She restarted her life in Atlanta. During the lockdown one Sunday morning in her apartment, Briggs went live on Instagram and held a self-styled worship space for 25 people to share their experiences. It became known as The Proverbial Experience, which Briggs describes as an "African-centered, womanist series of spiritual gatherings to nourish the soul."
In two years, Briggs grew her church into a digital community of 3,000. She also wrote "Sensual Faith: The Spiritual Art of Coming Home to Your Body," a treatise on liberation from the sexual politics and objectification of Black women's bodies in the church setting.
"I don't ascribe to this idea that the Black Church is dead," Briggs told the AP. "But I do acknowledge and promote that we have to eulogize what it used to be so that we can birth something new."
One preacher who fashions himself an expert on the topic of women's role in the church, Walter Gardner of the Newark Church of Christ in Newark, N.J., sent a video link of one of his lectures when queried by the AP about his beliefs. At the end of one session, Gardner suggested that women, overall, ignore Scripture and are incapable of being taught.
That's a mindset Gina Stewart would like to change, on behalf of future generations of Black women.
"I would hope that we can knock down some of those barriers so that their journey would be just a little bit easier," said Stewart, who has continued to charge forward.
In a given week, her preaching schedule can take her to multiple cities. As an example, she traveled to Washington earlier this month after accepting a sought-after invitation to preach at Howard University's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel.
Stewart's goals mesh with those of Eboni Marshall Turman, who gave the Martin Luther King Jr. Crown Forum lecture in February at Martin Luther King's alma mater, Morehouse College. In December, after not being named a finalist, she had sued Abyssinian Baptist Church and its pulpit search committee for gender discrimination over its hiring process for its next senior pastor, an assertion the church and the committee disputed. No woman has ever held the post.
A former Abyssinian assistant minister, the Rev. Rashad Raymond Moore, said in an email to The Associated Press that of the several dozen applicants for the senior pastor job, "None were more exciting, promising and refreshing than Eboni Marshall Turman."
Added Moore, who now is pastor of New York City's First Baptist Church of Crown Heights, "Pastoral searches in Black congregations, historically socially conservative, are often mired in the politics of discrimination, including biases based on gender, sexual orientation, marital status and age."
Marshall Turman, a Yale Divinity School professor, offered pointed critiques in her first book at what she deemed the inherent patriarchy of Morehouse's social gospel justice tradition. She adapted her recent lecture's title from the last speech ever given by King, the all-male college's most famous alumni.
The title was blunt: "I'm Not Fearing Any Man."