Skip to main content

The Holy Spirit and Black Women

A Womanist Perspective

  • Chapter
Christian Doctrines for Global Gender Justice
  • 116 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter discusses the work of the Holy Spirit in the struggles of black women for liberation and the flourishing of life. In this essay, the Holy Spirit includes some Christian ideas that are expanded, enriched, and significantly modified by and through how they are uniquely appropriated by black women. Using a womanist theological anthropology, I will argue that black women have particular insight into the power of the Spirit because their historical radical marginality puts them in the center of myriad realities in which deeply rooted, unacknowledged, and unconventional wisdom dwells.1

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Bibliography

  • Baker-Fletcher, Karen. Dancing with God: The Trinity from a Womanist Perspective. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baldwin, Lewis V. “‘A Home in Dat Rock’: Afro-American Folk Sources and Slave Visions of Heaven and Hell.” Journal of Religious Thought 41, no. 1 (Spring–Summer 1984): 38–57.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauer, Raymond, and Alice H. Bauer. “Day to Day Resistance to Slavery.” The Journal of Negro History 27 (1942): 388–419.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, John P. “The Holy Spirit in the Struggles of People for Liberation and Fullness of Life.” International Review of Mission 79, no. 315 (July1990): 273–81.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cannon, Katie. “The Emergence of Black Feminist Consciousness.” In Katie’s Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community, 47. New York: Continuum: 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Angela. Woman, Race, and Class. New York: Random House, 1981.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harrison, Renee K. Enslaved Women and the Art of Resistance in Antebellum America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hayes, Diana. “Slain in the Spirit: Black Americans and the Holy Spirit.” The Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center 20, no. 1–2 (1992–93): 96–115.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hopkins, Dwight N. Down, Up, and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jensen, Loucynda. “Searching the Silence: Finding Black Women’s Resistance to Slavery in Antebellum U.S. History.” PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal 2, no. 1 (2006): 1–27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karkkainen, Veli-Matti. Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit, in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mbiti, John. Introduction to African Religion. Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  • Northup, Solomon. Twelve Years a Slave. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1970.

    Google Scholar 

  • Raboteau, Albert J. Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sterling, Dorothy, ed. We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, John V. The Go-Between God. London: SCM, 1980.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walker, Margaret. Jubilee. 1st ed. New York: Mariner Books, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  • West, Elizabeth J. African Spirituality in Black Women’s Fiction: Threaded Visions of Memory, Community, Nature and Being. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • White, Deborah Gray. Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South. New York: W. W. Norton, 1985.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, Delores S. Sisters in the Wilderness. New York: Orbis, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors

Editor information

Jenny Daggers Grace Ji-Sun Kim

Copyright information

© 2015 Jenny Daggers and Grace Ji-Sun Kim

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Thomas, L.E. (2015). The Holy Spirit and Black Women. In: Daggers, J., Kim, G.JS. (eds) Christian Doctrines for Global Gender Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137462220_5

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics