Black Women Teach Us How to Divest from Inerrancy, Infallibility, and Patriarchal Leadership

A reading list for people who question dominant models of biblical interpretation and church leadership

This is the second installment in a series on Black women’s writings and how they can help us to deconstruct and decolonize our spirituality. Last week’s list focused on theology and ethics. In today’s post, I focus on womanist biblical scholars and practical theologians.

Wrestling with Scripture

Whereas womanist theologians and ethicists help us to respond to the question, “How should we live, particularly in light of the forces of oppression that shape the lives of Black women,”womanist biblical scholars help us to address the question, “How should we interpret Scripture, particularly in light of the way that it is often used to reinforce systemic forces of privilege and oppression?” Without the work of people like Renita Weems, Wil Gafney, Angela Parker, and Mitzi Smith, I am not sure that I would still identify as a Christian. Their work gives me a framework for interpreting scriptures in ways that are liberating and life-affirming. It often does so by taking a sober look at Scripture and acknowledging the ugliness that is often within it. That’s what Renita Weems’s Battered Love did for me when I first read it in a second-year seminary course on feminist theology. Instead of dismissing or downplaying the misogyny in Scripture, Weems confronts the way that prophets in the Hebrew canon utilized graphically violent language about women to describe the covenant between Israel and YHWH.

Along with Weems’ book, I often recommend Musa Dube’s Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible and Mitzi Smith’s edited collection, I Found God in Me, as great foundational texts in womanist and African feminist biblical interpretation. Smith’s book is a reader in womanist biblical interpretation, demonstrating how Black women read the Bible in liberating ways. Dube, a Botswanan feminist theologian and the continental coordinator of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, helped me to expand my racial framework beyond America and introduced me to the ways that African scholars are deconstructing and decolonizing the Bible and Christian tradition.

It’s no small thing that Black women were blocked from entry into Ph.D. programs in biblical studies even after they were admitted to programs in theology and ethics. The gatekeepers in religious studies understood the power that Black feminist interpretative frameworks would wield. They knew that it would destabilize tradition and upend power dynamics in church and society. We see this in Kimberly Russaw’s Revisiting Rahab, where she pushes back against the Bible’s often one-dimensional portrayals of women and demonstrates the power of reading biblical narratives from the position of marginalized characters. Angela Parker pulls no punches in If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I?, where she tackles the way that White supremacy has impacted the way that the Bible is interpreted and taught in much of Christianity. She provides an exemplary argument of why womanists reject inerrancy and infallibility.

Wil Gafney brings to her work on the Old Testament a deep appreciation of Hebrew Bible interpretive traditions, a commitment to the liberation of Black women and other marginalized peoples, and a skill in translation that is in the top of the field. I highly recommend her two-volume series, Womanist Midrash, and her four-volume series, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church. In fact, I routinely look to the latter as an exegetical aid when I write sermons. [Bonus suggestion: Nyasha Junior provides an introduction to womanist biblical studies in Introduction to Womanist Biblical Interpretation].

Wrestling with the Church

Womanists don’t just wrestle with the Bible and Christian doctrine. We wrestle with the church. We challenge the church’s practices of exclusion and marginalization of Black women and girls from leadership, even as we acknowledge how many Black women find spiritual and emotional sustenance within its walls. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes’s If It Wasn’t for the Women illuminates the Black church’s dependency upon women’s labor and financial contributions. In Unfinished Business, Keri Day critiques the prosperity gospel and argues that the church can be a powerful force for economic justice for poor Black Women. Monique Moultrie’s Passionate and Pious explores how Black women reconcile the repressive sexual politics of the Black church with their own experiences. And in her new book, Have You Got Good Religion?, AnneMarie Mingo shows us how Black women’s involvement in the Civil Rights Movement was their embodiment of the ethical and moral frameworks that guided their lives.

Womanist theology is inherently interdisciplinary. Even when rooted in ethics, theology, and biblical studies, womanist scholars are always concerned about the practical implications of their work. Some womanists, however, focus explicitly on issues of congregational leadership, preaching, worship, and pastoral care. If you want to explore how Black women’s faith and ethics uniquely shapes their approaches to sermon delivery, take a look at Teresa Fry Brown’s Weary Throats and New Songs and Lisa L. Thompson’s Ingenuity. Lisa Allen constructs a womanist paradigm for worship in A Womanist Theology of Worship. And my first book, Too Heavy a Yoke, critiques the myth of the StrongBlackWoman and provides a womanist framework for pastoral care.

A recent, and much needed, development in womanism is works focusing on Black girlhood. I really appreciate Almeda Wright’s The Spiritual Lives of Young African Americans for its illumination of how Black adolescents think about God, the church, and spirituality. And I’m excited about Khristi Lauren Adams’s newest release, Womanish Theology, which helps to connect us to the inherent spiritual wisdom of Black girls.

You can find all the books in the series on this Bookshop wishlist. Next week’s post will be a meditation practice, but I’ll continue with this series in March.

What books by womanists and Black feminists have been formative for you? Leave a comment and let us know.