Womanist theology, epistemology, and a new anthropological paradigm

Cross Currents, Winter, 1998 by Linda E. Thomas

Womanist theology, moreover, grasps the crucial connection between African American women and the plight, survival, and struggle of women of color throughout the world. Womanist theology intentionally pursues and engages the cultural contexts of women who are part of the African diaspora, for instance. To enhance the dialogical networking among women of color all over the globe, the methodology of anthropology, a key discipline within the social sciences, aids womanist theology in this engagement. Anthropological methodology encourages womanist religious scholars to embrace the cultural, symbolic, and ritual diversity dispersed throughout the religious lives of women of color on this earth.

Womanist theology takes seriously the importance of understanding the "languages" of black women. There are a variety of discourses deployed by African American women based on their social location within the black community. Some black women are economically disadvantaged and suppressed by macro-structures in society. Other African American women are workers whose voices are ignored by the production needs of the capitalist world order. Some other voices are dramatically presented in the faith speech of black women preachers. And still other articulations are penned in the annals of the academy. Womanist theology showcases the overlooked styles and contributions of all black women whether they are poor, and perhaps illiterate, or economically advantaged and "Ph.D.'ed." Womanists bring forth the legacy of our grandmamas and great grandmamas and carry their notions in the embodiment of life that we create daily. This language of black women is understood by black women; it accentuates intra-group talk. It is a language of compassion, and yet it is no-nonsense. The words and actions of this language oppose sexism, racism, classism, heterosexism, and abuse to any of God's creation. It is a language that respects the natural environment in the fullness of creation.

The method of womanist theology validates the past lives of enslaved African women by remembering, affirming, and glorifying their contributions. After excavating analytically and reflecting critically on the life stories of our foremothers, the methodology entails a construction and creation of a novel paradigm. We who are womanists concoct something new that makes sense for how we are living in complex gender, racial, and class social configurations. We use our foremothers' rituals and survival tools to live in hostile environments. Moreover, we gather data from a reservoir of bold ideas and actions from past centuries to reconstruct knowledge for an enhanced and liberating quality of life for black women today. The weaving of the past into present knowledge construction produces a polyvalent self-constituting folk-culture of African American women. In other words, the past, present, and future fuse to create a dynamic multi-vocal tapestry of black women's experience inter-generationally.

In addition to unearthing the sources of the past in order to discover fragments to create a narrative for the present and the future, womanist methodology comprises active engagement with marginalized African American women alive today. Ethnographic methodology necessitates our entering the communities of these women, constituting focus groups and utilizing their life experiences as the primary sources for the development of questions which establish a knowledge base from everyday people. These questions are then refined by the womanist scholar as she reflects on the initial conversations with her focus groups. Further refining takes place when the womanist scholar conducts a pilot study in which she ascertains whether the questions asked fit the context of poor black women and where she also learns the nuances needed for the sensibilities of the culture in which she is operating. Employing the context and knowledge base derived from the focus and pilot groups, she launches a larger and more comprehensive ethnographic research study by living among the people, thereby encountering their symbolic cosmology. In this living and learning process, these women evolve into the womanist scholar's teachers. The task thus becomes the production with integrity of the story of these poor people's lives and the reflection of their polyvalent voices. They have created space for the scholar in their communities, and now she creates space for their stories in their own words reflected in her publications. The womanist ethnographer entrusts to the reader these narratives for interpretation, assuming that many truths will emerge, transformation will occur, and readers will learn from those not usually given voice. Furthermore, the African American female scholar risks becoming emotionally connected to these people's lives as she reenters the community on a regular basis, and understands that she has familial obligations to the people about whom she writes. Thus womanist theology is a longitudinal theology.