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African American Womanism
-Womanist is to women what lavender is to purple.
Alice Walker
Selected Reading Resources for 21st Century African American Women
Alice Walker
Terry McMillian
Toni Morrison
Nikki Giovanni
Gloria Naylor
Kola Boof
Zadie Smith
Sister Souljah
Caribbean Writers
Jamaica Kincaid
Womanist Writers
By A. Carl Prince
1/11/06
While it is copiously self-evident that this extraordinary array of prolific personalities do not exhaust the list of womanist writers, they certainly provide a panorama for a plethora of insightful information regarding the interlocking influences of race, class and gender in patriarchal society from a Womanist point of view.
With an unmitigated audacity, scintillating clarity and an unapologetic ethos, these celebrated feminist plumb the depths of an indefatigable faith in varied social contexts from middle America to squalid urban and rural milieus, denouncing degradation and challenging the cherished social structure.
As expanding emancipating oeuvres that lift the particularities and complexities of sexual and psychological abuse, domestic flight, interracial marriage, coming of age, survival and healing, they strengthen social striving by the multifaceted and meaningful messages that leap from the pages of their prose.
Although fictional, these wonderfully written and straightforward stories represent recommended reading for both the bourgeois as well as dispossessed women of the Diaspora. They offer an oasis of hope in a desert of despair, faith to face the future, confidence in the face of crushed dreams, laughter as a panacea for pain and companionship for corporate and communal seclusion.
Summarily, these stories capture the distilled essence of radical African Americanism from the polarity of feminine adolescence to the aged, revealing an anatomy of all out emancipation, a full court press from the systemic structures of societal subjugation that fosters the incessant, unventilated and intolerable air of matrimonial victimization and the myopic mindedness in the mainstream of secular society that seeks to secure the prison for patriarchy over matriarchy in perpetuity.
In other words, these prolific personalities write a word that gives voice to the declaration that enough is enough and the time has come for a radical reevaluation and reorientation of life that calls for an egalitarian existence, even at the expense of take matters into their own hands for their own future enhancement and advancement.
These stories esteem all women’s rights to exhale and pursue life on their own terms devoid of the pandemic of patriarchal validation.
Women in Ministry: Seeking Acceptance and Inclusion
An Essay by A. Carl Prince
10/31/06
Ubiquitously the preponderance of persons who comprise the church in either African American, Latin American or European contexts is of the feminine persuasion. Nonetheless, even in our vast, progressive, effervescent, nuclear and technological age; the tragic fact remains that women continue to unfortunately suffer indignities due in my view to a historic, histrionic and harmful hermeneutic of scripture. Devoid of a critical exegetical examination of the sacred text, many over-the-top patriarchal personalities and Gospel gatekeepers on the local and national level, have attacked women’s integrity, insulted their character and critically questioned both their ministerial motivations and qualifications.
As a result of this lecherous lashing that has done violence to women, many women’s ministerial calling has become complicated, even obfuscated to the extent that they’ve become emotionally scarred, deeply disrespected and dishonored. To their ontological discredit, these scintillating spiritual sisters were ecclesiologically enfeebled and professionally paralyzed at the prejudiced hands of a male-dominated system. They found their calling and charisma rejected as contemptible and worse; they were unable to feel the caress of church in the process.
Though contextually within the church and having heard the translunar call of the uncaused cosmological creator called God to go forth vocationally to preach the Gospel, many women seeking entrance into the preaching ministry have found themselves ignominiously proscribed. They were summarily locked out of their supernatural calling and found themselves devoid of acceptance and inclusion within the church. The fact that the ordination of women, female priests and pastors in 21st Century America is still taboo in many religions and denominations is categorically telling that the phenomenon of professional prejudice against women remains alive and well.
The Ancient Apostolic Injunction
Indisputably, from the 1st Century through our 21st Century the issue of women in ministry, finding acceptance and inclusion has historically been and continues to be an issue of heated debate, one that is strongly and often stormily contested in the arena and ethos of the ecclesia. Who can forget the Apostle Paul’s ancient apostolic injunction to the Corinthian church? For God is not a God of disorder but of peace. As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.
The unfortunate misinterpretation and inappropriate application of this Corinthian commentary by fundamentalist and misogynist masses has tragically taken a toll on women seeking all rights and privileges into elite ecclesial ranks, the rarefied air of the religious and the inner sanctums of professional pastoral ministries, a phenomenon that has left many women not well pleased. The unfortunate misinterpretation and inappropriate application of this text alone has single-handedly become the perennial whipping post of women by patriarchy and has historically left the legitimate issue of the empowerment and aggrandizement of women in ministry mired in an ecclesiastical quagmire for centuries.
As a result of patriarchal prejudice and preference, many qualified Christian women seeking service in ecclesiastical centers nationally and internationally have been unduly demonized, demoralized and professionally disenfranchised. Through the incessant enunciation, unfortunate misinterpretation and inappropriate application this singular text, many women have been routinely disregarded in terms of receiving attention, influence or power in the ministries of the church.
Women in Ministry as Our Heritage
Nonetheless, this intimate interaction of the role of women in ministry is our homogenized heritage. Though women have often been excoriated for their interest in ecclesial ministries and prohibited from service in ordained ministry by patriarchy, a biblical theology of women meticulously meandering ministry for the Master is well documented. From the Jewish Masoretic Text saga of Deborah as Judge of Israel to the Greek New Testament illustration of Mary Magdalene, considered in many traditions as an Apostle to the Apostles on Resurrection Sunday, Judeo-Christian ministries have always underscored the role of women in ministry.
Prophecy of Our Unisex Ministries
Consequently, women in ministry are not a newfangled concept. In point of fact, there has always been a synergy relative to males and females in ministry. The biblical narrative is emphatically unisex. Although still disputed by patriarchy, in the Jewish Masoretic Text located in the 2nd Chapter of the book of Joel and the 28th verse, the Prophet Joel prophetically provides positive proof of God’s plan for unisex ministries. On the Day of Pentecost in the Book of Acts, the history of the early church, the Apostle Peter affirms the fulfillment of this prophecy.
"In the last days, God says. I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophecy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. The Apostle Paul testifies to this male female ministerial synergy declaring to the church at Philippi, Yes, and I ask you, loyal yokefellow, help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.
Spiritual Schizophrenia?
It seems as though Paul was conflicted or spiritually schizophrenic, supportive of women in ministry on the one hand and unsupportive on the other. Was he? Absolutely not, for in I Corinthians 11:5, 13 Paul affirms women’s roles as offering prayer and prophecy in the assembly. In Acts 18:26 Pricilla is instrumental as an instructor and in Romans 16:1 Phoebe serves in diaconal ministry, certainly something to shout about among evangelical feminist and bible-based clergy. Reduced to its least common denominator, it becomes elementary to extrapolate that it is clearly difficult to hermeneutically harmonize Paul’s injunction to women to keep silence in the church with his affable and unapologetic affirmation of women’s undisputed service in church ministries.
The Apostle Paul’s Affirmation of Women in Ministry
Suffice it to say Christian ministry has always been unisex. The Apostle Paul wasn’t spiritually schizophrenia relative to women in ministry. His position was crystal clear. The Apostle Paul affirms women in ministries and testifies to women in his own ministry declaring to the church at Philippi the following. Yes, and I ask you, loyal yokefellow, help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.
Just as God, through the prophet Joel, the Apostle Peter and the Apostle Paul affirmed women in ministry; today many women are defying the patriarchal injunction of keeping silence in church and are finding acceptance and inclusion like never before.
Taking Flight
Nevertheless, given the tragic landscape of many female clergy, all is not lost. Given the multivocality of the church and our multimodality global milieu, I am gratified to know many doors are opening to women in ministry. In a female friendly ecclesial environment energized by the move of the Holy Spirit, many women are taking flight. Though the gender justice battle is far from over to level the playing field of acceptance and inclusion of women in ministry, women today are leading exponents in various ministry contexts and are receiving exceptional acclamation.
These ministry contexts are not confined to the menial subservient roles of the patriarchial past but include pastoral and assistant pastoral ministries, theological education, parish Christian education, chaplaincy, music, religious cinema, fine arts, counseling, convention, youth and young adult ministries and beyond.
Women are engaged in IT, web-based, radio, TV, pre-school and after school programming and women are some of the most prolific Christian writers on the market today. To God be the glory for feminine acceptance and inclusion!
Endnotes
All biblical references are from the Life Application Bible. New International Version. (Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.: Wheaton Illinois), 1991. I Corinthians 14:33-35, Acts 2:17,
Philippians 4:3, I Corinthians 14:33-35.
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