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Religion, Race, and Ethnicity Series
Deeper Shades of Purple: Womanism in Religion and Society
A collection of leading voices on the study of Black women in religious life
Womanist approaches to the study of religion and society have contributed much to our understanding of Black religious life, activism, and women's liberation. Deeper Shades of Purple explores the achievements of this movement over the past two decades and evaluates some of the leading voices and different perspectives within this burgeoning field.
Deeper Shades of Purple brings together a who's who of scholars in the study of Black women and religion who view their scholarship through a womanist critical lens. The contributors revisit Alice Walker's definition of womanism for its viability for the approaches to discourses in religion of Black women scholars. Whereas Walker has defined what it means to be womanist, these contributors define what it means to practice womanism, and illuminate how womanism has been used as a vantage point for the theoretical orientations and methodological approaches of Black women scholar-activists.
Karen Baker-Fletcher, Katie G. Cannon, M. Shawn Copeland, Kelly Brown Douglas, Carol B. Duncan, Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, Rachel Elizabeth Harding, Rosemarie Freeney Harding, Melanie L. Harris, Diana L. Hayes, Dwight N. Hopkins, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Kwok Pui-Lan, Daisy L. Machado, Debra Majeed, Anthony B. Pinn, Rosetta Ross, Letty M. Russell, Shani Settles, Dianne M. Stewart, Raedorah Stewart-Dodd, Emilie M. Townes, Traci C. West, and Nancy Lynne Westfield.
Womanist approaches to the study of religion and society have contributed much to our understanding of Black religious life, activism, and women's liberation. Deeper Shades of Purple explores the achievements of this movement over the past two decades and evaluates some of the leading voices and different perspectives within this burgeoning field.
Deeper Shades of Purple brings together a who's who of scholars in the study of Black women and religion who view their scholarship through a womanist critical lens. The contributors revisit Alice Walker's definition of womanism for its viability for the approaches to discourses in religion of Black women scholars. Whereas Walker has defined what it means to be womanist, these contributors define what it means to practice womanism, and illuminate how womanism has been used as a vantage point for the theoretical orientations and methodological approaches of Black women scholar-activists.
Karen Baker-Fletcher, Katie G. Cannon, M. Shawn Copeland, Kelly Brown Douglas, Carol B. Duncan, Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, Rachel Elizabeth Harding, Rosemarie Freeney Harding, Melanie L. Harris, Diana L. Hayes, Dwight N. Hopkins, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Kwok Pui-Lan, Daisy L. Machado, Debra Majeed, Anthony B. Pinn, Rosetta Ross, Letty M. Russell, Shani Settles, Dianne M. Stewart, Raedorah Stewart-Dodd, Emilie M. Townes, Traci C. West, and Nancy Lynne Westfield.
331 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2006
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June 26, 2024
AN EXCELLENT ANTHOLOGY FROM A WIDE VARIETY OF (MOSTLY) WOMANIST SCHOLARS
Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas (born 1969) is a Professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School and University; she is also Executive Director of both the Society of Christian Ethics, and the Black Religious Scholars Group. She has also taught at Brite Divinity School and Temple University. She has also written Mining the Motherlode: Methods in Womanist Ethics, and cowritten/coedited The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture,Liberation Theologies in the United States: An Introduction,Beyond the Pale: Reading Ethics from the Margins,Beyond the Pale: Reading Theology from the Margins, and Black Church Studies: An Introduction.
She wrote in the Introduction to this 2006 book, “Intended to celebrate over two decades of womanist epistemology, this anthology is multidisciplinary, reflecting the range of womanist approaches to the study of religion and society from ethics, history of religion, and religious education to sociology of religion and theology... several leading nonwomanist scholars are also included as respondents in this volume. This work is a major contribution and extension of contemporary womanist discourse… this volume recognizes the interfaith diversity of Black women’s religious experience as an African disasporic transformation. It formally includes and dialogues with emerging African Derived Religions, African American Muslim, as well as Humanist womanist perspectives… This volume brings together an intergenerational group of womanist scholars, ranging from those senior scholars whose works represent the formation of womanist theological discourse… to junior scholars… This volume takes the bold step to define womanism… The contributors to this volume reexamine and extend Walker’s classic four-part definition of womanist far beyond her original premise… this volume defines and explores the four tenets of ‘womanism’---radical subjectivity, traditional communalism, redemptive self-love, and critical engagement---in order to illustrate the viability of this academic paradigm for interrogating religious and social phenomena…” (Pg. 5-7)
Some of the scholars whose work is included are Katie Cannon; Diana Hayes; Kelly Brown Douglas; Karen Baker-Fletcher; Cheryl Kirk-Duggan; M. Shawn Copeland; Emilie Townes; Letty Russell; and Ada Maria Isazi-Díaz.
In her essay, Katie Cannon says, “I invite you to measure womanism in the twenty-first century by calling into questions the presuppositions operative behind the following soul-searching inquiry: What does it mean that academia is so structured that Black women are severely ostracized when we re-member and re-present in our authentic interest?... What is the role of Womanist intellectuals in institutions of higher learning, where our pedagogical styles and scholarly lexicons are derailed on a daily basis?... we are repeatedly unheard but not unvoiced, unseen but not invisible.” (Pg. 21)
Debra Mubashshir Majeed explains, “The goals of Muslim Womanist Philosophy are to ‘interrogate the social construction’ of African American Muslim womanhood in relation to the realities of African American Muslim life and the global community of Muslims. It… seeks to reclaim the embodied experiences of African American Muslim women, significant contributors to scholarly understandings of the global sphere of Muslim women and Muslim life in the world.” (Pg. 50)
Diana Hayes notes, “Although I emphasized deeply with feminists and their issues, I found myself disconnected, especially in response to their constant assertions that I must be a feminist as I was a woman studying theology. I refused to be stuffed into the boxes others built for me as I had done all of my life, daring to be different in whatever ways I could. There were too many issues in feminism that did not affect me or my lack sisters who were trying to find our voices at this time… Sexism is not and cannot be the only concern as we who are Black acknowledge our triple and often quadruple oppression in today’s world.” (Pg. 59)
Rosemarie and Rachel Harding state, “Black religion, then, is not only in the music, the drama, the communion, and the interpretation of text within the walls of the physical church, but it is also in the orientation of black people to so-called secular culture… It is how we make meaning and joy out of our human experience.” (Pg. 101)
Rosetta Ross observes, “At the present time in the United States, the authenticity and legitimacy of much institutional black Christianity is severely threatened by the legacy of overwhelming piety and deemphasizing independent critical reasoning. This threat is intensified when the piety/reason dichotomy is connected to increasing separation of the black poor from the black middle classes, increasing emphasis on individual success, and increasing emphasis of religious entrepreneurialism.” (Pg. 119)
Nancy Lynne Westfield points out, “When our Black, male counterparts were shaping Black theology in the templates of Barth… Womanist theologians speculated another way of conceiving the world… Our epistemology of hope is grounded in the notion that change, reframing, re-thinking, re-imagining, re-naming, re-structuring, re-conceiving---birthing anew, is not only possible but necessary.” (Pg. 134)
Kelly Brown Douglas recalls, “The womanist idea affirmed who I was as a black woman. It affirmed me in all my uniqueness… It, thus, gave me a place from which to speak. It gave me a voice. It gave me the voice to speak out of my own experience of pain and struggle… It allowed me to stand with my black female sisters as they also struggled to find their way, their voice, and their place… Essentially, [Alice] Walker’s notion of womanist … verified the power of the black female voice to speak with authority about the complicated and wonderfully ‘adventurous’ reality of being embodied black and woman… claiming our spaces to tell our own diverse stories of living.” (Pg. 146)
Cheryl Kirk-Duggan states, “The body of knowledge and research of Womanist thou8ght includes, but is not limited to, issues pertaining to theology… Bible and narratives… ethics… and context… Womanist theology is a tool to name, expose, question, and help transform the oppression of women, of all people… a Womanist reading takes seriously the multidimensional complexity of communication.” (Pg. 177)
Kwok Pui-lan, an Asian feminist, wrote, “Womanist scholarship emerged on the scene with a radical critique of the study of religion and theology, which has long marginalized the voices of Black women and other women of color… womanist scholars have provided something like a model, a mirror, or a pathway, inviting other multiply marginalized women to dialogue and debate, and to reflect and rejoice.” (Pg. 252-253)
Ada Maria Isazi-Díaz explains, “The struggle womanist and other racial/ethnic theologians and ethicists have been engaged in for now more than two decades is an awesome responsibility as well as a precious gift… it has been an inspiring struggle for the marginalized and minoritized, a creative struggle discovering the bringing forth new possibilities for ourselves and for members of our communities… it has [also] saddled all of us racial/ethnic theologians and ethicists committed to liberation and fullness of life with the heavy responsibility of untired presence, demanding of us the sacrifices that integrity and accountability always exact.” (Pg. 265)
Daisy Machado argues, “By keeping this tension between the particular and the universal, womanist theology was also a critique of the false universalism of the white feminists of the first wave of feminism, who claimed their experience as the experience of ‘all’ women even though in reality it was the lived experience of white middle-class women. Womanist theologians dared to claim their particularism and in so doing gave their lived experience a cultural/social/racial location that resonated with black women because it took seriously their context, their language, and their identity as black and female.” (Pg. 271)
This collection will be is great interest to those studying Womanism, Black Theology, and contemporary theology/spirituality.
Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas (born 1969) is a Professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School and University; she is also Executive Director of both the Society of Christian Ethics, and the Black Religious Scholars Group. She has also taught at Brite Divinity School and Temple University. She has also written Mining the Motherlode: Methods in Womanist Ethics, and cowritten/coedited The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture,Liberation Theologies in the United States: An Introduction,Beyond the Pale: Reading Ethics from the Margins,Beyond the Pale: Reading Theology from the Margins, and Black Church Studies: An Introduction.
She wrote in the Introduction to this 2006 book, “Intended to celebrate over two decades of womanist epistemology, this anthology is multidisciplinary, reflecting the range of womanist approaches to the study of religion and society from ethics, history of religion, and religious education to sociology of religion and theology... several leading nonwomanist scholars are also included as respondents in this volume. This work is a major contribution and extension of contemporary womanist discourse… this volume recognizes the interfaith diversity of Black women’s religious experience as an African disasporic transformation. It formally includes and dialogues with emerging African Derived Religions, African American Muslim, as well as Humanist womanist perspectives… This volume brings together an intergenerational group of womanist scholars, ranging from those senior scholars whose works represent the formation of womanist theological discourse… to junior scholars… This volume takes the bold step to define womanism… The contributors to this volume reexamine and extend Walker’s classic four-part definition of womanist far beyond her original premise… this volume defines and explores the four tenets of ‘womanism’---radical subjectivity, traditional communalism, redemptive self-love, and critical engagement---in order to illustrate the viability of this academic paradigm for interrogating religious and social phenomena…” (Pg. 5-7)
Some of the scholars whose work is included are Katie Cannon; Diana Hayes; Kelly Brown Douglas; Karen Baker-Fletcher; Cheryl Kirk-Duggan; M. Shawn Copeland; Emilie Townes; Letty Russell; and Ada Maria Isazi-Díaz.
In her essay, Katie Cannon says, “I invite you to measure womanism in the twenty-first century by calling into questions the presuppositions operative behind the following soul-searching inquiry: What does it mean that academia is so structured that Black women are severely ostracized when we re-member and re-present in our authentic interest?... What is the role of Womanist intellectuals in institutions of higher learning, where our pedagogical styles and scholarly lexicons are derailed on a daily basis?... we are repeatedly unheard but not unvoiced, unseen but not invisible.” (Pg. 21)
Debra Mubashshir Majeed explains, “The goals of Muslim Womanist Philosophy are to ‘interrogate the social construction’ of African American Muslim womanhood in relation to the realities of African American Muslim life and the global community of Muslims. It… seeks to reclaim the embodied experiences of African American Muslim women, significant contributors to scholarly understandings of the global sphere of Muslim women and Muslim life in the world.” (Pg. 50)
Diana Hayes notes, “Although I emphasized deeply with feminists and their issues, I found myself disconnected, especially in response to their constant assertions that I must be a feminist as I was a woman studying theology. I refused to be stuffed into the boxes others built for me as I had done all of my life, daring to be different in whatever ways I could. There were too many issues in feminism that did not affect me or my lack sisters who were trying to find our voices at this time… Sexism is not and cannot be the only concern as we who are Black acknowledge our triple and often quadruple oppression in today’s world.” (Pg. 59)
Rosemarie and Rachel Harding state, “Black religion, then, is not only in the music, the drama, the communion, and the interpretation of text within the walls of the physical church, but it is also in the orientation of black people to so-called secular culture… It is how we make meaning and joy out of our human experience.” (Pg. 101)
Rosetta Ross observes, “At the present time in the United States, the authenticity and legitimacy of much institutional black Christianity is severely threatened by the legacy of overwhelming piety and deemphasizing independent critical reasoning. This threat is intensified when the piety/reason dichotomy is connected to increasing separation of the black poor from the black middle classes, increasing emphasis on individual success, and increasing emphasis of religious entrepreneurialism.” (Pg. 119)
Nancy Lynne Westfield points out, “When our Black, male counterparts were shaping Black theology in the templates of Barth… Womanist theologians speculated another way of conceiving the world… Our epistemology of hope is grounded in the notion that change, reframing, re-thinking, re-imagining, re-naming, re-structuring, re-conceiving---birthing anew, is not only possible but necessary.” (Pg. 134)
Kelly Brown Douglas recalls, “The womanist idea affirmed who I was as a black woman. It affirmed me in all my uniqueness… It, thus, gave me a place from which to speak. It gave me a voice. It gave me the voice to speak out of my own experience of pain and struggle… It allowed me to stand with my black female sisters as they also struggled to find their way, their voice, and their place… Essentially, [Alice] Walker’s notion of womanist … verified the power of the black female voice to speak with authority about the complicated and wonderfully ‘adventurous’ reality of being embodied black and woman… claiming our spaces to tell our own diverse stories of living.” (Pg. 146)
Cheryl Kirk-Duggan states, “The body of knowledge and research of Womanist thou8ght includes, but is not limited to, issues pertaining to theology… Bible and narratives… ethics… and context… Womanist theology is a tool to name, expose, question, and help transform the oppression of women, of all people… a Womanist reading takes seriously the multidimensional complexity of communication.” (Pg. 177)
Kwok Pui-lan, an Asian feminist, wrote, “Womanist scholarship emerged on the scene with a radical critique of the study of religion and theology, which has long marginalized the voices of Black women and other women of color… womanist scholars have provided something like a model, a mirror, or a pathway, inviting other multiply marginalized women to dialogue and debate, and to reflect and rejoice.” (Pg. 252-253)
Ada Maria Isazi-Díaz explains, “The struggle womanist and other racial/ethnic theologians and ethicists have been engaged in for now more than two decades is an awesome responsibility as well as a precious gift… it has been an inspiring struggle for the marginalized and minoritized, a creative struggle discovering the bringing forth new possibilities for ourselves and for members of our communities… it has [also] saddled all of us racial/ethnic theologians and ethicists committed to liberation and fullness of life with the heavy responsibility of untired presence, demanding of us the sacrifices that integrity and accountability always exact.” (Pg. 265)
Daisy Machado argues, “By keeping this tension between the particular and the universal, womanist theology was also a critique of the false universalism of the white feminists of the first wave of feminism, who claimed their experience as the experience of ‘all’ women even though in reality it was the lived experience of white middle-class women. Womanist theologians dared to claim their particularism and in so doing gave their lived experience a cultural/social/racial location that resonated with black women because it took seriously their context, their language, and their identity as black and female.” (Pg. 271)
This collection will be is great interest to those studying Womanism, Black Theology, and contemporary theology/spirituality.
Displaying 1 of 1 review