"If It Wasn't for the Women...": Black Women's Experience and Womanist Culture in Church and Community

"If It Wasn't for the Women . . . ": Black Women's Experience and Womanist Culture in Church and Community. By Cheryl Townsend Gilkes. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2001. viii + 253 pp. $24.00 (paper).

African American women and the welfare of the black church and community are inextricably linked. However, the imprint of African American women's ministerial leadership is often obscured behind church structures and the podium and pulpit of male preachers and politicians. As the title implies, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes declares, "If it wasn't for the women you wouldn't have a church!" (p. 1).

This collection of essays provides a number of lenses through which leadership patterns of African American women and their roles in their churches and communities are uncovered and examined. Gilkes contends that the leadership of African American women has played a major role in shaping African American political and religious life. This leadership does not emerge without struggle and acquires its unique character in tension with the triple jeopardy of race, class, and gender. Taken further, Gilkes states, "the wisdom that comes from the responses of African-American women to their sufferings, if taken seriously by God and society, has the power to transform the world" (p. 196). Here lies the import of this book.

The are four parts to the book: The Community Connection; Church Women and Their Work; Womanist Culture; and Crises, Confrontations, and Conflicts. These parts work together to provide an overview of the development, experience, and implication of African American women's roles in their churches and communities.

The "Community Connection" examines the history, relationships, and traditions of African American women and their community organizations and institutions. Here the discussion of the historic intersection of race, class, and gender provides a helpful background. The role and activities of African American women in the Church are the central concerns of "Church Women and Their Work." The focus on the Sanctified Church may surprise some readers. Gilkes uses the designation Sanctified Church to describe independent African American congregations associated with the Holiness and Pentecostal movement that developed between Reconstruction and World War II. Black women joined these congregations in large numbers. For Gilkes, "The importance of the Sanctified Church lies in its relationship to black history, its normative impact on the larger black religious experience, and its respect for and positive redefinition of black women's historical experience" (p. 44). Using the term "womanist" as a starting point, "Womanist Culture" explores the development and impact of African American women's religious consciousness in the black church. Biblical understandings, worship, and social location empower women to be moral agents. Finally, "Crises, Confrontations, and Conflicts" identifies work, self-esteem, and empowerment as challenges that shape African American women's experience and the community's health.

Many of these essays have been published or presented in other venues. When the collection is brought together, there may be repetition at points. However, such emphasis serves to draw back the curtain of invisibility, silence and misrepresentation of African American women's experience and leadership in ministry. This book is not only for African Americans or those interested in African American religious history or traditions. It is for anyone who cares about the Church, the leadership role of women, or the struggle against oppression in this country.

KAREN B. MONTAGNO

Episcopal Divinity School Cambridge, Massachusetts

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Winter 2002
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