Womanist theology highlighted at Trinity Lutheran Seminary
When the Rev. Monica Lowe reads the Bible, she sees things differently than others may.
That’s because she has learned about womanist theology through her new job at Trinity Lutheran Seminary at Capital University on the East Side and also at her church, New Salem Baptist Church in Linden.
Womanist theology is a way of understanding God and the world that focuses on the experiences and views of Black women, according to Trinity’s website, including the intersectionality of race, class and gender.
The approach is being highlighted at Trinity through a lecture series this fall and again in January. There are also plans for a certificate program on the topic for students at all Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) seminaries, such as Trinity.
So, for instance, according to her interpretation of womanist theology, Lowe, an assistant director for seminary admissions at Trinity, reads the Bible story in the book of John where Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well differently due to her perspective.
She believes that the story shows how, even though the woman may be perceived in society badly today for living with several men, Jesus showed her compassion. That illustrates that Jesus looks at women not just as second-class citizens, but as whole people who are just as important as men, Lowe said.
That’s what womanist theology can do.
“It only grows a person, it doesn’t take away from what has been,” Lowe said. “It just highlights that God loves all of us, and I think that’s the really important piece.”
The seminary began the series of three lectures by womanist theologians on Sept. 9 with the Rev. A. Elaine Brown Crawford and there are two more coming up, one on Thursday and one on Nov. 11. People can watch online or in person after registering at capital.edu/womanist.
Angela N. Parker, an assistant professor at Mcafee School of Theology at Mercer University in Georgia, will speak next on womanist interpretation of scripture.
The third speaker, the Rev. Beverly Wallace, also is coming in the spring to teach a class on the topic, said the Rev. Kathryn “Kit” A. Kleinhans, dean of Trinity.
Wallace, an associate professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, had the idea to create the certificate program because she realized that Black female students were leaving even historically Black institutions with no knowledge of womanist theology.
Womanist theology isn’t just something to be taught and discussed, it’s a way of life and a practice, Wallace said.
“It’s a way of living out one’s view of the world,” she said. “How do we see the world? How do we live out who we are?”
Only Black women can be womanists, said Parker, as the theological perspective is derived from racialized oppression.
White women can learn about womanist
perspectives and even empathize with them, but they can’t be womanists because they can’t experience the same racialized oppression Black women do, Parker said.
“If you want to be an ally with me, you will take my racialized oppression seriously,” Parker said. “Because I am not a white woman, I am going to read scripture differently than a white woman would.”
For instance, when Parker reads a passage in Mark, Chapter 6 – the story of Herodias and her dancing daughter – instead of possibly blaming Herodias for how oversexualized her daughter is, Parker said she can relate more.
“I also recognize that my own children, as Black children, are usually perceived as adult quicker than white children,” Parker said. “My reading is different because I can kind of empathize with Herodias, knowing her daughter is overly sexualized because my own daughter has been oversexualized.”
Denise Rector, a doctoral student at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and part of the planning process for the lectures, said womanism is important because Westernized Christianity is largely focused on the thoughts and teachings of white men.
“(Womanism) is a way of celebrating the particularity of God’s creation and then also celebrating and centering a universality of Black women that has been otherwise overlooked in society and in theology,” Rector said.
The approach wasn’t named until the 1980s, by author and activist Alice Walker, according to Howard University. But women were doing it all along, Rector said.
Feminist theology and Black theology emerged around the same time in the 1950s and 1960s, Rector said. But, she said, neither centered the thoughts of Black women, which is where womanist theology came in – to illustrate experiences Black women have that other women and other Black people don’t.
“There is a certain sensitivity to community, to economic issues, to the way we talk to and about God that has been communicated to me through my ancestors and through women who are not my ancestors,” Rector said. “I then communicate it to the next generation.”
The fact that theology is largely understood and learned in the United States through the perspectives of white men is problematic, she said.
“I’m here, I’m created by God, so the
fact that that theology is not working for me is a real issue,” Rector said.
Womanist theologians illuminate stories in the Bible from a womanist perspective, she said.
The idea of the series, and the coming certificate program, is to lift up voices that aren’t traditional and show that all people truly are made in the image of God, as the book of Genesis states, Kleinhans said.
“That means if we want to know who God is we have something to learn from everybody,” she said. “(It’s) listening to experiences of people like Denise and Beverly because they will help me see aspects of God and aspects of life on this earth I may not see.”
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is still 96% white despite commitments and efforts in diversity, Kleinhans said.
“A series like this and a certificate like this helps people understand that God is so much bigger than what they may have thought or known about God previously,” she said. “The experiences of God’s people are richer when we value experiences of all people in it.” dking@dispatch.com @Danaeking