Summary: A memoir of the ways that beliefs about God impact our social reality and the ways that we can heal.
There are books that I know will be misread or not picked up because they are judged without being read. I am never sure if the misreading or the prejudicial lack of reading is the bigger problem. I recieved an advance copy of God is a Black Woman from Netgalley. I glanced at reviews on Netgalley when I downloaded it, and sure enough, the standard (my paraphrase), “well, God may not be a white man, but he sure isn’t a Black woman,” was in one of the early reviews. And in response to a tweet, I posted a quote from God is a Black woman, and a person I do not follow argued with me over several tweets, assuring me that Christena Cleveland was publicly no longer a Christian and now advocated Goddess worship. That person had not read God is a Black woman but assured me that their view was accurate based on their reading of social media. I countered that I had read the book written to address these issues and that Cleveland had neither publicly repudiated Christianity nor advocated Goddess worship. But those two interactions, I think, will characterize a lot of potential readers, vague impressions that inaccurately keep them from picking the book up, and a misunderstanding of the book based on a lack of familiarity with the realities of race, gender, and history. As part of the Twitter conversation, the person suggested that no one believes that God is a white male. However, Color of Christ and many other studies show many people believe that God is a white male either explicitly or implicitly. (Four studies on perceptions of God and Race, older study on the importance of images of Black Christ to counter white supremacy)
I am not a close follower of Christena Cleveland, but I have been aware of her work for a while. I read Disunity in Christ, Cleveland’s first book. I was aware that she was a professor at Duke and led the reconciliation study center started initially by Chris Rice. And that she left the school because of her frustrations with racism around the school. I read her essay about leaving, White Devil in Blue, although the article is now behind a paywall. And I knew that she had gone to France on pilgrimage to visit a number of the Black Madonnas common in France. Knowing those parts of the story meant that I was not walking into the book blind, but I was not familiar with her broader story.
God is a Black Woman is framed as a memoir of that pilgrimage. Like many memoirs, that framing is an organizing structure more than a foundation. The book primarily looks at what she calls ‘whitemalegod’ and ‘fatherskygod’ and how she personally, and our society more generally, has been shaped by the cultural understanding of God as a white male. There are many ways to misunderstand this book if you have not previously grappled with Black or Womanist theology. Angela Parker’s book If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I, which I have read, but I am going to reread before I post on, has an excellent explanation of what Womanist Theology or biblical studies are and why all Christians, not just Black women must grapple with the questions that are raised by Womanist readings of the Bible or Womanist theological reflections.
In some ways, God is a Black Woman is part of a long tradition of grappling with our misperceptions of God, for example, Imaginary Jesus, Good and Beautiful God, part of Twelve Lies, and the already mentioned Color of Christ. But without a liberation focus, those books on misperceiving God can stop at individual analysis and miss the ways that society acts to disempower. And as I already mentioned above, the familiar tropes against Feminist, Womanist, Black theology, etc., as simply replacing the White male God with different similar identity are projecting what has happened in the past with the explicit ideals of these theological critiques. When James Cone says Jesus is Black, he is both saying God is not White in a biological sense (similar to saying Jesus is Lord is saying Ceasar is not) but also saying that Jesus fundamentally identifies with the marginalized and dispossessed against the powerful. Whiteness, the cultural belief in white racial superiority, altered Christianity to require a hierarchical system. Womanist Theology believes that the hierarchy violates our understanding of Christianity and is a form of heresy. So the projection of simple replacement is a fundamental misreading of this book and liberation theologies as a whole. The simple message of the book God is a Black Woman is that we have to counter the distortions to bring about healing. Simple balance would be a distortion itself, but Cleveland does say, “When masculinity rejects feminine wisdom, it becomes a toxic caricature of itself.”
I could easily make this into a post of quotes. I have twelves pages of highlights and notes you can look at (my notes). But I want to highlight a couple of more extended quotes that matter.
According to Douglas, the white christ essentially made slavery A-okay because, if Christ was white, then it was cool for white people to enslave non-white people and benefit from the enslavement of non-white people. But the whitechrist didn’t simply justify slavery; it also made a statement about who God is and what God cares about. Since the whitechrist more closely resembled whites than Blacks, God was obviously more concerned with the experiences and troubles of white people than the experiences and troubles of Blacks. Further, since the whitechrist identified with whites, God obviously preferred whites over Blacks. The whitechrist offered proof that God wasn’t concerned with the plight of the oppressed. In other words, God was just fine with slavery and other forms of oppression. In this way, God was not only associated with whiteness, but specifically with white supremacy. In the whitechrist, God specifically chose white people over Black people.
I am pretty sure that there are potential readers of God is a Black Woman who will suggest that Cleveland is exaggerating here, but as The Problem of Slavery in Christian America and The Bible Told Them So illustrate with Christian defenses of slavery and segregation, this is the type of arguments that were made to defend slavery and segregation.
Similarly, Angela Parker in If God Still Breathes and Willie James Jennings in After Whiteness speak about how theological education is oriented toward autonomous mastery and creating White Male theologians. Cleveland says, “whitemalegod teaches us that we should be ashamed of our need because our need erodes all that is right and good in the world.” That grappling with human limitation and the false narrative that makes white maleness the normative expression of humanity ignores how our different human expressions show us different aspects of what it means to be human. As Cleveland discusses briefly in one section, humanity that bleeds regularly will have a different understanding of what it means to be human than one that does not. A disabled person has a different understanding of what it means to be human than a person that has not grappled with the limitations that society puts in the way for disabled people. Instead:
In whitemalegod’s world, to be human is to be needless. So, of course, white patriarchy does not permit a definition of femininity that challenges the status quo. This is one way in which whitemalegod weaponizes femininity—by defining it as always silent and submissive to white patriarchy. In other words, if one has a need, one better keep it to oneself or only express it in ways that will not offend white patriarchy’s fragile ego. This is a heavy burden for all women, but the weight is crushing little Black girls who, due to societal anti-Blackness and misogyny, carry great need in their bodies. Their societally inflicted need is LOUD and yet they are supposed to keep quiet.
and
More than any other human characteristic, need seems to trigger whitemalegod’s gag reflex.
This is already too long, but it matters that God is a Black Woman deals with Christena Cleveland’s personal story of child abuse and control, eating disorders, sexuality and the purity culture, the tokenism of so much of the Evangelical world’s concept of racial reconciliation, the silencing disagreement for the comfort of white Christians and the broader discussion of experience regarding theology.
Experience does not trump all other concerns, but what is common is that when others have an experience that we have not had, there is a disbelief in that experience, or at least a minimizing of the salience of the experience. The importance of God is a Black Woman as a memoir, and a piece of theology is that Christena Cleveland is centering the importance of her experience as an act of Christian theology.
The problem is that many people will either refuse to engage with it because of preconceptions or will engage it badly with the only purpose to argue. And that will be a loss of the gift that has been given to us.
God Is a Black Woman by Christena Cleveland Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook