Abstract
Pastoral response that resonates with the ways Black women approach self-recovery and healing requires new images and paradigms for care. I respond to this need in this chapter by introducing working images of WomanistCare that prompt pastoral theological reflection on practitioners’ cultural countertransference responses to Black women and existing norms for care. Next, a case study of WomanistCare ritual is presented for analysis and reflection on ritual as a congregation-based, communal act of care. The analysis includes discussion of the use and abuse of power in ritual space convened to meet the needs of women who have experienced violence.
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Notes
See Marsha Foster Boyd, “WomanistCare,” in Embracing the Spirit: Womanist Perspectives on Hope, Salvation, and Transformation, ed. Emilie M. Townes (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997), 199.
Caroll Watkins Ali, Survival and Liberation: Pastoral Theology in African American Context (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 1999), 120.
For more Womanist and Feminist analysis of norms and paradigms for care, see Bonnie J. Miller-McClemore and Brita Gill-Austern, eds., Feminist and Womanist Pastoral Theology (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1999);
Nancy J. Gorsuch, Introducing Feminist Pastoral Care and Counseling (Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 2001);
Nancy J. Ramsay, ed., Pastoral Care and Counseling: Redefining the Paradigms (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2004);
Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner and Teresa Snorton, eds., Women Out of Order: Risking Change and Creating Care in a Multicultural World (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010);
Chanequa Walker Barnes, Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014).
Major voices include Linda H. Hollies, ed., WomanistCare: How to Tend the Souls of Women, Volume 1 (Evanston, IL: Woman to Woman Ministries, Inc., 1992);
Teresa Snorton, “The Legacy of the African American Matriarch: New Perspectives for Pastoral Care,” in Through the Eyes of Women: Insights For Pastoral Care, ed. Jeanne Stevenson Moessner (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 50–56;
Beverly Wallace, “A Womanist Legacy of Trauma, Grief and Loss: Reframing the Notion of the Strong Black Woman Icon,” in Women Out of Order: Risking Change in a Multicultural World, ed. Jeanne Stevenson Moessner and Teresa Snorton (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009) 43–56;
Elizabeth Johnson Walker, “Counseling Grace: A Pastoral Theology,” in Women Out of Order: Risking Change in a Multicultural World, ed. Jeanne Stevenson Moessner and Teresa Snorton (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009), 243–254.
And, most recently, Phillis I. Sheppard, Self, Culture and Others in Womanist Practical Theology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Read especially, Sheppard, “The Current Shape of Womanist Practical Theology,” Chapter 3, in Self, Culture and Other, for a discussion and critique of contemporary Womanist scholarship on the applicability of psychodynamic theory with African American women. These books, articles, and essays are seminal Womanist deconstructions of cultural norms that undergird ideas about the form and function of pastoral theology, care and counseling, and their implications for African American women.
Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004).
See also Edward P. Wimberly, African American Pastoral Counseling: The Politics of Oppression and Empowerment (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 2006).
See also Teresa L. Fry Brown’s God Don’t Like Ugly: African American Women Handing on Spiritual Values (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2000), where she discusses literature, film, music, and visual arts as creative mediums through which African Americans transfer knowledge and wisdom intergenerationally.
Craig Dykstra, Images of Pastoral Care: Classic Readings (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2005).
See also Lee H. Butler Jr., “African American Spirituality as Survival,” in Liberating Our Dignity, Saving Our Souls (Danvers, MA: Chalice Press, 2006), Chapter 7, 104–118.
See Katie Cannon, “Moral Wisdom in the Black Women’s Literary Tradition,” Chapter 4; and “Resources for a Constructive Ethic: The Life and Work of Zora Neale Hurston,” Chapter 6, in Katie’s Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community (New York: Continuum, 1995) for a thorough discussion of the role of African American women writers in contributing narratives about African American moral wisdom, including spirituality.
Toni Morrison, “The Site of Memory,” in Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, rev. and exp., ed. William Zinsser (Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1998), 186.
Malidoma Patrice Somé, The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose through Nature, Ritual and Community (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1999), 141.
See Monica A. Coleman, “Learning from the Past: The Role of the Ancestors,” in Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), Chapter 4, 101, where she writes, “Womanist theologies remind us that black women have histories with experiences of violence and destruction. Womanist theologies discuss the ways that black women find resources for survival and life in their spiritual and cultural pasts. The postmodern theological framework acknowledges that every move into the future entails some loss of what we once experienced. Nevertheless, there are ways that the past remains alive to us today. We can creatively transform the past to decide how we should move into the future. We can also draw power from the lives of those who have come before us, as we learn from the past, our ancestors have their own kind of immortality.” To further explain the moral implications of a spirituality that includes active engagement with ancestors, on page 114 she quotes African Religions scholar Jacob K. Olupona, “In order to function [as guardians of moral authority], the ancestors are freed of the human weaknesses and conditions of pettiness, particularly common among living lineage members. They are, therefore, eminently qualified to act as the guardians of social and moral order.”
James L. Griffith and Mellissa Elliott Griffith, Encountering The Sacred in Psychotherapy: How to Talk to People about Their Spiritual Lives (New York: Guilford Press, 2003), 167.
In Yoruba religious tradition, when the Creator God calls forth life in human form, the individual receives her or his Ase’, a sacred identity and purpose given to him/her by Spirit. Saying Ase’ each time an ancestor’s name is called is the community’s way of asking ancestors to offer up the best of their Ase’ as a guiding force that helps the living community recall and live into its identity and collective purpose. In Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology, Womanist theologian Monica A. Coleman writes about how Black Christianity has historically incorporated African religious retentions like Yoruba belief and culture into its identity. Read page 109 where Coleman notes, “Through both the triangular slave trade and contemporary reversionist attempts at recapturing traditional religions, the religion of the Yoruba people (of current-day Nigeria) has constituted a base for African-derived religious practices throughout the Caribbean, South America, and the United States.” On page 112 she clarifies, “When speaking of the presence of traditional Yoruba religion in the United States, one must also include contemporary revisionist attempts to reclaim cultural identity through an intentional revival of and return to ancient traditions. Practitioners will often refer to this system of belief and practices as “Ifa” or “Yoruba.” For a further discussion of Yoruba religion in America, see Tracey E. Hucks, Yoruba and African American Religious Nationalism (New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 2012).
The description of the significance of the elements described here may be found in Askhari Johnson Hodari’s The African Book of Names: 5,000 Common and Uncommon Names from the African Continent (Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, Inc., 2009). In the text Hodari notes that while the ritual and elements are described in her text for the purposes of their inclusion in a baby-naming ceremony, the same elements have been used to mark other significant life passages. Toure adapted the ritual to address the pastoral needs she observed for a ritual acknowledging significant events and experiences in the lives of the women at the First Afrikan church and the surrounding community.
Jan Berry, “Whose Threshold? Women’s Strategies of Ritualization,” Feminist Theology 14 (2006): 287,
referencing Heather Walton, “Speaking in Signs: Narrative and Trauma in Pastoral Theology,” Scottish Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy 5 (2002): 2.
Gail E. Wyatt, Jennifer Vargas Carmona, Tamra Burns Loeb, Armida Ayala, and Dorothy Chin, “Sexual Abuse,” in Handbook of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health, ed. Gina M. Wingood and Ralph J. DiClemente (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2002), 201.
Marie M. Fortune and James Newton Poling, “Calling to Accountability: The Church’s Response to Abusers,” in Violence against Women: A Christian Theological Sourcebook, ed. Carol J. Adams and Marie M. Fortune (New York: Continuum, 1995), 455.
Nicholas Groth, Men Who Rape (New York: Plenum, 1979), 4,
quoted in Marie Fortune and James Newton Poling, “Calling to Accountability: The Church’s Response to Abusers,” in Violence against Women and Children: A Christian Theological Sourcebook, ed. Carol J. Adams and Marie M. Fortune (New York: Continuum, 1995), 455.
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© 2014 Stephanie M. Crumpton
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Crumpton, S.M. (2014). WomanistCare: Reshaping Images and Paradigms for Care. In: A Womanist Pastoral Theology against Intimate and Cultural Violence. Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137370907_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137370907_5
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