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Womanist Theology
by JoAnn Shade
I recently asked twenty women officers in the
USA Eastern Territory if they could define the term “womanist,”
and only two of the twenty could do so. That didn’t surprise
me, for I had spent six years serving predominantly
African-American congregations in Philadelphia and Cleveland
in the 1990’s, but I wasn’t exposed to this term until
enrolling in the Women in Prophetic Leadership track at
Ashland Theological Seminary. As Salvationists, all too often
we find ourselves so busy in ministry that we lose track of
the various theological ideas that are introduced in the years
following our own training. This article is an overview of
womanist theology and offers a few thoughts for its
application to Salvation Army ministry, particularly among
women of African descent.
The term ‘womanist’ is attributed to Alice Walker, writing in
In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, but aspects of
womanist theology are as ancient as Hagar naming God, Vashti
saying no, and the slave-woman Felicitas facing the death of a
martyr. Carried forth in spirit on the lips of Harriet Tubman
and Sojourner Truth, it began to have the hint of a theology
(although still unnamed) in the writings of women such as Anna
Julia Cooper, Maria Stewart, Mary Church Terrell and Ida B.
Wells-Barnett. Cooper’s work in A Voice from the South
is described as “forcefully arguing for the unmuting of Black
women’s voice and the telling of their own stories so that
everybody would know their precise status as told by them, and
not by Black men or well meaning Whites” (Burrow 1998, 19).
This, in essence, is womanist theology.
Womanist has its origins in “the black folk expression You
acting womanish,” meaning, according to Walker, “wanting to
know more and in greater depth than is good for one –
outrageous, audacious, courageous and willful behavior.” A
womanist is also ‘responsible, in charge, serious.’ She can
‘walk to Canada and take others with her.’ She loves, she is
committed, she is a universalist by temperament” (Williams
1987, 68). Defined early on as a black feminist or feminist of
color, Walker uses the analogy that womanist is to feminist as
purple is to lavender (Williams 1987, 69). In doing so, Walker
provided “a way of thinking, talking, writing about, and doing
theology and ethics” based on the experience of Black women
(Burrow 1998, 20).
William’s comments add theology to the definition. “Womanist
theology attempts to help black women see, affirm and have
confidence in the importance of their experience and faith for
determining the character of the Christian religion in the
African-American community” (Williams 1993, xiv). Thomas
proposes that, “Womanist theology is critical reflection upon
black women’s place in the world that God has created and
takes seriously black women’s experience as human beings who
are made in the image of God” (Thomas 2003, 1). As an
alternate explanation, Mitchem writes that womanist theology
is “an opportunity to state the meanings of God in the real
time of black women’s lives” (Mitchem 2002,60).
If a theologian is both black and female, does that make her a
womanist? JoAnne Marie Terrell would answer “no” to that
question. She suggests that it is also necessary that “Black
women entering the womanist enterprise commit to exploring
further the contradictions that shape their collective and
personal lives in the spirit of critical inquiry and in the
spirit of hope” (Terrell 1998, 188). Womanist theology is a
way of thinking, feeling and living, rather than simply a
school of thought.
While womanist theology owes much to feminist theological
thinking, it has had its clashes with what has been seen as
white, upper middle class privilege. Rosemary Radford Ruether
addresses that perception:
Let me make clear that I do not think that white feminists,
such as myself, are innocent of racism just because we have
consciously adopted a certain rhetoric of pluralism . . . I
still live in a context of race and class privilege that is
automatically accorded to me no matter what my personal views
may be . . . [Yet] I affirm a plurality of feminist theologies
both in various Christian racial and cultural contexts and in
various inter-religious contexts and I reject any dominant
form of feminist theology that claims to speak for the whole
of womankind (Thomas 2004, 57).
It would appear that in pointing out valid concerns regarding
perspective, grace has not always been extended to the other.
And of course, in comparison to women who live in poverty
and/or in third world cultures, the privileged womanist of
North America has the same difficulty as the feminist in
attempting to find ways to cross those cultural divides and
speak to all who live under oppression.
Voices of Note
There are many African-American women with a role in the
on-going development of womanist theology. Names associated
with womanist theology in the USA are Emilie Towns, Katie
Cannon, Delores S. Williams, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Kelly
Brown Douglas, Shawn Copland, Clarice Martin, Francis Wood,
Jamie Phelps, Marcia Riggs, Jacquelyn Grant, Karen
Baker-Fletcher and Cheryl Kirk-Duggan. Thomas describes these
women:
We are university, seminary, and divinity school
professors. We are ordained and lay women in all the Christian
denominations. Some of us are full-time pastors; some are both
pastor and professor. We are preachers and prayer warriors. We
are mothers, partners, lovers, wives, sisters, daughters,
aunts, nieces – and we comprise two-thirds of the black church
in America . . . We are charcoal black to high yellow women
(Thomas 2003, 3).
I’ve especially appreciated the writings of Renita Weems, who
definitely has the ability to “cross-over,” for she makes the
leap from learned theologian to conversational writer, and she
is able to use her African-American womanist background to
speak broadly to women of varying ethnicities and backgrounds.
Weems is currently the William and Camille Cosby Visiting
Professor at Spelman College, and has spent many years on the
faculty at Vanderbilt University. Weems has also been ordained
in the African Methodist Episcopal Church since 1984. Of her
ordination, she says, “I didn’t choose ministry so much as
ministry chose me. I hope I heard correctly, but I can’t
always be sure” (Weems 1999, 115).
Her personal story shines through her writing for women.
Rooted in a small storefront Pentecostal church in Atlanta,
she speaks of those days:
Of course, education tends to make us look back at our
conservative, working-class origins with contempt. In order to
gain acceptance into the upper classes, in order to buy into
academia, in order to move around in a class of educated
clergy, for the sake of upward mobility, we must denigrate the
people, the experiences, and all the memories that shaped us .
. .
Yet, Weems recognizes, that grounding provided her with “a
heart full of hope which keeps me tiptoeing to the altar” (Weems
1999, 97).
Role in the Church
It may be too early to judge the impact of womanist theology
on the church at large, and on the Black church in particular.
Baker-Fletcher suggests that, “Black women and men can
transform present existence by actively remembering and
practicing the prophetic, generational wisdom of the past . .
. in a way that is salvific and communal.” She also believes
that its purpose is to “ remember the heritage of creative,
prophetic wisdom in African-American culture “(Baker-Fletcher
1993, 8). Linda Thomas knows that “womanist theologians can
bring the experience and knowledge of the marginalized to the
center by standing aside to let the community speak for
itself” (Thomas 2003, 2).
One of the questions to be answered, although it may be too
early to do so, is this: Is womanist theology just a flash in
the pan of the late twentieth century, or will it have value
in the history of the church? Townes asks a similar question
in a different form:
I think it telling that in this late modern/postmodern
theological world
academic
denominational
local church
that the work of men and women of african descent
the work of other racial ethnic women and men
remains off the radar screen of so many who declare what is
perfect and imperfect
in theological thought
church doctrine
and righteous living
our lives
our experiences of God
our strivings to understand the nature and work of the church
our yearnings for the spirit
our cries and shouts to Jesus
oddly enough
remain categorized as drama or theater or “interesting’
some have noticed our absence in their thought
but have faulted us for not using the masters’ and mistresses’
tools
with the same kind of ghastly precision they do
to annihilate or obscure the vastness of God’s ongoing revelation
and God’s eternal and unrelenting call to all of us to grow in
grace from right where we have been planted
to celebrate the richness found in being created in the
image of a god who is
quite simply
limitless
they have forgotten a cardinal rule
that many of us learned in nursery school
or perhaps kindergarten: sharing
(Thomas 2004, 189-190).
Another question of importance is this: Can womanist theology
impact the lives of the average church-going woman of color,
or is it, like many other theological positions, potentially
only for the theologians to discuss? How can it impact the
lives of poor black women in the neighborhoods where
Salvationists minister?
It will be up to scholars such as Renita Weems to find ways to
communicate outside of the ivory towers of academia, as she
had through her column in Essence and in her recent writings
such as Showing Mary and What Matters Most, in
which she has been able to speak to every-day women about
common life situations from a theoretical base of womanist
theology. She, like Sojourner Truth, is finding ways for
‘keeping things going while things are stirring’” (West and
Glaude 2003, 845). But it will also be the responsibility of
the ordinary woman of color to tell her story, and so to keep
alive the tradition of faith and practice into the
twenty-first century.
Practical Implications
While the Salvation Army is not considered a black
denomination, in the US quite a number of its congregations
are predominantly African-American, and so the lack of
exposure to this way of looking at theology is of concern,
even considering the Salvation Army’s conservative theological
bent. Yet I am not a woman of color, so how can I speak to
this topic? In 1994, Jane Evershed coined a new term, “sisterist”.
“To be sisterist is to recognize and celebrate diversity among
women, to work towards a common goal regardless of race,
creed, nationality, or sexual preference, to disregard social
structures which place women in groups that separate them from
each other” (Baker-Fletcher 1998, v). As a white woman of
relative privilege who has worked for a number of years among
poor African-Americans, as much as I might long to be, I
cannot truly be a womanist, but I can, by Evershed’s
definition, be a sisterist, and I would suggest that can be a
start for those of us who minister across cultures.
We are able to adopt the spirit of womanist theology as
described by Townes:
[Womanist spirituality] is the deep kneading of humanity
and divinity into one breath, one hope, one vision. Womanist
spirituality is not only a way of living, it is a style of
witness that seeks to cross the yawning chasm of hatreds and
prejudices and oppressions into a deeper and richer love of
God as we experience Jesus in our lives . . . This
understanding of spirituality seeks to grow into wholeness of
spirit and body, mind and heart – into holiness in God. Such
cogent holiness cannot hold its peace in a world so
desperately separate from the new earth (Riggs 1997, 190).
As Salvationist women in particular, we can also take courage
from Weems, to be the kind of woman that she and her womanist
sisters are, women who “know how to dive deep within and tap
into the inner resources God has given them” (Weems 2004, 84).
She reminds us that, “You have to learn how to focus your
energies and intelligence on what you want” (Weems 2004, 90).
Her belief that “You will never become the woman you want to
become until you learn how not to disintegrate in the face of
difficulty, learn how to stay focused despite whatever
difficulties that come your way, and learn how to disarm
difficult people” (Weems 2004, 93), is a powerful perspective
to offer to those we work with. Her words remind us that
although womanist theology may be a theoretical discipline, it
is also a way of seeing God that gives hope to everyday
people.
As a start, might I suggest two options for a better
understanding of womanist theology. The first is to read one
of the authors listed in the reference section or the
paragraph on womanist theologians. The second is to seek out a
woman of African descent and truly listen to her story – her
hopes and fears and her love for Jesus. For it is in the
stories of real women who seek to grow into wholeness of
spirit and body, mind and heart, that we find the essence of
womanist theology.
REFERENCE LIST: For Further Reading
Baker-Fletcher, Karen. 1993. Tar baby
and womanist theology. Theology Today 50: 29-37.
______________. 1998. Sisters of dust, sisters of spirit:
Womanist wordings on God and creation. Minneapolis: Fortress
Press.
Burrow, Jr, Rufus. 1998. Enter womanist theology and ethics.
The Western Journal ofBlack Studies 22: 19-29.
Cannon, Katie G. 1995. Katie’s canon: Womanism and the soul of
the black community. New York: Continuum.
Mitchem, Stephanie Y. 2002. Introducing womanist theology.
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Riggs, Marcia Y., ed. 1997. Can I get a witness? :Prophetic
religious voices of African American women: an anthology.
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Terrell, JoAnne Marie. 1998. Power in the blood:The cross in
the African American experience. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Thomas, Linda E. Womanist theology, epistemology, and a new
anthropological
paradigm. Cross Currents 2003, www.crosscurrents.org/thomas.htm.
Thomas, Linda E., ed. 2004. Living Stones in the household of
God: the legacy and future of black theology. Minneapolis:
Fortress Press.
Townes, Emilie M., ed. 1993. A troubling in my soul: Womanist
perspectives on evil and suffering. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books.
Weems, Renita. 1999. Listening for God: A minister’s journey
through silence and doubt. New York: Simon and Schuster.
_________________. 2004. What matters most: Ten lessons in
living passionately from the Song of Solomon. West Bloomfield,
MI: Walk Worthy Press.
West, Cornel and Glaude, Eddie S Jr., ed. 2003. African
American religious thought: An anthology. Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press.
Williams, Delores. 1987. Womanist theology: Black women’s
voices. Christianity
and Crisis 47: 66-70.
___________________ . 1993. Sisters in the wilderness; The
challenge of womanist God-talk. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
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