In a Twin Cities suburb, a man with an ICE badge holds a pulpit. Four Black women interrupted the service. Untangling the Knot is not the work of asking whether a single pastor is wrong. It is the work of asking what governance formation makes him possible.

Erykah Badu suggested there might be more Black millionaires if Black congregants stopped tithing. Bishop Talbert Swan answered with the math. Dr. Boyce Watkins answered with compounding. The tradition answered with the civil rights movement. Untangling the knot says: all three are right, and a knot is what happens when truths get pulled in opposite directions without ever being named.