Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology

241 Pages·2011·2.405 MB·English

by  Phillis Isabella Sheppard

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10.1057/9780230118027 - Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology, Phillis Isabella Sheppard
Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice
Series Editors Dwight N. Hopkins and Linda E. Thomas
Published by Palgrave Macmillan
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Edited by Alton B. Pollard, III and Love Henry Whelchel, Jr. 04-
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Black Theology in Transatlantic Dialogue: Inside Looking Out, Outside Looking In ne
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Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil gr
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Theology C
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10.1057/9780230118027 - Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology, Phillis Isabella Sheppard
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Criticism gra
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Racism and the Image of God o
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Self, BCyu Plthuirleli,s aInsadb Oeltlah eSrhse ipnp Warodmanist Practical Theology m - lic
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10.1057/9780230118027 - Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology, Phillis Isabella Sheppard
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Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist
Practical Theology 0
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Phillis Isabella Sheppard om
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10.1057/9780230118027 - Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology, Phillis Isabella Sheppard
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SELF, CULTURE, AND OTHERS IN WOMANIST PRACTICAL THEOLOGY
Copyright © Phillis Isabella Sheppard, 2011.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2011 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
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Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, 11-
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trehgisi sitse breyd P ianl gErnagvela nMda, ccmomillpanan, ay dniuvmisiboenr o7f8 M59a9c8m, iollfa Hn oPuunbdlimshiellrss, Limited, ct - 2
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Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. nn
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and has companies and representatives throughout the world. gra
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Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, P
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. o -
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ISBN: 978–0–230–10288–0 o
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data et i
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Sheppard, Phillis Isabella, 1958– ot
Self, culture, and others in womanist practical theology / Phillis Isabella bibli
Sheppard. ets
p. cm.—(Black religion/womanist thought/social justice) sit
ISBN 978–0–230–10288–0 (alk. paper) ver
1. Womanist theology. 2. Black theology. 3. Feminist theology. Uni
4. Theology, Practical. I. Title. d to
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BT83.9.S54 2011 s
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230.082—dc22 2010035418 ce
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. m - li
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Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. ct.
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First edition: March 2011 nn
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ve
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Printed in the United States of America. algr
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10.1057/9780230118027 - Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology, Phillis Isabella Sheppard
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Contents
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Series Editors’ Preface vii gr
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Acknowledgments xi o -
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1 Black As You See Me 1 et i
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Part I Living Blackness: Womanist Perspectives on bi
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Black Women’s Experience sit
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2 Black Women’s Experience of Religion, Race, and Gender 23 ni
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3 The Current Shape of Womanist Practical Theology 41 ed t
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4 STuhfef eErminbg eadndde dP aPisny,c Lhoolnoggiyn gi na nWdo Lmoavnei:s t Perspectives 61 m - lic
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Part II Psychoanalysis and Black Experience: n
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Critique, Appropriation, and Application ve
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5 Black Psychoanalysis and Black Feminist Psychoanalytic pal
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Literary Criticism: Resources toward a Critical w
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Appropriation of Psychoanalysis 81 m
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Black Women and Self Psychology: Toward erial fr
a Usable Dialogue 111 mat
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7 Black Embodiment and Religious Experience after yri
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Trauma: A Womanist Self Psychological Perspective Co
on Mourning the Loss of Cultural Selfobjects 127
8 A Dark Body of Goodness Created in the Image of
God: Navigating Sexuality, Race, and Gender,
Alone and Together 143
10.1057/9780230118027 - Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology, Phillis Isabella Sheppard
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vi Contents
Part III Womanist Practical Theology
9 Black and Beautiful: Reading the “Song of Songs” 173
10 Final Thoughts 187
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Notes 197 04-
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Author Index 219 2
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Subject Index 221 nn
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Series Editors’ Preface
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Is it possible to be black, beautiful, woman, and a human being at the gr
al
commencement of the twenty-first century? Such a question, though o - P
prima facie provocative, undergirds a profound psychoanalytical doc- ms
o
trine of theological anthropology in the contemporary postmodern Tr
world. et i
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For instance, the backdrop of the eighteenth-century European ot
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Enlightenment shifted categories of the West in contrast to the world- bi
s
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view of its future (nineteenth-century) African colonies. “I think sit
therefore I am” (Descartes’ seventeenth-century epistemological turn ver
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to the self) and “what is Enlightenment?” (Kant’s eighteenth-century o U
piercing querying essay) mark reification of new forms of hierar- ed t
s
chy with life and death and psychological-aesthetic implications for en
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women of African descent. Though such new Western thought cat- m - li
egories and questioning unleashed unparalleled progressive patterns co
ct.
of worldviews and freedoms, the European Enlightenment reflection ne
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of the modern impulse disallowed room for Africa’s embracing of the co
e
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intriguing subtleties of the everyday grace and trials of the African a
gr
woman. Now, normative human ontology resided in reason, Greek pal
w.
phenotype, and male status. All three cut against the grain of nature’s w
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and creation’s gift of the black beautiful woman. m
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The primordial case in point: the August 1619 violent and forced al fr
arrival of twenty Africans to Jamestown, Virginia colony (British ateri
m
and Anglican), marked the symbolic and literal beginning of African ht
g
Americans, black Americans, Africans in the diaspora, or Americans yri
p
of African descent. More specifically, it revealed the new creation of a Co
human category called black American women. Why? Because three
of the twenty enslaved Africans on the Dutch Man-of-War ship, which
stole these enslaved humans to the British citizens of Jamestown, were
African women. In that sense, each black American woman today
heralds from the genealogical tradition of those three women. At that
10.1057/9780230118027 - Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology, Phillis Isabella Sheppard
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viii Series Editors’ Preface
time, space, and place, the African American woman was formed.
And there the seeds of today’s womanist theology can be possibly
traced, if not in bloodline then at least in imagination.
Yet, enslavement into Jamestown tells one part. These women were
Africans who brought a rich worldview and practice of getting things
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done for themselves, their families, ancestors, and larger communi- 2
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ties. Integrated psyches, sophisticated knowledge and experiences 1-
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of handling wealth, organizing institutions, educating generations, 2
adjudicating disputes, dispensing medicine, and engineering the con- ect -
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struction of societies flowed through the energy in their bodies. These o
C
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African sojourners were snatched from homelands where parents v
a
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groomed their children to be proactive thinkers toward practically al
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owning and building communities. o -
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Though hailing from a background where their families owned om
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resources, these three African women crossed the seas as the enslaved et i
and were bartered/sold as private property in modern fashion of ek
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emerging capitalism, and they entered a European colony already bli
bi
stamped with preconceived notions of racial pigmentation asymme- ets
try. Yes, it is true that Western Europe’s solidification of world racial ersit
v
hierarchy realizes itself in the nineteenth-century “science of man” ni
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with its cranial, forehead, nose, foot, buttocks, lips, and other body d to
measurements. Here too, Darwin’s survival-of-the-fittest-guesses were se
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Marxism claimed that, in the origin of the species, private property, ct.
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and the state, as well as in the inevitable human progress to socialism, nn
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Africa, among all of the world’s peoples, had no history. e
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And let us not forget that modern creation of the term “race” gr
al
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was married intricately to the Christian God. Particularly, the over- w.
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whelming rationale, or at least the cultural context, for the seven- w
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the biblical warrant. In a word, the declassification of blackness as mat
subhuman (the curse of Ham) and woman as subservient (be submis- ght
sive in church) came from Jesus Christ. pyri
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Against such long and complex formations and reformations, C
Phillis Sheppard has offered us a gift. She puts forth one basic claim:
beauty, blackness, and womanhood are the liberating and sustaining
gifts from God. Womanism, among other profound and pioneering
efforts, asserts that, through it all, black-woman-beautiful remains.
She survives and has a quality of life for herself, her family, her church,
10.1057/9780230118027 - Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology, Phillis Isabella Sheppard
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Series Editors’ Preface ix
and her community. And now that the number one woman in the
United States is black, we can also add, for her nation. Yet, survival
and quality of life accompanies freedom and liberation, especially in
the linking of sexuality with black and beautiful.
Indeed, Sheppard presents a novel thought and way of being in the
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world. She coins the black-woman-beautiful phrase of a womanist prac- 2
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tical theology of the psychological and the cultural. We call her thinking 1-
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a gift because this theology takes care of black woman’s particularity 2
and has arms big enough to embrace all. Isn’t that what the womanist ect -
n
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tradition has been saying for some time? Perhaps that is why woman- o
C
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ists have been some of the leaders arguing for a holistic theology. In v
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the race-gender-class-sexuality-ecosensitive experience of womanists, al
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we encompass all of humankind. Sheppard has, indeed, continued our o -
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tradition, which is a good news for theological anthropology. om
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Phillis Sheppard’s theological theory and psychoanalytic prac- et i
tical compassion fall within the best part of this tradition. In fact, ek
ot
it represents one definite dimension of the black religion/woman- bli
bi
ist thought/social justice series’ pioneering conceptual work and ets
boundary-pushing effort. This series will publish both authored and ersit
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edited manuscripts that have depth, breadth, and theoretical edge and ni
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will address both academic and nonspecialist audiences. It will pro- d to
duce works engaging any dimension of black religion or womanist se
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tahpopurogahct ha si nth tehye p setrutadiyn otof sAofcriiacla nju sAtimcee.r Wicaonm wanoimst etnh’os upgehrts pise cat inveews. m - lic
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The series will include a variety of African American religious expres- ct.
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sions. By this we mean traditions such as Protestant and Catholic nn
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Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Humanism, African diasporic practices, e
v
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religion and gender, religion and black gays/lesbians, ecological jus- gr
al
p
tice issues, African American religiosity and its relation to African w.
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religions, Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, new black religious w
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experiences (such as the spiritual aspects of aesthetic efforts like the mat
Harlem Renaissance and literary giants such as James Baldwin, or the ght
religious fervor of the Black Consciousness movement, or the religion pyri
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of compassion in the black women’s club movement). C
Dwight N. Hopkins,
University of Chicago Divinity School
Linda E. Thomas,
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
10.1057/9780230118027 - Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology, Phillis Isabella Sheppard
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