Three books recently published by Orbis Books together represent a major breakthrough in African-American women’s theological scholarship. Each is a first of sorts—Delores Williams’ Sisters in the Wilderness is the first book-length womanist theology, Kelly Brown Douglas’ The Black Christ is the first womanist christology focused upon the black Christ image and idea, and Emilie Townes’ anthology, A Troubling in My Soul, is the first published collection of writings by womanist theological scholars.
The three books have as their common point of departure the womanist idea, a creation of writer Alice Walker who coined the term in the preface to her 1983 essay collection In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. Womanist means black feminist, and a growing number of black women religious scholars are appropriating this concept for their own work. It appeals especially to black women who do not wish to be identified along with black men as black theologians, or who see themselves as different from the white women who are feminist theologians. Thus, womanist theology has a distinctive identity of its own. And these three new books contribute mightily toward giving further shape and content to womanist theology as a body of religious scholarship.
Douglas’ The Black Christ essentially follows the approach developed by James Cone (beginning in 1969) to create a black theology rooted in the idea of a black Christ. She introduces the book with a biographical statement regarding her encounters with the black Christ through the faith of her grandmother and the thought of James Cone.
In the first chapter, Douglas cites historical precedents formed during the slave period regarding the black Christ, followed by brief discussions of the thought of a few black nationalists and literary artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She also discusses the importance of the black Christ during the era of civil rights and Black Power, with special attention to the thought of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
Later chapters examine models of the black Christ fashioned by three leading black male theologians: Albert Cleage, James Cone, and J. Deotis Roberts. Douglas then attempts a sociopolitical and religiocultural analysis of the blackness of Christ from the vantage point of womanist thought. The book ends with the claim that the Christ of her grandmother’s faith can be identified with the womanist black Christ Douglas has constructed.
In its structure, this book closely resembles Jacquelyn Grant’s White Women’s Christ, Black Women’s Jesus (Scholars Press, 1989). Both books use black women’s experience of slavery as a starting point for doing theology; engage in comparative critiques of black male and white feminist theologies; and end with a statement of the womanist theological perspective that is disproportionately brief in view of the great deal of attention devoted in previous chapters to analyzing christological statements white women and black men have made. The Black Christ leaves the reader puzzled by the fact that as a subject in its own right, womanist christology (the very perspective supposedly being brought to bear upon the others!) is treated in only the broadest of strokes in the final chapter of the book.
Delores Williams provides a more comprehensive treatment of womanist theology in Sisters in the Wilderness. At the outset, she describes her method as the piecing together of fact and vision, subjected to her own critical theological reflection, into a mosaic of black women’s experience.
She claims that this first step is represented by the present work, leaving the second step of theological construction to another book. Thus, the chapters that comprise the first part are pieces—a sociocultural "rereading" of Hagar’s story in Genesis 16:1-16 and 21:9-21; a portrait of black motherhood drawn from an assortment of cultural and literary sources; the naming of black women’s oppression as social-role surrogacy; the description of black women’s ethnicity in terms of the cultural pathology of white racial narcissism; and the establishment of the bond of sisterhood between Hagar and black women using the symbolism of the wilderness.
The second part explores the theological implications of a womanist understanding of Hagar’s history. Williams engages black male theologians and a variety of feminist theologians in what she calls "womanist god-talk."
The chapter on black liberation theology cites the work of James Cone, J. Deotis Roberts, and Cecil Cone in a manner reminiscent of Douglas’ engagement of black theology. However, in the chapter on womanist-feminist dialogue she manages a conversation that is inclusive of African, Asian, Latino, Jewish, and Anglo-American feminist theologians, as well as several African-American womanist theologians in addition to herself. Significantly, she lifts up as a hermeneutical principle God’s word of survival and quality of life as a key to locating the common ground of feminist and womanist theologies.
The final chapter offers ecclesiological reflections based upon womanist concerns. Like Douglas, she makes a scathing critique of the black church (i.e. the African-American denominational churches), which unfortunately overlooks many of the contributions that even black women have made toward the promotion of group solidarity, survival, and quality of life. However, by devoting specific attention to the Universal Hagar’s Spiritualist Churches, Williams at least reveals an awareness of the existence of egalitarian black churches apart from the denominational mainstream she so readily condemns as sexist, classist, and heterosexist. This acknowledgment is important because historically some such churches have tended to embrace black christologies, women’s leadership, and ministry to the poor, features now being promoted by some womanist theologians as new ideas.
A Troubling In My Soul, edited by womanist ethicist Emilie Townes, features a rich variety of approaches to theodicy and suffering as significant themes in the experience of black women in the United States, largely using black women’s lives and literature as sources for constructive ethics. Several of these well-documented, methodologically innovative articles merit special mention.
Clarice J. Martin’s "Biblical Theodicy and Black Women’s Spiritual Autobiography" surveys hermeneutical strategies employed in 19th-century black women’s ethical discourse. Marcia Y. Riggs’ "A Clarion Call to Awake! Arise! Act! The Response of the Black Women’s Club Movement to Institutionalized Moral Evil" mines the socioreligious ethical sensibilities of the black women’s club movement as a point of departure for modern black liberation ethics, giving special attention to the synthesis of moral suasion and social activism.
Emilie Townes’ "Living in the New Jerusalem: The Rhetoric and Movement of Liberation in the House of Evil" envisions a womanist praxis for the elimination of suffering. M. Shawn Copeland’s "Wading Through Many Sorrows: Toward a Theology of Suffering in Womanist Perspective" outlines a theology of suffering from resources of resistance drawn from 19th-century slave women’s narratives. Delores Williams’ "A Womanist Perspective on Sin" analyzes the notions of sin developed historically in the African-American community using slave spirituals, ex-slave autobiographies, and Cone’s A Black Theology of Liberation, then constructs a womanist understanding of sin as an alternative.
Cheryl A. Kirk-Dug-gan’s "African-American Spirituals: Confronting and Exorcising Evil Through Song" fashions an Afro-centric, womanist constructive theodicy built upon the transformational powers of text and music of the African-American spirituals. Karen Baker-Fletcher’s "‘Soprano Obligato’: The Voices of Black Women and American Conflict in the Thought of Anna Julia Cooper" explores the theme of "coming to voice" in Cooper’s 1892 book A Voice From the South as a key to womanist movement toward freedom and equality.
Jacquelyn Grant’s "The Sin of Servanthood and the Deliverance of Discipleship" begins with a critique of attempts by feminists Letty Russell and Rosemary Radford Ruether to redeem the notion of servanthood in christological terms, then turns to the theme of "double-consciousness" in the thought of W.E.B. DuBois in order to resolve the theological dilemma servanthood poses for black women, given their history as domestic workers in the United States. Katie Cannon’s "‘The Wounds of Jesus’: Justification of Goodness in the Face of Manifold Evil" analyzes and interprets Afro-Christian sacred rhetoric from the standpoint of womanist liberation ethics, using as a central text a sermon preached by a character in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Jonah’s Gourd Vine.
Cheryl Townsend Gilkes’ "The ‘Loves’ and ‘Troubles’ of African-American Women’s Bodies" focuses upon cultural humiliation as a major component of the racial oppression suffered by black women. She elucidates the revolutionary nature of the womanist idea and its ethical challenge to live out the mandates of love in a hateful and hate-filled world.
The entire collection represents a significant step taken by womanist scholars to expand the scope of theological discourse to include new voices and address more issues pertinent to the survival and wholeness of African-American people.
The Black Christ. By Kelly Brown Douglas. Orbis Books, 1994.
Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk. By Delores S. Williams. Orbis Books, 1993.
A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering. Edited by Emilie M. Townes. Orbis Boosk, 1993.
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