Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk

by Delores S. Williams

In this landmark work of emerging African American womanist theology, Delores Williams finds in the biblical figure of Hagar -- mother of Ishmael, cast into the desert by Abraham and Sarah, but protected by God -- a prototype for the struggle of African-American women. African slave, homeless exile, surrogate mother, Hagar's story provides an image of survival and defiance appropriate to black women today. Exploring all the themes inherent in Hagar's story -- poverty and slavery, ethnicity and sexual exploitation, exile and encounters with God -- Sisters in the Wilderness traces parallels in the history of African-American women from slavery to the present. A particular theology -- a womanist theology -- emerges from this shared experience; specifically, from the interplay of oppressions on account of race, sex, and class. In Part I, Williams shows how reading Hagar's story exemplifies the issues and problems black women face. The "forced motherhood," "single motherhood" and "surrogate motherhood" Hagar experienced have been part of black women's lives. Williams also explores the dismal reality of contemporary "racial narcissistic...consciousness" which finds its parallel in Hagar's travail as foreign servant and outcast. Finally, there is the religious resonance of Hagar's sojourns in the wilderness and her encounters with God. These themes Williams finds echoed in the cultural and literary traditions of African-American women. Part II considers the theological implications of the womanist understanding of Hagar's history. Williams explores the relationship between womanist and black liberation theology, and womanist theology and the black church. Through the combination of social history, political theology, and literary criticism, Williams demonstrates how approaching theology consciously informed by the awareness of the identity of black women results in a rich and vibrant knowledge of the sacred. Sisters in the Wilderness provides a reconstruction of "God-talk"

Genres: Theology, Religion, Race, Feminism, Nonfiction, Christianity, Spirituality

297 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1993

About the author

Delores Seneva Williams (born 1937) is an American Presbyterian theologian notable for her formative role in the development of womanist theology and best known for her book Sisters in the Wilderness. Her writings over the years have discussed the role intersecting oppressions of race, gender, and class have played in the situation of black women. As opposed to feminist theology as it was predominantly practiced by white women and black theology as predominantly practiced by black men, Williams argues that black women's oppression deepens the analysis of oppression in theology.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Objectively, this is a pathbreaking book. We wouldn't have womanist theology in its current form without this book. The theological academy has taken up some of Williams' major moves enthusiastically, even as it has tended to sideline younger womanist theologians. At the same time, like so many pathbreaking books, this one has at least as many blind alleys as fruitful new courses. Though consistently interesting and always (need one add?) suffused by a bracing moral clarity, this book lacks the monographic specificity that helps other revoultionary works feel constantly fresh.

For my purposes, Williams' theological method and hermeneutics are her most intriguing contributions. Theology had been in conversation with philosophy and politics for ages, but womanist theology marked the first time in generations that a theological movement took so many of its cues from a literary movement. (What precedent, if any, would we choose? Late Renaissance humanism and its impact on the Reformers? Even that was less direct.) The use of literature as a privileged theological source for Black women's experience would grow more sophisticated, but the basic pattern is already there in Williams.

What to make, then, of something like her careful retrieval of the category "genocide" and the postwar efforts of Black radicals to charge the United States with it? The historical work here is very strong, paralleling Samantha Power's work in A Problem from Hell but fifteen years earlier; the moral case, likewise, is compelling. Why make that case in this particular book? What are readers, even those won over by (say) the Hagar/Sarah material, to make of it? Its importance to Williams is obvious. There would be an amazing article, and probably a good solid book, behind the research for that chapter; but why bring it up with so little argumentative or theoretical follow-through?

When assigned (as it often is) as a founding or representative text of womanist theology, I think, this book is not likely to be read on its own terms. Its arresting, strange intensity demand attention, but the payoff remains elusive, at least between its own covers. The moves, tropes, and themes Williams surfaces in this book have proven themselves invaluable and even necessary. Perhaps it is only in comparison to them that the book itself comes off, to me, as disappointing.

[Jeremy Garber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delores Williams boldly and creatively examines the story of Hagar in the Hebrew Bible as a starting point for contemporary womanist theology. Rather than the more widely known theological tradition of “liberation,” Williams observes that throughout history to the modern day, African American women have focused on the struggle for survival and quality of life for themselves and for their families. The first part of Williams’ book examines Hagar’s story as Hagar’s struggle for survival is initiated by her own resources. Williams then traces these same struggles and resources throughout Black history, including the ambivalent role of motherhood and forced surrogacy both before and after the Civil War. Finally, Williams examines the “wilderness meetings” of the prebellum period, and suggests that “wilderness theology” is both a more accurate and more fruitful description of a theology that centers on Black experience but can apply to both men and women, individuals and community.

Part II of the book presents a more explicitly theological approach. Williams puts her wilderness theology in conversation with traditional Black liberation theology and with feminist theology. This part of the book is especially beautifully and carefully written. Williams is not shy about challenging the limited and limiting aspects of other theologies, but she does so in a way that does not denigrate the other theology and presents further questions as a guide to necessary further conversation. Her careful examination of the implications of atonement is rich and important. In the final chapter, Williams presents a fascinating case study of the Universal Hagar’s Spiritual Church as a contemporary manifestation of wilderness ecclesiology. Williams gives a theology grounded in experience and moving toward flourishing, rooted in history but not doomed to pessimism or a shallow lack of hope. Recommended for anywhere from undergraduates to professional theologians, for pastors and church members, for anyone looking for an authentic theology that seeks to make life better rather than escape it.

[Alexa Rollow · Rating 5 out of 5]

a must read for sure

[Jasonlylescampbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sisters In The Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk is a key work in womanist theology. Black women were not quite invited into two different movements in the seventies ... Black Theology and Feminist Theology. One was black, but male and other was female but white. What is more, the experiences that these two groups detail do not map onto the experiences of black women. A key and founding story for Black Liberation Theology is the exodus, a powerful key. Cone and others argue that Jesus is about the action of liberation and so the church should always be on the side of liberation.

Williams explores a different story, that of Hagar and Ishmael. Hagar is an Egyptian slave of Sarai, yes to become Sarah, wife of Abraham (yes, "Father Abraham had many sons ... ). Williams leads us to "reread [Genesis 16 and 21] with the slave woman Hagar as center of attention, Genesis 16:1-16 illustrates what the history of many African-American women taught them long ago; that is, the slave woman's story is and unavoidably has been shaped by the problems and desires of her owners. In these texts Hagar is introduced as the solution to a problem confronting a wealthy Hebrew slave-holding family..." (15)

Before chapter 16, Abraham has received a promise from God that he will be father of many nations. Sarai looking at her old body, decides she is barren takes her slave Hagar (it uses a Hebrew term for virgin) and forces her to sleep with Abraham. And her plan works, Hagar becomes pregnant, but then Sarai despises Hagar. And Abraham says Sarai can do whatever she wants or thinks is right. So "Sarai mistreated her." We don't get more information on this. But whatever it was, Hagar flees into the wilderness. Then an "angel of the Lord" comes to her and tells her to go back and submit to her master, but also that she have many descendants.

Williams points out the surrogacy role Hagar plays, first in sleeping with Sarai's husband and then in receiving a promise from the angel. "The human role in the 'Yahweh promise modality' has (before Hagar) been filled by a male, the patriarch. Hagar steps into the usual male role of receiving a promise of numerous posterity." What is more, Hagar gives God a name El Roi, God of Seeing.

If we move ahead in the book of Genesis to chapter 21, Sarai, now Sarah, has born her own son, Isaac. The NIV says 9 But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, 10 and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.” This is not Williams interpretation who says "Now Sarah watched the son that Hagar the Egyption had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. 'Drive away that slave-girl and her son,' she said to Abram, 'this slave-girl's son is not to share the inheritance with my son Isaac.'"

Robert Alter, a Hebrew scholar and translator, says that "Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing." He says the Hebrew metsaheq can mean laughing or mocking or joking. Alter explains that of course mocking would provoke anger, but since specifically Sarah names the inheritance as the problem, it is likely that she witnessed "Ishmael presuming to play the role of Isaac, child of laughter." But if we will allow Williams to lead us, she questions whether what Sarah is really concerned about is whether Ishmael as the eldest child of Abraham will inherit "a double portion of his fathers wealth. Law forbade the father from showing special privilege to the son of the wife he preferred and thereby protected the firstborn son's inheritance rights."

And the story continues on getting weirder. Abraham is distressed by what Sarah says because Ishmael is his son. But God commands him to "do whatever Sarah says." "It is God who ultimately destroys Ishmael's right to claim primogeniture and relieve the appropriate inheritance." So the next morning Abraham gave them some bread and water, "put the child on her shoulder and sent her away." She is sent out into the very land that the future Israelites would wander for forty years after being freed from Egypt. She is sent out, stripped of the only thing she really had as a slave, her connection to a large family and therefore a home and wealth.

Williams then shifts to discussing the history of Black women in the USA. She starts in the antebellum south and quotes the testimony of Sojourner Truth in 1851:

Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs me any best place!" And raising herself to her full height, and her voice to a pitch like rolling thunder, she asked. "And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! (and she bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing her tremendous muscular power). I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear de lash as well! And ain't, I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern, and seen 'em mos' all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

She talks about Harriet Tubman who her people called Moses, who led regiments and scouted for the Union Army during the Civil War. Then Williams begins exploring literatures, comparing who women are written about by black male writers like Baldwin and Wright to that of Alice Walker and Zora Hurston. This combination of lived historical experience with theology and biblical scholarship is powerful.

Williams brings us to why the Hagar image maps onto the Black experience, especially today. The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves of the rebel states, but all the accompanying promises dissolved. The land granted the freed slaves by Sherman was given back to the plantation owners. Reconstruction fell with the compromise of 1876. Like Hagar with her young child, the freed slaves were dropped into a dangerous wilderness where they had to combine dependence on God with dependence upon themselves and survival strategies of their own makings to build a home in the wilderness.

On p 109, Williams says the "Victorian ideal woman was an exact opposite of the kind of womanhood Hagar-in-the-wilderness and many poor black women modeled. The Victorian true woman was described as one 'who, through Christ, blesses man and helps make his home a joy and life a privilege.' White ministers described this ideal woman as "pliant ... adapted [by nature] to meet man's wants ... feminine ... soft, tender and delicate.' Further, the true woman's sphere is the home." Then Williams compares this to the hard success of black women working and caring for their families.

Theological Methodology

On p 132 she gives a "womanist hermeneutic of identification-ascertainment. This is a strategy all theologians and Christians should engage in, especially those who think they only believe and preach the Bible. It involved "three modes of inquiry: subjective, communal and objective. 1) Through an analysis of their own faith journey with regard to biblical foundations, theologians discover with whom and with what events they personally identify in scripture. 2) Through an analysis of the biblical foundations of the faith journey of the Christian community with which they are affiliated, Christian theologians determine the biblical faith, events and biblical characters with whom the community has identified.

Through this work of subjective, then communal analysis, we can see what "biases" we bring to the interpretation of scripture. Then, 3) "theologians engage the objective mode of inquiry that ascertains both the biblical events, characters and circumstances with whom the biblical writers have identified and those with whom the biblical writers have not identified, that is, those who are victims of those with whom the biblical writers have identified."

This is hard but important work and leads us to much more real, but uncomfortable truths. For example, it is from this perspective that Williams questions James Cone and Black Theology's identification with the Hebrew slaves liberated from Egypt, but neglect that these Hebrews went on to destroy a nation of people, the Canaanites.

Wilderness

Williams argues that the wilderness experience fits with the contemporary situation more than the Exodus event for these reasons (and others): 1) its "male/female/family-inclusive"; 2) it suggestive of "the essential role of human initiative (along with divine interpretation) in the activity of survival, of community building" even "in the work of liberation"; 3) speaks to "culture of resistance"; 4) even in the Exodus narrative there is wilderness wandering with "God's direction and the work of building a peoplehood and a community." (141-142)

New Vision of Jesus

Interpreting the Bible in light of the black woman's experience, especially that of exploitation and surrogacy, it is easy to see that Jesus on the cross becomes a celebration of suffering and exploitation and to the neglect of the "ministerial vision" and kingdom of God that Jesus brings to us. Williams says "The cross is a reminder of how humans have tried throughout history to destroy visions of righting relationship that involve transformation of tradition and transformation of social relationships and arrangements sanctioned by the status quo."

"Jesus showed humankind a vision of righting relations between body, mind and spirit through" his teachings ("beatitudes, parables, moral directions and reprimands"); "through a healing ministry of touch and being touched...through a militant ministry of expelling evil forces ... through a ministry of compassion and love." As Christians, black women cannot forget the cross, but neither can they glorify in it. To do so is to glorify suffering and to render their exploitation sacred." (148)

Dialogue with Feminism

As earlier passages are working to re-read the Bible and Black Theology in light of black woman experience, Williams does the same with the Feminist movement. She seeks to define the scope of the term Patriarchy, saying that it leaves a lot out. "It is silent about class-privileged women oppressing women without class privilege. It is silent about white men and white women working together to maintain white supremacy and white privilege ... It is silent about the positive boons patriarchy has bestowed upon many white women ... in some cases the choice to stay home and raise children and/or develop a career--and to hire another woman (usually a black one) 'to help out' in either case."

Williams makes clear that she is not proposing to throw out the word, just that it is important for Womanist and Feminist to be in dialogue so they can appreciate a more expansive view of society and history and the trouble women face.

She also talks about the community aspect, quoting Jer 29:4-7. That "community responsibility is commanded in the work of survival of the group." And that this is true both for the smaller community, in this case black americans, but also their working toward peace and good will for the larger community as well. The Jeremiah passage "Seek the welfare of the city where i have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." Williams asks "In other words, seek the welfare of your oppressors? African Americans in the diaspora can perhaps hear the silence in the text reiterate what their experience in America has taught: when the white-controlled power structures and ordinary white people are prospering, then black people are at least not brutalized as badly. When the white-controlled power structures and ordinary white people are suffering economically and when the white population decreases, black people are brutalized and scapegoated in every possible way."

From the Afterward

"It is no accident that a black woman, Ida B. Wells, birthed the modern civil rights movement in the late nineteenth century, and that another black woman, Rosa Parks, birthed the civil rights movement in the late twentieth century. Neither was it an accident that black women have encouraged black people to endure when, as Professor Eric Lincoln says, 'endurance gave no purpose.'" (209)

This is an important work and certainly one which united states christians should take up, especially white christians as they have a lot of learning to do.

[samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ch 1 Hagar’s Story: A Route to Black Women’s Issues
• Early in the text motherhood is an important issue. Obviously Sarai believes it is Yahweh who controls pro-creation in the family, but it is she who controls Hagar. So, for Hagar, motherhood will be a coerced experience involving the violation of her body over which she, as a slave, has no control.
• Exegetes have traditionally interpreted this passage so that attention was focused upon the conflict between Hagar and Sarai. And it is usually suggested that this conflict arose because Hagar began to feel that she should take Sarai's place because she was producing the offspring for Abram.6 Such an interpretation implies that Hagar did not know that the law prescribed stringent punishment for slave surrogates who tried to put themselves on an equal basis with the barren wife.
• The word used in Genesis to describe Hagar is šip â, meaning “a virgin, dependent maid who serves the mistress of the house.” This means that Hagar was a virgin when she was made to lie down with Abram.
o okay out of date but I get the vision
• Why, for instance, does Sarai phrase her accusation to Abram in language that suggests intimacy rather than legal relation between Hagar and the slave master (“I...put my slave-girl into your arms”)?
• Hagar becomes the first female in the Bible to liberate herself from oppressive power structures. Though the law prescribes harsh punishment for run-away slaves, she takes the risk rather than endure more brutal treatment by Sarai. The harshness of the force Sarai exerts upon Hagar is indicated in the passage by the verb (‘nh), which is also used in Exodus to indicate the suffering experience of all the Hebrews when they were slaves in Egypt.
• Nevertheless Hagar, by way of her own speech and religious experience, comes through to the reader as a person momentarily in control of her destiny. In the wilderness to which she has escaped, the issues of survival and quality of life come to the surface in her story. And the divinity is at work in the process. The text reports that “the angel of Yahweh found her by a spring in the desert, the spring on the road to Shur” (Genesis 16:7). With reference to the identity of the divinity here, The New Jerusalem Bible states that in most ancient texts the angel of Yahweh “is not a created being distinct from God...but God himself in visible form.”
• HAGAR HERSELF IS OBVIOULSY ON THR WAY TO EGYPT, for Shur is thought to have been located on the Northeast border of Egypt.
• SUMMARY: First, God invites her to speak, asking, “Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” (Genesis 16:8). The angel of Yahweh still identifies Hagar as Sarai's property, but seeks from Hagar her own words about her past and her sense of destination. Hagar speaks about neither her past nor her future. Rather, she tells only the present: “I am running away from my mistress Sarai” (Genesis 16:8b). Hagar's response here suggests that Hagar still sees herself as property. Then, in what appears to be God's support of slavery, the angel of Yahweh says to Hagar, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her” (Genesis 16:9). If Hagar obeys, she can be sure that her autonomy will be severely restricted.
o Accd Tamez: What God wants is that she and the child should he saved, and at the moment, the only way to accomplish that is not in the desert, but by returning to the house of Abraham. Ishmael hasn't been born.... Hagar simply must wait a little longer, because Ishmael must be born in the house of Abraham to prove that he is the first-born….While Tamez's observation has merit, her initial attempt to put this aspect of Hagar's experience with God into a liberation mode stretches the text beyond what it declares. The angel of Yahweh is, in this passage, no liberator God.
• Nevertheless, the angel of Yahweh makes a promise to Hagar similar to the promise Yahweh makes to Abram in Genesis 15:2–6. “The angel of Yahweh further said to her [Hagar], ‘I shall make your descendants too numerous to be counted’”(Genesis 16:10). This means that Hagar, a foreign female slave whose future would ordinarily not advance past slavery,20 is given hope not only for the survival of her generation but also hope for the possibility of future freedom for her seed
• The promise assures survival, and the birth announcement forecasts the strategy that will be necessary for survival and for obtaining a quality of life.22 This is a blessing, suggesting that Ishmael will be free and a warrior. He will be able to help create and protect the quality of life he and his mother, Hagar, will later develop in the desert.
• Naming of shrines, wells and other places was done by men, but Hagar's authority substitutes for male authority. The text claims, “Hagar gave a name to Yahweh who had spoken to her. ‘You are El Roi,’ by which she meant, ‘Did I not go on seeing here, after him who sees me?’
• As Phyllis Trible points out, Hagar is the only person in the Bible to whom is attributed the power of naming God, who has ministered to her and empowered her in these surrogate roles
• HASHEM IS RARELY EL: While Hagar's God may be, as Ringgren suggests, a localized form of “a single great divinity,”25 it is interesting that this deity is not associated with Hagar's oppressors, the patriarchal family.
o EL ROI parallels RA, her Egyptian god
o The fact that Hagar does not call upon the God of the slave holders Sarai and Abram and the fact that she does not name her God in accord with their (Sarai and Abram's) patriarchal traditions lifts up another bit of Egyptian tradition.
o According to Egyptian faith, one could do nothing better for anyone than by inscriptions and representations to “cause his name to live,” and nothing worse than to allow it to perish. The Egyptians zealously endeavoured to root out and destroy the names and figures of people they hated; this act of revenge was common at all periods, and was practiced by kings as well as by private individuals.
o Was Hagar's naming of God an act of defiance and resistance as well as an expression of awe?
o This act of naming is Hagar's last word in the Genesis 16 account.
• 21 is E; 16 is J
• At this point in the narrative, the issue of economic realities connects with the issue of homelessness. Abraham has given Hagar and his son no economic resources to sustain them in their life away from his family.
• Regardless of Ishmael's (or Hagar's) age, bread and a skin of water would not sustain them on their journey, which apparently had no destination. The text claims, “She wandered off into the desert of Beersheba. When the skin of water was finished she abandoned the child under a bush. Then she went and sat down at a distance, about a bowshot away, thinking ‘I cannot bear to see the child die.’ Sitting at a distance, she began to sob”
• Hagar's autonomy is manifested in the last act she performs in the Genesis 21 narrative. Assuming a role ordinarily prescribed for males in most ancient Near Eastern households, Hagar gets a wife for Ishmael from Egypt (verse 21b).
Ch2 Tensions in Motherhood: From Slavery to Freedom
• Yet there is no denying that black women's roles as mothers and nurturers have been important for the development of institutional life in both the Anglo and the African-American communities. Attempts to understand social life in the African-American community must take seriously the history of the black woman's motherhood roles, which were institutionalized in the slavocracy as “mammy”2 and were later redeemed from negative connotations and reinstitutionalized in some African-American denominational churches as “mothers of the church.”
• In some African-American literary history following the antebellum period, black writers infer that this kind of God-consciousness and God-dependence supporting black mothers is problematic. They suggest that for some black mothers, this consciousness and dependence created needs that could only be fulfilled within the limits of the black mother's religion.
• Postbellum black writers were trying to present the black woman's mothering and nurturing roles in relation to the transformative social processes occurring in the black community after the Civil War.
• In the newly freed African-American community, this business of transferring authority to the black male represented a process of translating power in the ex-slave community into a more stable patriarchal model.
• Emerging shortly after the Civil War during the reconstruction period, the lyrics to many blues songs often present black women in conflicting roles as mamma and baby simultaneously. THE MAMMA-BABY
• Through black mothering and nurturing depicted in the deposits of African-American culture we see social process in the black community (in both the antebellum and postbellum periods) affected by the God-consciousness and God-dependence of African-American women. Whether positively or negatively assessed by the various artists used in this study, the African-American mother's God-consciousness and absolute dependence upon God provided hope in personal and community relationships where hope seemed absurd. Therefore, systems of bondage like racism and sexism did not bring permanent lethargy to the community.
Ch3 Social-Role Surrogacy: Naming Black Women’s Oppression
• whereas Hagar's experience with surrogacy was primarily biological, African-American women's experience with surrogacy has been primarily associated with social-role exploitation.
• Black women experienced coerced surrogacy under slavery and voluntary surrogacy in postbellum (that was hardly voluntary at all: so pressured)
• forms of coerced antebellum surrogacy result in mammy, masculinization of black women, slave woman/master sexual liason/black woman as over-sexed.
Ch 4: Color Struck: A State of Mind
• Hagar's story in the Bible does not provide enough information for us to respond to the “why” of her enslavement. The Bible does not tell how or why the Egyptian woman Hagar came to be the slave of a Hebrew woman—given Egypt's overwhelming power and leadership in antiquity and the Hebrew people's relative obscurity and powerlessness. Nor does the text indicate whether Hagar's skin color had anything to do with the nature of her bondage among the Hebrews and her miserable treatment by Sarah. But in America skin color makes a difference. Thus African-American women's skin color has had a lot to do with their enslavement and with the continuation of their oppression. Hagar's ethnicity was based on national identity, while African-American women's ethnicity is indicated by their skin color or the drop of “black blood” that flows through their veins.
• the impact of aesthetic values, of religion, economy
Ch 5 Sisters in the Wilderness and Community Meanings
• Although many themes in African-American women’s history correspond with many themes in Hagar’s story, nothing links the two women together more securely than their religious experiences in the wilderness.
• Hagar and African-American women (with their children) meet God there in the midst of trouble and what appears to be impending death and destruction.
• For many black Christian women today, “wilderness” or “wilderness-experience” is a symbolic term used to represent a near-destruction situation in which God gives personal direction to the believer and thereby helps her make a way out of what she thought was no way.
• In the biblical story Hagar's wilderness experience happened in a desolate and lonely wilderness where she—pregnant, fleeing from the brutality of her slave owner, Sarai, and without protection—had religious experiences that helped her and her child survive when survival seemed doomed. For both Hagar and the African-American women, the wilderness experience meant standing utterly alone, in the midst of serious trouble, with only God's support to rely upon.
• Slaves had a positive concept of wilderness: It was a free and friendly space where one received from Jesus the strength needed to rise above one's ailments
o Slave women were often most persistent in their effort to undergo the wilderness experience.
o The wilderness experience, as religious experience, was transforming. Its structure was physical isolation (of slave from slave environment); establishing a relation (between Jesus and slave); healing by Jesus (of whatever malady afflicted the slave); transformation (conversion of the slave's more secular bent to a thoroughly religious bent); and motivation to return (to the slave community) changed for the better
• For whites, the aim was to transform wilderness into civilization
• After emancipation, however, the slaves’ notion of wilderness took on added dimension. Their understanding of wilderness was not only of a place where black men and black women, like Hagar, met God. It was also the wide, wide world (a hostile place), where black women must go to seek a living for their families.
o Immediately after slavery, then, African Americans apparently had two attitudes toward wilderness. One, deriving from antebellum days, emphasized religious experience and projected positive feelings about the wilderness as sacred space. The other sense of the wilderness seemed shaped by new experiences of economic insecurity, social displacement and the new forms of oppression ex-slaves encountered in a “free” world.
• Apparently, at some point in African-American consciousness, these two senses of wilderness came together in the appropriation of the biblical Hagar. In African-American culture, this Hagar-in-the-wilderness figure began to represent both the positive antebellum black religious experience of meeting God in an isolated place and the negative postbellum experience of “pioneering” in a wide world hostile to African-American social and economic advancement.
• Finally, all the women and Hagar could testify, “Me and God stood up.”
Ch 6 Womanist God-Talk and Black Liberation Theology
• The fabric of Hagar’s and African American women’s experience designed by their exploitation, by their faith in God, by positive and negative human relationships and reactions, by motherhood, by fierce survival struggles and by resistance strategies
• Now we must determine the theological yield of this womanist focus upon black women's and Hagar's experience.
• A womanist rereading of the biblical Hagar-Sarah texts in relation to African-American women's experience raises a serious question about the biblical witness. The question is about its use as a source validating black liberation theology's normative claim of God's liberating activity in behalf of all the oppressed.
• Therefore, in the use of scripture theologians should initially engage a womanist hermeneutic of identification-ascertainment that involves three modes of inquiry: subjective, communal and objective.
• Black experience has four active constituents
o 1. The Horizontal Encounter. This is interaction between black and white groups in a socio-historical context. The interaction results in negative and/or positive relationships and sociopolitical situations. Most often the encounter between blacks and whites is described negatively in black liberation theology. From this encounter, suffering has become a characteristic of African-American community life.
o 2. The Vertical Encounter. In this category black liberation theologians speak of the meeting between God and oppressed people. This meeting not only results in the creation of sustaining and nurturing cultural forms, like black religion, but the oppressed also achieve positive psychological and physical states of freedom and liberation.
o 3. Transformations of Consciousness. These can occur in both a positive and negative sense. They are positive when oppressed people arrive at self- or group-identity through awareness of self-worth and through the appreciation of the value of black people and black culture. Transformations of consciousness are negative when black people give up positive black consciousness and identify with alien and destructive forms of consciousness.
o 4. An Epistemological Process. This is a special way the mind processes data on the basis of action in the three categories above. The socio-historical context plays an important role in this process. (Theologian James Cone emphasizes the significance of this process for the black theological task.)
• But if black theology is to be inclusive of black women’s experience it must give attention to women’s re/productive history
o It involves more than women birthing children, nurturing and attending to family affairs. Though the events and ideas associated with these realities do relate, “women's re/production history” has to do with whatever women think, create, use and pass on through their labor for the sake of women's and the family's well-being.
• I suggest that in black theology today, the wilderness experience is a more appropriate
• name than the black experience to describe African-American existence in North America. This is so because:
o 1. wilderness experience is male/female/family-inclusive in its imagistic, symbolic and actual content; black experience has been described with an androcentric bias in theology, and its perimeters are narrowly racial;
o 2. wilderness experience is suggestive of the essential role of human initiative (along with divine intervention) in the activity of survival, of community building, of structuring a positive quality of life for family and community; it is also suggestive of human initiative in the work of liberation; black experience says very little about black initiative and responsibility in the community's struggle for liberation, and nothing about internal tensions and intentions in community building and survival struggle;
o 3. wilderness experience is African-American religious experience that is simultaneously African-American secular experience; thus wilderness experience—especially in its symbolic dimension—signals the unity of the sacred and the secular in African-American reality; black experience does not function or signal this way;
o 4. indicating more than the negative reality the name black experience has come to typify in both the African-American and Anglo-American world, wilderness experience extends beyond being bitten by rats and living six people in a kitchenette; wilderness experience indicates female-male intelligence and ingenuity in the midst of struggle, creating a culture of resistance;
o 5. wilderness experience in its symbolic manifestation in African-American consciousness lifts up and supports leadership roles of African-American women and mothers;
o 6. in a Christian theological context wilderness

[Jason Palmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me White mansplain this book to you. I give 4 stars to the parts that I liked, but there were parts that dragged and read more like a dissertation meant to impress a committee of male scholars. The other parts, the good parts, exposed Williams's true passion, which was a religion that eschewed the Bible entirely without eschewing the good parts of Black womanist Christianity. I like how she theorizes differently between liberation and survival, because that is what MLKs civil rights movement lacked. The Civil Rights Movement was all about survival really. It was all about asking for a bone from the White table. Therefore, when the Civil Rights Act (the table scrap) was granted, people got what they wanted, they guessed, and they stopped fighting. Worse, they were expected to be grateful. Worse still, they now felt that they were invested in and were an integral part of the settler empire, the very empire that MLK said was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. They had achieved an equal piece of the pie that White people stole from Native people. Many Black people realized that they had simply "mobilized" against the lack of a few freedoms like the freedom to support White-owned businesses and the freedom to drink out of White drinking fountains. They had not "organized," as Kwame Ture put it. Such a large quantity of disparate mobilizations seemed like organization, but it was not, for the most part. The organization that emerged was the Black Panther Party, but the likes of that have not been seen after the FBIs CoINTELPRO (well maybe a glimmer in BLM before it sold out to the Democratic Party). What really happened in 1964 was that Black people only achieved a way to survive the settler colonial hellscape that is the so-called United States of America. The majority had lost the means of even seeing the possibility of absolute liberation from it. So, Williams posits that we need both: survival and liberation. Of course, we need to survive the post-apocalypse that the US occupation of Abya Yala represents, but we also need to have our eyes unfailingly fixed on a future wherein Abya Yala is free from the US and other forms of oppression (like Canada). I like how there is no extended conclusion that is just a summary of the whole book. Instead, the very last chapter presents a lot of really cool, ethnographic information about a religion I'd never heard of. This religion worships Madam Hurley, and I think it is meant to represent what Black Christianity can approximate to the extent that it throws out the Bible, US interpretations of the Bible, and androcentric Christology. However, if Williams really wants to see the culmination of a truly womanist theology, I hope she starts her own organization (not mobilization).

[JC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I sadly waste a lot of my life doomscrolling through Left-twitter arguments and not long ago there was a heated surrogacy discourse between Sophie Lewis (author of Full Surrogacy Now) and various proletarian feminist voices like Mila Ghorayeb and Esperanza Fonseca (who’s involved with AF3IRM, and I think is a Maoist). I’m not familiar with the contours of the debate so I won’t comment on it here, but I do know Williams in this book paints a very horrifying history of the way biblical surrogacy stories were deployed by American slave owners in a way that I found more compelling than Atwood was able to achieve with The Handmaid’s Tale. The gravity of this theological issue was made evident to me by Amaryah Armstrong on one of her guest appearances on the Magnificast, which I haven’t listened to for a while now because I just haven’t listened to podcasts for many months. But the slave woman Hagar is a central figure in one of the most important theological arguments Paul is trying to make in Galatians and becomes an enormous problem for anyone who is trying to reconcile Divine justice with a God (as depicted in the bible) who asks a slave woman to return to a slaveowner who has effectively raped her. Therefore, Williams presents some very insightful questions to contemplate regarding atonement and problematizing notions of redemptive suffering. And Williams is not simply working from the Galatians text, but locating the issue of atonement right in Leviticus 19 where the law regards the slave woman differently from the free woman, based on the notion that the slave woman is property. Williams also works through a variety of Hebrew bible texts in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, 1 Samuel, Jeremiah that rightfully should unsettle readers who can think of the horrors of American slavery, and all other slavery that happened under European colonialism. The Exodus narrative is tainted by all these other texts in the biblical account and one always has to attend to these problems as a faithful reader of the bible. Williams also has a really fascinating section on Asian feminist theology, particularly on Chung Hyun Kyung's work on Mary. Considering that the Magnificat might be my favourite biblical text, I look forward to reading some of Chung’s work when I have the chance.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lately I have been exploring black theology through an online discussion group and been wrestling with what they have to say about God and Jesus Christ. In this book, Delores S. Williams uses the biblical story of Hagar in the book of Genesis to explore what it means to be a black woman living in America and a Christian. It is an impressive book that links the trials and travails of the black woman experience to this biblical story of oppression and survival.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part looks at the Hagar/Ishmael story in the book of Genesis and makes connections between Hagar's oppression & survival and links it to the unique experience of black women in America. Ms. Williams points how, like Hagar, enslaved black women were taken advantage of by their masters and provided surrogate children to them and how, like Hagar again, enslaved black women could face abuse and mistreatment by their owners. Drawing on these parallels, she expounds upon black women's critical role in the black church and black community life. The second part of the book is a kind of dialogue between the womanist theology Ms. Williams is expounding upon and other theologies/ideologies that it bumps up against such as black liberation theology, as expressed by black theologians such as James H. Cone and others, white feminist ideology, and the black church as a whole.

Not everyone will agree with Ms. Williams's arguments. But the value of this book is in how it provides a unique perspective on Christian faith and practice from a group that too rarely gets a chance to speak out about their own travails. Whether this is your first experience with womanist theology or not, I would recommend this book to all Christian thinkers.

[Matthew Sobolik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sisters in the Wilderness is written in two parts: the first part examines the historical oppression of black women, while the second part uses these historical insights to develop a Womanist Theology, both parts are written through the lens of the story of Hagar. The first part of the book was interesting, although the history she presented was at times rather surface level. I really enjoyed the second part of the book. Williams' critiques of Black Liberation Theology and White Feminist Theology are interesting, specifically her discussion about how the traditional view of the crucifixion can be untenable to black women as it prioritizes suffering and surrogacy. If the book had ended 15 pages earlier I would have given it 4 stars, unfortunately in the last pages of the book Williams promotes a hilariously absurd cult - the Universal Hagar's Spiritual Church. This sect believes, according to Williams, that their founder was the reincarnation of Christ who ushered in a 7,000 year era, including prophesies for the year 6953. The leaders birthday is a church-wide holiday usurping Christmas, and members can go to a school to become mediums and when they graduate are given a wand with hieroglyphics on it. The only justification given for this cult is that the founder was black and women are allowed into positions of power in the church. The utter absurdity of the last dozen pages makes me rethink much of the rest of the book, many of the arguments that I enjoyed but had some issues with, I came to see in a different light after Williams promotes this absurd cult. I would like to recommend the first 190 pages of this book, because there is a lot in there that I legitimately think is powerful and important, but the absurdity of the last dozen pages mars the book to the extent that I can't really endorse any of the book.

[Cathie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another church group read. This one was slow going but ended up being worth it.
Womanist is black feminist reading of the Bible, which emphasizes Hagar's story as a slave and in the wilderness, relying on God to "make a way out of no way."

Chapter 6 -
"God's gift to humans, through Jesus, was to invite them to participate in this MINISTERIAL vision of righting relationships. The response to this invitation by human principalities and powers was the horrible deed the cross represents - the evil of humankind trying to kill the MINISTERIAL vision of life in relation that Jesus brought to humanity. The resurrection does not depend upon the cross for life, for the cross only represents historical evil trying to defeat good. The resurrection of Jesus and the flourishing of God's spirit in the world as the result of resurrection represent the life of the MINISTERIAL vision gaining victory over the evil attempt to kill it."

Chapter 7 -
discusses how God relates to the oppressed in history
" The central image of Christ on the cross as the savior of the world communicates the message that suffering is redemptive... it asks people to suffer for the sake of helping evildoers see their evil ways. It puts concern for he evildoers ahead of concern for the victim of evil. It makes victims the servants of the evildoers' salvation.... Jesus did not choose the cross. He chose to live a life in opposition to unjust, oppressive cultures... Jesus chose integrity and faithfulness, refusing to change course because of threat."

[E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finally read this classic theological text after years of reading other books that discussed it (there are still many classic theology books I haven't read, as I spent graduate school reading the philosophical canon).

I was interested in the places where she argues for something (such as her criticisms of traditional atonement theory) that have since become standard. In this way you see the influence of her work on the wider discipline.

I'm drawn to the concluding remarks on the survival strategies of black women: an art of cunning, an art of encounter, an art of care, and an art of connecting. I would like further constructive theology on these, which I think would be helpful for pastoral care and preaching. A key point is that simply enduring is itself "an act of defiance, a revolutionary act."

[Nikki Mcgee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a great book, I wish I had read it earlier. I would also recommend looking up Delores S Williams on youtube to hear her speak.

The book presents womanist theology as an alternative to feminist and black theology - stating that they both overlook the oppressed of the oppressed - black women.

The book is bold and takes on the giants of Martin Luther King and James H Cone as well as classical
Theologians - arguing that the glorification of suffering and atonement models are harmful to black women in particular. We need to construct new lenses through which to view the Christian story.

I know the story of Hagar but thanks to Williams I now feel like I actually know her rather than a story which views her in passing, as a womb to be used and then rejected.

This is a must read.

[Rain · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look into how mainline Christianity, and even The Black Church as an institution has both saved and failed black women historically. Williams uses womanism, a precursor to what we now call intersectionality, as well as the history of black women as surrogates for white power, to make a new idea for how spirituality and Christianity can be repurposed for the needs of black women.

I am absolutely not the book's target audience, but, or maybe therefore, I learned a great deal, and wonder why Williams is not ranked with the other thinkers on civil rights. A great recommendation via the Free Black Women's Library challenge.

[Milton Brasher-Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I wish I had come across a long, long time ago. Starting with Hagar's story in Genesis, Williams challenges us to read the Bible differently, to understand that the various books were written by people who were oppressed, and they tell the story of a God who is, first, the God of the oppressed.

At the Festival of Homiletics, Otis Moss III cautioned that the American Christians have too easily become "chaplains of the Empire." He was echoing Dolores Williams. They are both right.

Like I said, I wish I had read this book a long, long time ago.

[Mary Tuttle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book took me forever to read. It IS an important book. It is a groundbreaking work on womanist (African-American feminist) theology. I appreciated it, even as I crawled through it. It reads like a textbook - a heavy, dry, theological textbook. There were moments when it rang, but those were few. Those were moments when the author allowed herself to shine through. I would look forward to other works by this author which would be less scholarly and more impassioned. I believe she has it in her.

[Clayton Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Williams effortlessly weaves together history, literature, biblical narrative, and theology into this groundbreaking text. It was a fascinating read through and through. And yet, I’m left utterly confused as to why in the final few pages after the in-depth analysis and reflection on these themes, Williams unapologetically endorses a certifiable cult as a possible solution merely because of its egalitarian leadership structure.

[Kate Belt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reflecting on how Black women find themselves in Biblical stories and Christian theology has expanded my consciousness of the African-American experience. From Wikipedia: “An American Presbyterian theologian notable for her formative role in the development of womanist theology . . . discussed the role intersecting oppressions of race, gender, and class have played in the situation of Black women.”

[Katie Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A foundational text in womanist theology. Williams does not shy away from pondering on the complicated legacy and implications of sacred scripture and the ways they have been interpreted throughout the centuries. She provides us with a roadmap to engage the texts with fresh eyes and justice-oriented hearts.

[Mitzi VDS · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book very informative and thought provoking. It is a bit more scholarly than my attention span, so I chose not to finish it. I will incorporate the concepts into my Bible study and teaching. If I ever do a teaching on Hagar, I will defiantly refer to this book and the valuable information.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

A slog to read through in parts, but this book is nothing short of revolutionary to my worldview. The commentary on the Hagar story combined with the historical survey of African-American female experience opened a lot of doors for me to pursue further.

[Graydon Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delores Williams is one of the mothers of Womanist Theology, and this is a fantastic book to learn about it. Her wilderness imagery is beautiful and she offers strong critiques of how Feminist Theology and Black Theology have left Black women out.

[cindy]

rec: Women and Redemption: A Theological History

[Chelsey Carroll · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to read this again when I can pay more attention to it. It lost me in some parts, and then other parts had some really profound statements and connections to my understanding and my church’s history, theory, and practices.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent exposition of womanist theology and the African American Church through the context of Hagar's story. I recommend it for anyone interested in theology.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love black people.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Essential reading for theologians.

[Elicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye opening perspective and theology. Going to have to revisit and explore more.

[Danica is Booked · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love so much of this. Very intriguing. Dragged a bit at times, but overall fascinating.

[Jack Markman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now I want to read The Color Purple.

[Violet · Rating 5 out of 5]

ya she rocks