Abstract
In this brief excerpt from a dialogue, the novelist Alice Walker (1982) captures an important shift in perspective that one woman, Shug, has already undertaken and is gently leading another woman, Celie, to consider. Shug’s perspective is that of a black woman who is aware of the use of religious images in a specific cultural context, namely, the image of a white, male God, in a white, male-dominated society. Research in cultural anthropology (Eisler, 1987; Lerner, 1986; Stone, 1976) and writings by black (Cone, 1970; Jones, 1987) and feminist theologians (Geller, 1983; Ronan, Taussig, & Cady, 1986; Spretnak, 1982) suggest that changes in images of the divine often reflect changes in individual and cultural psychologies. Jones (1987, p. ix) writes: “Especially the concept of God, when it is alien, can hold one, mind and body, in bondage to a distorted understanding of one’s own true selfhood, one’s own humanity, and in the case of Black people, the meaning of one’s own blackness.”
Shug: Tell me what your God look like Celie.
Celie: Okay... He big and old and tall and graybearded and white. Sort of bluish-gray [eyes] Cool. Big though. White lashes.
Shug: Ain’t no way to read the Bible and not think God white.... When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest. (Walker, 1982, pp. 201–202)
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Mulrenin, K. (1998). Women’s Psychospiritual Paths Before, During, and After Finding It Difficult to Pray to a Male God. In: Valle, R. (eds) Phenomenological Inquiry in Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0125-5_11
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