Kelly Brown Douglas’ book, The Black Christ, is ensconced in the canon of womanist theology as a seminal work pivotal christological reading. There are numerous womanist and Black Theology christological works currently available. (For additional work on womanist christologies, see “Womanist Christology and the Wesleyan Tradition,” by A. Crawford and White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response, Jacquelyn Grant).
The notion of Black women’s bodies as sacred is an essential part of understanding our 2024 Theme, “Black Women’s Radical Religious Traditions.” (As one example of a scholarly treatment of the concept of Black women’s bodies as sacred, see “Home is Where the Heart is: Gendered Sacred Space in South Africa,” Judy Tobler). Exploring Black women’s radical religious traditions allows us to interrogate issues such as the sacredness of the Black female body as understood within African traditions and throughout the African Diaspora.
This video features the powerful analysis of Dr. Eboni Marshall Turman at Yale Divinity School, as she contemplates the topic, “This is My Body.” By exploring contemporary and eucharistic themes, Turman provides fresh insights to this particular aspect of theological discourse, strengthening our understanding of radical religious epistemologies. Merriam Webster consistently defines “radical” as extreme. However, the problem with the definition is that defining something as extreme means to first identify a normative.
Extreme behavior is to understand something on the outer periphery. As we have regularly explored on our website, the definition of “normative” within religion and religious scholarship can often be skewed. Therefore, the word “radical” is used here to identify that which is disruptive and contrary to the perceived normal order.
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Resources
A. Crawford, “Womanist Christology and the Wesleyan Tradition,” in The Black Theology Jouurnal, 2015
Eboni Marshall Turman, Toward a Womanist Ethic of Incarnation: Black Bodies, the Black Church, and the Council of Chalcedon, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013
Jacquelyn Grant, White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response, Scholars Press, 1989
Judy Tobler, “Home is Where the Heart is: Gendered Sacred Space in South Africa,” JSTOR, Vol. 13, No. 1 & 2, 2000
Kelly Brown Douglas, The Black Christ, Orbis Books, 1993
Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God, Orbis Books, 2015
Kelly Brown Douglas, What’s Faith Got to do with it: Black Bodies, Christian Souls, Orbis Books, 2005
Tamura Lomax, Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture, Duke University Press, 2018
Misogynoir to Mishpat Research Network 