Abstract
Many said it would not be here. Still. Regardless. And after almost thirty years, womanist theology survives and thrives through the pens, teaching, writing, art, and activism of several waves of womanist religious thought. Birthed out of the minds and critical thinking of such scholars as Katie G. Cannon, Delores S. Williams, Jacquelyn Grant, and Renita J. Weems,1 womanist theology began with the act of these women boldly naming themselves “womanists,” appropriating a term coined by literary writer Alice Walker. Calling sexism a necessary category of contemplation for black Christian traditional churches and demanding black feminist race-class-gender analysis be used in black theological methodology, these women shaped womanist theology and ethics to center the voices and experiences of women of African descent as primary sources for theological reflection.
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Notes
Katie G. Cannon, “The Emergence of Black Feminist Consciousness,” in Feminist Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Letty M. Russell (Louisville, KY: Westminster Press, 1985);
Renita J. Weems, Just a Sister Away: Understanding the Timeless Connection between Women of Today and Women in the Bible (West Bloomfield, M: Walk Worthy Press, 1988);
Jacquelyn Grant, White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989);
and Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (New York: Orbis Books, 1993).
This date marks the publication of Katie G. Cannon’s essay, “The Emergence of Black Feminist Consciousness” first published in Letty M. Russell, ed., Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (Louisville, KY: Westminster Press, 1985), 30–40.
For more information on the argument of this sort, see Katie G. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988).
Alice Walker, “Coming Apart,” in Take Back the Night, ed. Laura Lederer (New York: Harper Perennial, 1980). It should also be noted that Walker provides further explication of the term in her essay “Gifts of Power: The Writings of Rebecca Jackson,” originally published as part of the collection of nonfiction essays In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens.
Barbara Smith, Toward a Black Feminist Criticism (New York: Crossing Press, 1977);
Angela Davis, Women, Race and Class (New York: Random House, 1983);
Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter … The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: William Morrow, 1984);
Gloria Wade-Gayles, No Crystal Stair: Visions of Race and Sex in Black Women’s Fiction (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1984);
Bell Hooks, Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981); and All the Women Are White, and All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave, ed. Gloria Hull, Patricia Scott, and Barbara Smith (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978).
Others have labeled Walker a black theological philosopher within the school of academic black theology. See Fredrick L. Ware, Methodologies of Black Theology (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2002). Scholar Anthony B. Pinn also refers to Walker as a humanist in his work Noise and Spirit: The Religious and Spiritual Sensibilities of Rap Music (New York: New York University Press, 2003). Walker, however, is a self-proclaimed pagan. See the preface of The Color Purple, 10th Anniversary Edition (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992), xi.
For example, Stephanie Y. Mitchem, Introducing Womanist Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002) is an important contribution but refers only to Walker’s definition of “womanist” and the book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens as it relates to its relevance to the state of womanist theology and ethics. Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, also references Walker’s definition and highlights The Color Purple as an important literary source of womanist theology but does not reference Walker’s own nonfiction work. On the other hand,
Katie G. Cannon’s reference to I Love Myself When I Am Laughing … And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader (Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1979) and select essays in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens are recorded in Black Womanist Ethics. Her book Katie’s Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community (New York: Continuum, 1996) also refers to Walker’s nonfiction essays.
Marcia Y. Riggs, Awake, Arise & Act: A Womanist Call for Black Liberation (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1994), 2.
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© 2010 Melanie L. Harris
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Harris, M.L. (2010). Introduction. In: Gifts of Virtue, Alice Walker, and Womanist Ethics. Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230113930_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230113930_1
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