Response

Abstract

Monica A. Coleman's essay is a courageous attempt to expose three inherent weaknesses in womanist religious scholarship. By raising critical and constructive questions for both theological and ethical inquiry, Coleman stirs a body of work that has for too long been uncritical of itself and unreceptive of different voices inside and outside of its camp. Although all three points in Coleman's essay are essential and interrelated in depicting these inherent weaknesses that at present exist in womanist religious scholarship, I will expound on the heteronormativity of womanist religious scholarship. In so doing, I aim to demonstrate how the heteronormativity of womanist religious scholarship excludes queer voices.1 I also aim to demonstrate how the heteronormativity of womanist religious scholarship creates an essentialist construction and application [End Page 107] of this opus of work, thus truncating its growth and compromising its academic respectability As an African American Christian lesbian ordained minister, theologian, and activist who speaks, writes, and loves unapologetically from this standpoint, I stand in the womanist religious scholarship camp similarly to the way I do in the Black Church—as a sister outsider.2 As a sister outsider, I am tangentially aligned to these communities with the nagging experience of marginalization, if not complete dispossession. For me and others like me, being both of African descent and queer creates a distinctive epistemology that shapes not only our identity but also the distinctive interpretative lens we use to zoom in on the world with regard to politics, race, class, gender, and sexual orientation, issues that contribute to both the church and the academy. Our method of identifying, or "languaging," ourselves as both of African descent and queer is evident in the terms we use, such as "in the life"—an identifier, a code, that derives from the Harlem Renaissance. Another is the term "same-gender loving," which became popular in the African American queer lexicon in the 1990s. Both terms are indeed a radical pronouncement for LGBTQ people of African descent, because they are statements about openly engaging in gender expressions and sexual orientations counter to the accepted norm, and about naming this engagement in the face of virulent homophobia in the Black Church and in African American male religious scholarship in the academy that could very well cost us our careers, if not our lives. Unlike white feminist and African American male religious scholarship that excludes me because I am black, female, and lesbian, womanist religious scholarship appeared to offer hope at first. With Alice Walker's second definition of the term explicitly stating that a womanist is "A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually," I felt the excitement of finally participating in an African American sisterhood organizing across sexualities.3 Also [End Page 108] I experienced the excitement of engaging in an intellectual collaboration with African American women in the nascent stages of development of womanist religious scholarship However, as the women in this field grew in numbers, the dominant and controlling voices in the academy were those of Christian heterosexual women. Noticing how her voice and visibility in womanist religious scholarship was becoming marginalized, womanist lesbian theologian Renee Hill stated, "The lesbian voice is silenced in Christian womanist theology. Heterosexism and homophobia are nonissues in the Christian womanist paradigm for liberation. There is no widespread discussion on sexuality in African American Christian theology in general. Christian womanists, like their male counterparts, focus for the most part on the impact of racism on the Black community."4 Some womanist Christians would say that the battle in womanist religious scholarship is not one between heterosexual and lesbian women but rather, as womanist ethicist Cheryl Sanders argued in 1989, one whose purpose is "to set forth an authentic representation of Walker's concept in [womanist theological and ethical thought]."5 This statement came back to bite Sanders, as her troubles began in not recognizing and honoring the various ways African American women had come to use and to share the term, especially with other women...