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As seen in Black Women and Religious Cultures 2, no. 1 (Spr 2021): 18-37.
Abstract
Using a womanist auto-ethnographic approach, this essay presents an anamnestic remedy for healing cultural trauma and cultural amnesia within the African American community. The essay narrates the creation then infusion of Rituals of Restorative Resistance into the liturgy of a traditional, urban Black Baptist Church as a means of resistance, resilience, and restoration. By commemorating the sacrifices of Jesus and enslaved African ancestors in communion rituals that are enhanced with sacred songs, readings, and symbols, the liturgy expands the meaning of “Do This in Remembrance of Me” (1 Corinthians 11:24) to “Re-Member Me.” Drawing especially on the work of Engelbert Mveng, Delores S. Williams, Barbara A. Holmes, Linda E. Thomas, and JoAnne Marie Terrell, and combining theology and anthropology, the essay describes a hermeneutic of healing within the Black community. It argues (1) that participation in the enactment of Rituals Of Restorative Resistance decolonizes minds and deconstructs negative Western characterizations of black and brown bodies and (2) that ritualistic inversion and transformation of painful histories and traumatic stories into narratives and symbols of endurance and faith can re-invent, re-construct, and re-member individuals and communities into whole and healed entities.
As seen in Black Women and Religious Cultures 4, no. 1 (July 2024): 1-23.
Abstract
Honoring the memory of Delores S. Williams and commemorating the 30th anniversary of Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, this essay reflects on and pays tribute to the life and works of Williams as one who influenced the author as a teacher, mentor, friend, and theological mother. While Sisters will always be pivotal in womanist scholarship, the author proposes that it be read in conjunction with Williams’ lesser-known published
essays to position her as a major American prophetic voice of the 20th and 21st centuries. The essay asserts that as an ancestor Williams still has much to say to the country and the church in 2024. It argues that Williams addressed racism, white supremacy, and the possible demise of democracy in the 1990s, but her prophetic voice and warnings were not heard because so many of the less known essays are not as visible, appreciated or readily available. This article explores some of those hidden gems and re-presents Delores Williams’ prophetic words to be received again. The author concludes that in an era when white supremacy and hate groups are proliferating across the country, the need to hear again the warnings Williams laid out can aid efforts to combat these problems while clinging to hope for the future.
My new book, “A View From the Balcony: Opera Through Womanist Eyes,” introduces a Balcony Hermeneutic which intersects Womanist Theology, Womanist Anthropology, and Black Performance Theory to trace the racist history of the United States through the development of minstrel shows and opera as acceptable genres of cultural entertainment. She situates African Americans--and other marginalized minorities forcibly consigned to the balconies of theaters and American society, culture, and institutions -- into positions of agency as they peer over metaphoric balcony railings to locate, excavate, and correct the historical underpinnings of Western philosophical and theological thought which seeded the racist ideologies that continue to disparage indigenous, Black, and Brown people in the names of God and Christianity.
Her research further presents a Womanist anamnestic remedy for the healing of cultural trauma and cultural amnesia within the African American community. Creating and infusing Rituals of Restorative Resistance into the liturgical worship experience of traditional urban Black Baptist Churches becomes a means of resistance, resilience, restoration, and a move toward a hermeneutic and practice of healing within the Black community.
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