Review of Sisters in The Wilderness - Delores S. Williams

Sisters In The Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk is a key work in womanist theology. Black women were not quite invited into two different movements in the seventies ... Black Theology and Feminist Theology. One was black, but male and other was female but white. What is more, the experiences that these two groups detail do not map onto the experiences of black women. A key and founding story for Black Liberation Theology is the exodus, a powerful key. Cone and others argue that Jesus is about the action of liberation and so the church should always be on the side of liberation. 

Williams explores a different story, that of Hagar and Ishmael. Hagar is an Egyptian slave of Sarai, yes to become Sarah, wife of Abraham (yes, "Father Abraham had many sons ... ). Williams leads us to "reread [Genesis 16 and 21] with the slave woman Hagar as center of attention, Genesis 16:1-16 illustrates what the history of many African-American women taught them long ago; that is, the slave woman's story is and unavoidably has been shaped by the problems and desires of her owners. In these texts Hagar is introduced as the solution to a problem confronting a wealthy Hebrew slave-holding family..." (15)

Before chapter 16, Abraham has received a promise from God that he will be father of many nations. Sarai looking at her old body, decides she is barren takes her slave Hagar (it uses a Hebrew term for virgin) and forces her to sleep with Abraham. And her plan works, Hagar becomes pregnant, but then Sarai despises Hagar. And Abraham says Sarai can do whatever she wants or thinks is right. So "Sarai mistreated her." We don't get more information on this. But whatever it was, Hagar flees into the wilderness. Then an "angel of the Lord" comes to her and tells her to go back and submit to her master, but also that she have many descendants. 

Williams points out the surrogacy role Hagar plays, first in sleeping with Sarai's husband and then in receiving a promise from the angel. "The human role in the 'Yahweh promise modality' has (before Hagar) been filled by a male, the patriarch. Hagar steps into the usual male role of receiving a promise of numerous posterity." What is more, Hagar gives God a name El Roi, God of Seeing. 

If we move ahead in the book of Genesis to chapter 21, Sarai, now Sarah, has born her own son, Isaac. The NIV says 9 But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, 10 and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.” This is not Williams interpretation who says "Now Sarah watched the son that Hagar the Egyption had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. 'Drive away that slave-girl and her son,' she said to Abram, 'this slave-girl's son is not to share the inheritance with my son Isaac.'"

Robert Alter, a Hebrew scholar and translator, says that "Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing." He says the Hebrew metsaheq can mean laughing or mocking or joking. Alter explains that of course mocking would provoke anger, but since specifically Sarah names the inheritance as the problem, it is likely that she witnessed "Ishmael presuming to play the role of Isaac, child of laughter." But if we will allow Williams to lead us, she questions whether what Sarah is really concerned about is whether Ishmael as the eldest child of Abraham will inherit "a double portion of his fathers wealth. Law forbade the father from showing special privilege to the son of the wife he preferred and thereby protected the firstborn son's inheritance rights."

And the story continues on getting weirder. Abraham is distressed by what Sarah says because Ishmael is his son. But God commands him to "do whatever Sarah says." "It is God who ultimately destroys Ishmael's right to claim primogeniture and relieve the appropriate inheritance." So the next morning Abraham gave them some bread and water, "put the child on her shoulder and sent her away." She is sent out into the very land that the future Israelites would wander for forty years after being freed from Egypt. She is sent out, stripped of the only thing she really had as a slave, her connection to a large family and therefore a home and wealth. 

Williams then shifts to discussing the history of Black women in the USA. She starts in the antebellum south and quotes the testimony of Sojourner Truth in 1851: 

Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs me any best place!" And raising herself to her full height, and her voice to a pitch like rolling thunder, she asked. "And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! (and she bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing her tremendous muscular power). I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear de lash as well! And ain't, I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern, and seen 'em mos' all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

She talks about Harriet Tubman who her people called Moses, who led regiments and scouted for the Union Army during the Civil War. Then Williams begins exploring literatures, comparing who women are written about by black male writers like Baldwin and Wright to that of Alice Walker and Zora Hurston. This combination of lived historical experience with theology and biblical scholarship is powerful. 

Williams brings us to why the Hagar image maps onto the Black experience, especially today. The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves of the rebel states, but all the accompanying promises dissolved. The land granted the freed slaves by Sherman was given back to the plantation owners. Reconstruction fell with the compromise of 1876. Like Hagar with her young child, the freed slaves were dropped into a dangerous wilderness where they had to combine dependence on God with dependence upon themselves and survival strategies of their own makings to build a home in the wilderness. 

On p 109, Williams says the "Victorian ideal woman was an exact opposite of the kind of womanhood Hagar-in-the-wilderness and many poor black women modeled. The Victorian true woman was described as one 'who, through Christ, blesses man and helps make his home a joy and life a privilege.' White ministers described this ideal woman as "pliant ... adapted [by nature] to meet man's wants ... feminine ... soft, tender and delicate.' Further, the true woman's sphere is the home." Then Williams compares this to the hard success of black women working and caring for their families. 

Theological Methodology

On p 132 she gives a "womanist hermeneutic of identification-ascertainment. This is a strategy all theologians and Christians should engage in, especially those who think they only believe and preach the Bible. It involved "three modes of inquiry: subjective, communal and objective. 1) Through an analysis of their own faith journey with regard to biblical foundations, theologians discover with whom and with what events they personally identify in scripture. 2) Through an analysis of the biblical foundations of the faith journey of the Christian community with which they are affiliated, Christian theologians determine the biblical faith, events and biblical characters with whom the community has identified.

Through this work of subjective, then communal analysis, we can see what "biases" we bring to the interpretation of scripture. Then, 3) "theologians engage the objective mode of inquiry that ascertains both the biblical events, characters and circumstances with whom the biblical writers have identified and those with whom the biblical writers have not identified, that is, those who are victims of those with whom the biblical writers have identified." 

This is hard but important work and leads us to much more real, but uncomfortable truths. For example, it is from this perspective that Williams questions James Cone and Black Theology's identification with the Hebrew slaves liberated from Egypt, but neglect that these Hebrews went on to destroy a nation of people, the Canaanites. 

Wilderness

Williams argues that the wilderness experience fits with the contemporary situation more than the Exodus event for these reasons (and others): 1) its "male/female/family-inclusive"; 2) it suggestive of "the essential role of human initiative (along with divine interpretation) in the activity of survival, of community building" even "in the work of liberation"; 3) speaks to "culture of resistance"; 4) even in the Exodus narrative there is wilderness wandering with "God's direction and the work of building a peoplehood and a community." (141-142)

New Vision of Jesus

Interpreting the Bible in light of the black woman's experience, especially that of exploitation and surrogacy, it is easy to see that Jesus on the cross becomes a celebration of suffering and exploitation and to the neglect of the "ministerial vision" and kingdom of God that Jesus brings to us. Williams says "The cross is a reminder of how humans have tried throughout history to destroy visions of righting relationship that involve transformation of tradition and transformation of social relationships and arrangements sanctioned by the status quo."

"Jesus showed humankind a vision of righting relations between body, mind and spirit through" his teachings ("beatitudes, parables, moral directions and reprimands"); "through a healing ministry of touch and being touched...through a militant ministry of expelling evil forces ... through a ministry of compassion and love." As Christians, black women cannot forget the cross, but neither can they glorify in it. To do so is to glorify suffering and to render their exploitation sacred." (148)

Dialogue with Feminism

As earlier passages are working to re-read the Bible and Black Theology in light of black woman experience, Williams does the same with the Feminist movement. She seeks to define the scope of the term Patriarchy, saying that it leaves a lot out. "It is silent about class-privileged women oppressing women without class privilege. It is silent about white men and white women working together to maintain white supremacy and white privilege ... It is silent about the positive boons patriarchy has bestowed upon many white women ... in some cases the choice to stay home and raise children and/or develop a career--and to hire another woman (usually a black one) 'to help out' in either case."

Williams makes clear that she is not proposing to throw out the word, just that it is important for Womanist and Feminist to be in dialogue so they can appreciate a more expansive view of society and history and the trouble women face. 

She also talks about the community aspect, quoting Jer 29:4-7. That "community responsibility is commanded in the work of survival of the group." And that this is true both for the smaller community, in this case black americans, but also their working toward peace and good will for the larger community as well. The Jeremiah passage "Seek the welfare of the city where i have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." Williams asks "In other words, seek the welfare of your oppressors? African Americans in the diaspora can perhaps hear the silence in the text reiterate what their experience in America has taught: when the white-controlled power structures and ordinary white people are prospering, then black people are at least not brutalized as badly. When the white-controlled power structures and ordinary white people are suffering economically and when the white population decreases, black people are brutalized and scapegoated in every possible way."

From the Afterward

"It is no accident that a black woman, Ida B. Wells, birthed the modern civil rights movement in the late nineteenth century, and that another black woman, Rosa Parks, birthed the civil rights movement in the late twentieth century. Neither was it an accident that black women have encouraged black people to endure when, as Professor Eric Lincoln says, 'endurance gave no purpose.'" (209)

This is an important work and certainly one which united states christians should take up, especially white christians as they have a lot of learning to do.