?
100%. The thing about the white liberal and Black Christianity is this: they are on the same scale because what does the white liberal think? White liberals project their racism on us through their low expectation of us. Then the Black church co-signs it. The Black church got a Bible that says, "I'm more than a conqueror through Jesus Christ." Yet the Black church will allow a white liberal politician to come up on the platform and say "because you Black, if you have a hard time getting an ID, a Voter ID, it’s racist. Don't vote for a person who wants to put in a voter ID." So, basically Black people are so ignorant, we can't go and get an ID. They sell us out.
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Margaret Sanger used the Black church to get women to start getting abortions, getting sterilized, getting birth control. She used the Black leaders in the Black church to do that. They forgot about the Word of God and let in a white liberal, who basically thinks they're less than dirt. A white liberal thinks that a Black man is incapable of doing anything. A white liberal will never acknowledge the perseverance of a Black man. But the white liberal will always remind you of your struggle. Because you need them, and they need you.
What do you say to Christian leaders who claim what you do isn't the right way, it just causes more problems?
Anybody can make an opinion from the sideline. But were you in the thick of it? It's always easier to criticize the warrior after he fought, but if you weren’t in that ring with him well, what are you talking about? A lot of times, I see that these Christians have their opinions, but the reality is, I'm in the fight. I'm watching God be with me and stand with me. I'm watching God's hand on an everyday basis in the way I speak, in the things that I do, and I see that he is co-signing me. So, the criticism phases me not. If anything, the criticism exposes where that person is in their faith. You're telling on yourself, "because so a man thinketh in his heart so is he." You don't know me from a can of paint, you see a 30-second clip of what you think I'm doing or even a 40-minute clip of what I'm doing. All of a sudden, you got a great opinion about what I'm doing. You don't know me like that. So, basically, you judge me, and you judge me based on your own standard.
Does your faith shape your politics or do politics shape your faith?
My faith shapes my politics. I became more of a conservative when I started going out and doing a mission trip and street ministry. I'm in the hood all the time. I'm talking to kids on the block asking them what they do. And they told me nothing, just chilling. Then I'm asking questions about their lives and talking to them and most of them are on welfare. Most of them don't have daddies and most of them live in Democrat-run cities. It seems as if it’s the same script, different cast every single time with our young men who just kind of fall into the system by default.
I've seen where I meet young couples or young people who work for a living. These are kids who carry more pride in themselves because they work for everything they get. But I see a lack of value in a person when everything they get is from the government. They don't care about anything. They're wasteful. They're not good stewards. I've seen where one young Black man, he may not have much, but guess what, he's 14 years old and owns a lawn mowing business. Most respectable young, Black man I've ever seen in my life. Then I see another 14-year-old and all his family's on welfare, all he does is sit on the block, hang out with his friends and kick it, and has no value of life and doesn't care about anything. In the back of his mind, little does he know he has nothing to live for. I have become a conservative because the Word of God has become reality for me, going out in the streets. And I'm realizing now that when you vote Democrat, you are not voting for the Word of God.
We as Christians must always align ourselves with the Word of God. The Bible speaks against welfare. Now does it say for the church to be charitable? Yes, the church is supposed to be charitable. But the Bible also says a man that does not work does not eat. So how are you making your money? Who are you depending on? You can't be dependent on the Lord if you're waiting on the government to send you a check every month. So many discrepancies are going on through the Democrat system, and it actually denies the glory of God. So, me being a Christian, I have to be a conservative, if I'm truly a Christian.
What would you say to the church and this time?
I would say wake up. You're either going to be the virgin whose oil lamp was full and ready when the bridegroom came back. Or you going to be the foolish church, the foolish bride, the foolish virgin who thought "Oh, he's taking too long to come,” and you began to slumber. When he comes, it will be when you are least expecting it. It is time for people to get out of themselves. Churches need to stop thinking about themselves and start prioritizing the kingdom, the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Stop being a Jezebel, submit to your husband-- your husband is Christ. Submit to him. Do what [Jesus] asks of you. Yes, and Amen to what he says.
Princess Jones is an editorial clerk at the New York Post, recently furloughed due to the coronavirus pandemic. She is a recent alumna of Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, Tennessee, and of the NYC Semester in Journalism at The King’s College in New York City. She previously interned for Religion Unplugged and the New York Amsterdam News.