Unveiling Womanist Theology: Rev. Dr. Emilie Townes on Race, Gender, and Spiritual Resilience

As I sat down with Dr. Emilie Townes, the gravity of her words struck me with the force of a spiritual awakening. Through our conversation, we peeled back the layers of womanist theology, revealing its inception from the unmet needs of Black women in theology and its evolution into a movement that intersects race, gender, and class. Dr. Townes' insights bridged the gaps left by other theologies, guiding us through the importance of a framework that captures the essence of Black women's fight for survival and justice.

The episode traverses more than just academic theology; it's an expedition into the heart of identity, where labels fall short and personal narratives emerge victorious. Our dialogue in Salvador, Brazil, with Dr. Townes unveiled the ever-evolving journey of self-definition beyond conventional boundaries, invigorating the soul with the concept of 'in betweenness' and the re-emergence of Jesus as a personal spiritual figure. The rich tapestry of cultural identity and faith we discussed is a testament to the power of individual stories in shaping our spiritual and cultural landscapes.

Closing our heartfelt exchange, I couldn't help but express profound gratitude for the resilience Dr. Townes instilled in me, reminding us of the sanctity of companionship in our individual and collective quests. As we seek to align our inner circles with our values and beliefs, the episode is a clarion call to build communities that reflect the diversity of our theologies and politics. It's a celebration of the kinship that fuels our journey toward personal and societal transformation. Join us for this enlightening voyage that is sure to embolden your spirit and challenge your heart.

Chapters

• 0:35 Navigating Identity in Womanist Theology
• 13:35 Exploring Womanism and Identity in Conversation
• 22:43 Discovering and Embracing the Holy Spirit
• 32:37 Gratitude for Impactful Work

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:35

What's up everybody, welcome back to this episode of Life After Levin. I'm your host, denise Spencer Helms, and I'm a little bit shaking in my boots this week, but I'm interviewing another one of somebody that I consider a hero for me in my formation, dr Emily Towns, and we're going to jump into some conversation, and this week it'll be a little bit interesting because I've got burning questions that have been kind of sticking with me since my time in Atlanta and we'll talk a little bit about that. But, dr Towns, thank you so much for being on the show, welcome.

Speaker 2: 1:10

You're welcome and thank you for inviting me.

Speaker 1: 1:14

Yes, indeed, thank you for saying yes. So a little bit about me. So I grew up in the Black Church when I was 17. As people know, I wrote it in the book that you know I met white Jesus in hell. It was a simulation, a play about hell. I got saved at that play at the age of 17 and went into full-time ministry right when I got to college. Had been in full-time ministry up until Trayvon died in 2012. And in the midst of kind of grappling with police brutality and Black Lives Matter, the foundations of my faith began to really unravel. And so it was around that time 2013, 2014, where I was actually the first time introduced to womanist theology.

Speaker 1: 2:04

I had never heard of it before. It was obviously one of those things that was considered to be a slippery slope, and so I had never been exposed to anything. And someone handed me Katie's Canon and just changed my life. I never felt more seen. I never felt like someone had spoken to my experience in that same way, even though we grew up at very different times. So the things that she was discussing felt so current for me, and obviously from there I was introduced to you, duffy Towns, and so you consider yourself to be an ethicist, and so I'm wondering if you could kind of talk about what is womanism for the people who are listening to my show? They may not have even been exposed to womanism or womanist theology before, so could you talk to us a little bit about what is it? And then what it means for you to be an ethicist within that frame of thinking about and doing God talk.

Speaker 2: 3:09

Well, I'll give you the short history version because it goes on and on. But basically by the 1970s, with the rise of Black power and Black theology, feminism and feminist theology, black women started coming to seminary in large numbers. They'd not seen that before. And we looked around and saw well, we see Black theology thinking about Black men mostly and feminist theology thinking mostly about white women, but no one was speaking to what Black women were seeing in their religious lives. And so we used the term Black feminist to be clear that, yes, we were worried about sexism and gender concerns, but we were also worried about race and class, and those three things were inseparable for us. And as time went on and folks began to move from a focus on the Black church and ministry in the Black church to now going into PhD programs. This all culminated at Union Seminary in New York where, at that time, in school, working on their PhDs after having gotten their MDivs, were Katie Cannon, jacqueline Grant and Dolores Williams Imagine that all at once, at the same time, and a few other people might add. And they were all asking the same questions in their respective disciplines Cannon was in ethics, jackie and Dolores were in theology, but it's like where is the Black women's work In both these disciplines and also in the life of the church, the Black church to be specific and the church universal to be more broad?

Speaker 2: 5:45

Along comes Alice Walker with her book of essays in search of our mother's gardens, and a lot of people miss the subtitle, which was Womanist Pros, grants, not grant. Walker's editor said what's that? So Walker sat down and, not trying to be a scholar but being a writer, and an evocative writer at that, she came up with a four part definition of womanist. And the first definition. The first part, talks about the communication of knowledge and survival skills from older Black women to younger Black girls and the fact that younger black girls have to grow up faster and sooner. The second part talks about communal bonding of all sorts and this was what got so many upset, because Walker waited right in on same sex relationships, but also the importance of communal bonding and bringing others along with you into survival, as well as the impact of miscegenation on black communities, because we are a many colored black folk. The third part had to do with women, self-image, it and the fact that black women and actually most women, no matter what color, don't fit into this ideal of beauty for women and she ends that definition with loves herself regardless. And the fourth part was the critique on white feminism, where she says womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

Speaker 2: 7:51

And what she was trying to get at is the deepening and enriching and spreading out of concerns that black women have to live with. It's not an option. We have to be concerned about our community. We have to be concerned about the men and children and other folk in our community. We can't just be worried about getting a slice of the pie.

Speaker 2: 8:20

Well, that definition caught a whole with Jackie and Dolores and Katie and they said well, maybe we can work with this in our own disciplines. And this is one of the first times, if not the first time in history where a new term comes out of religion as opposed to religion finding a term and then using it. And so they began to work at both scholars and also deeply committed to the church. And so we're often running and what that, what womanist, basically means is no matter what you're doing and how you tease through the issues before you, whether you're a scholar or a pastor or a counselor or a teacher or whatever you are trying to hold in your view as you look at the world and try to respond to God's call to you by analyzing it through the lenses of race, gender and class at their minimum, at their minimum.

Speaker 2: 9:42

And so womanism is about that journey, about that journey of always trying to expand your worldview, having a communal emphasis, being unapologetic about being outraged about any of the isms and working with others to try to eradicate them and understand more and more that justice is not an act, it's an ongoing process. We're constantly seeking justice. If we look, we'll see there are a lot of people that still have a long way to go, and so how we participate in where they are and where they want to get to.

Speaker 1: 10:33

Okay, thank you. I'm grappling with this and I know that I asked this question about ethicists, but I'm going to ask it a different way, because I heard you in an interview talk about seeing yourself as a person who was an ethicist because you always wanted to figure out why. You were after this question of why and I feel like that really speaks to me in a lot of ways, as I've been grappling with what does it mean to be non binary gender food and also a womanist, and what does that? How does a person reconcile this? So I'd like to share with you kind of a little bit of a what's leading me into that question, and I would love to have you answer that.

Speaker 1: 11:22

What does it mean to be non binary womanist? Doesn't even matter. Do we need to figure that out? But the question I'm asking is coming from a deep place of feeling like often being too much of one thing and not enough of another, and when I was in Atlanta just recently, I was at Pride in the Pews, which is essentially a nonprofit that is seeking to try to help black churches go on a journey of becoming a firming and celebratory of queer identities, and other questions was brought up and the panelist says brought up Alice Walker and said you know when sugar walks, when sugar is talking in the book, and says you know, I think it pisses God off to walk by the color purple and not notice it.

Speaker 1: 12:09

And something struck me as the the person on the panel was bringing that up because it kind of felt like that's where I live in, this in between, not one or the other, this bothness or neitherness, and and and. So for me I was talking with in this particular, these were Trans women is they were trans women who are also women, is theologians. And I said, you know, I'm trying to navigate, understanding that you, you all, are sourcing safety from somewhere, but for me, as a non-binary person, feeling like my safety is actually in being invisible and and not being seen. And so how are, how are you sourcing safety? Where is that coming from and how are you sourcing hope?

Speaker 1: 12:55

So these are the questions that I think have been Kind of swirling around in me as I'm coming into my own queer identity. How do I do? I feel very much Saved by womanist theology, held up by it, and at the same time, feel in some ways Elusive, an elusiveness to it because I don't feel like I identify in terms of the gender of woman. So could you help me navigate that? And and I think the reason I'm asking you as an ethicist is because I feel like I'm driven by that why a lot as well?

Speaker 2: 13:35

In the early 2000s I Spent a good bit of my summers in in Brazil, and more specifically Salvador, in the state of Bahia, which at that time was about 98% Afro-Brazilian, and a group of women's seminarians there had gotten a hold somehow of a womanist Theology book and I don't even know who they were reading. But they wanted to know more and so they worked their connections and I Ended up going down After really saying no several times, because I said I don't speak Spanish, and the person asked me said well, they don't speak Spanish either, they speak Portuguese. And I said see, that's even more to the point. I don't know their reality. Why would I be going down there to tell them something? And so we went back and forth and forth and back and finally I did go and had an interpreter and one of the first things I recognized right off the bat and Said it to them until I was blue in the face, for I think it was about seven or eight years, I would go over some every summer, the part of it if If womanist doesn't fit, you don't use it.

Speaker 2: 15:10

It's not, it's, it's. It's a confessional term, and some people use it as a noun and some people use it as a verb. Some people do all sorts of things with it, but mostly, where is your heart and where is your work? Yeah, and I from one. I'm not someone who says you have to use a title.

Speaker 2: 15:44

Mm-hmm and I think that even more the more fluid I watch gender get Every year. It seems like with each entering class of students there is more there than there ever was man. I was in school in the 70s. It's just a whole different world and over the 10 years I served as dean at Vanderbilt I watched the enormous shift in how folks present themselves and understand themselves, and hardly anything was static. So I guess what I say to you is again if womanist doesn't fit you, find another term that does, or take what you can from what womanist thought says and put it in your own laboratory and make your own way, because that's how change happens, that's how we.

Speaker 2: 16:55

This is the art of conversation where I'm not telling you we're talking together and you get to name yourself for yourself. I've just never, since I've been a little girl, I've never liked labels, because they hardly ever capture the person. And certainly, growing up, knowing on some level that I didn't fit the cishet norm, I saw firsthand and felt firsthand the not fitting in. I didn't fit in with my white friends, I didn't fit in with my black friends, I didn't fit in with the women. I didn't fit in with the men. I actually had more friends who were guys, because I played sports and ran around all the time on somebody's field doing something. But it was one of my students who's now Professor Chitaviya when calls it in betweenness, yes, right, and having to embrace that.

Speaker 2: 18:17

So I think womanism is a beginning for folks like you. It is not your stepping point, nor should it be, because you are experiencing, seeing, feeling and can talk about a world some of us don't know. We will only know if we hear you talking about it and you have felt empowered to speak. So I'm a strong advocate don't fit into those moles, or ma'am sir, whatever. Don't fit into those moles because they are not you. Yeah, define your own mole and inhabit it with all your is-ness and then some.

Speaker 1: 19:17

Yeah, I think it's. So hearing that and my responses, hearing you say, okay, can womanism be a beginning for you, there was something visceral about that to me that just felt like that feels dishonoring. It feels it feels like Womanism, and I guess you know as I'm thinking about it. Womanism, part of it is the problem solving in the dialogue, because it felt like to me to claim something. It felt like putting on Lineage and power and Source. You know, in claiming the, in claiming that, at least ontologically claiming, and so I hadn't ever thought about what it means to start there and go on a journey, and I feel like there was a Something just kind of unlocks like why wouldn't? Isn't that the spirit of, of what womanism is? Is I the? Finding the way that this text sources freedom and hope for me? How?

Speaker 1: 20:25

I live it through the world. You had this, this one. Okay, so there was one interview I wanted to ask you about. I'm curious because I'm not sure how I'm identifying. I say I'm wearing a light jacket Called Christianity these days, but there was this interview that you did. It was robust hope in the midst of matrix, and you talked about how you had always been feel century, but of late Jesus started to creep back in. Can you say more about that, what that means? You said, as you've gotten old, as you've gotten older and lately Jesus has started to creep back in, but you were always, from a young age, very, very connected to God and and the spirit. Do you remember that by chance?

Speaker 2: 22:05

Well, I don't remember saying that, but I suppose I did my real journey. I don't know what I was talking about.

Speaker 2: 22:18

Jesus was a nice Jewish boy, but that you were connected to God and the spirit, and that Resonated and and that is true, still true I am much more to your century than I am personal century and I have moved away from. As a kid, jesus was all that in a bag of chips. But I Began to realize, I think I Began to hear myself when I was teaching at Yale and I I always begin classes in prayer, mostly for me. The students think I'm doing it for them, but I'm doing it for me, mostly to try and get my act together To help us do what the work we're gonna try to do in that session. But I began to hear myself saying Jesus who is our Lord. That was, that was first, and then over time it became Jesus who is our brother as much as our Lord and Savior, and then it became Jesus who is our brother.

Speaker 1: 23:48

And I haven't.

Speaker 2: 23:49

I haven't taught in a bit, so God knows what I'll say when I start teaching. Nick, bring it I. I Am persuaded by the power of the Holy Spirit much more Than I am by the power of Jesus. Which does not mean I don't believe in the power of Jesus. I mean this is through to what have been that crucified for me, so I better give him his cross. But you, what moves me, what holds me, what rocks me? What do I feel? To where do I feel rested? Who do I pray? To?

Speaker 2: 24:33

it's mountains out of town don't be the Holy Spirit, and a lot of that has to do with the journey I've been on to try and move away from making God male or female or both. I don't even do well with the Mother, father, god stuff. The Holy Spirit is where it is. For me it's kind of ineffable, but it is so concrete, it is so tangible and that's where I am now. So what I said in that interview I don't know what I was talking about that day, so you can hit the delete button on that one Because really, truly, you know I'm on a research lead this year and we have a house on Martha's Vineyard where I've been living all year and we have a coastal pond out the front door and a marsh out the side door and every day I look at nature and just am amazed and what I see there is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 2: 26:05

And what I try to be a part of is not messing up the beauty. Even when it's, when we have a lot of gray days here, even when it's a gray day in rainy, there's a beauty to that as well. So that's where I am now.

Speaker 1: 26:26

So as we kind of go towards, we're getting towards our mark, I think, another. The last question I have is kind of about some of the spaces that I occupy, where leaving evangelicalism, leaving white Christianity, but being a leader in those spaces and in lots of institutions in those spaces has me kind of straddling both worlds, and so something I consider a gift is kind of introducing white progressives to this kind of theology, because a lot of times they leave the whole game without ever hearing from anybody. That doesn't look one.

Speaker 1: 27:06

So I guess what I would love is for white progressives to have an opportunity to hear from they are not probably aware of how legendary you are, but I am aware, at least in my own experience of theology if you could say something to the white progressive community and at the same time to queer black ex-vangelicals who are trying to figure God out.

Speaker 1: 27:42

You could hold those two people and maybe speak to them. Just words to live by, words of wisdom, wisdom, words that can carry us and bring us into the work that we should be doing in our generation. I would love if you could do that before we go.

Speaker 2: 28:03

Well, I can try One of the things that strikes me and I identify as a progressive angelical. The Bible still means a lot to me, even though I'm like roll my eyes and suck my teeth sometimes at it, but it does. And the power of you start telling me about the power of the Holy Spirit, my goodness, yes, mm-hmm. But one of the things that has struck me about all of us, including the two groups that you've asked me to think about who do we have at our celebrations? Fierals, weddings, birthday parties, what not? What does the room look like? And if that room doesn't look like the theology you espouse or the politics you hold, then you've got work to do, because so often I will look at. I was just doing it the other day. A colleague of mine sent me a link to a group that she had just discovered and said would you look at these people? I thought, oh Lord. But now it was a progressive white evangelical group and maybe there were two people of color and I thought I don't know how far they're gonna go and they don't even have the people at the table that, even though, live into the richness of God's good creation. So where do we, where are our personal politics and theology. Wow, and that's gonna be a life journey of discovery. It's not gonna be an event you get to and go got it, check that off the list.

Speaker 2: 30:31

No, this is a journey. This is not a destination, and part of what is so necessary is in that journey is curiosity, being humble and doing the best you can not to be swallowed up by guilt and loathing, because guilt and loathing is a strategy to keep us all oppressed, but very effective in stopping us from moving forward or finding our best self. What have you? So I think it's a good fight. I think it's a joyous fight. It's worth working this hard to bring ourselves to a better place and to bring others along with us.

Speaker 2: 31:30

But and this is probably my most important thing, do not try to do this by yourself. You gotta find a community. Even if that community is one person, make sure they're sane. That's all I ask. They don't need to be saved, they just need to be sane, because it is too easy, when folks try to do the work of transformation, both in turn to themselves and to society in general, to try and be a lone ranger. And I'm telling you, the forces of domination, evil and hell and suffering will pick you up with your lone self. But you gotta work harder if there's more than one and it's always more helpful to have more than one, because at some point we're gonna leave this side of the Jordan and we have to have people who will pick up the book and carry it on.

Speaker 1: 32:37

That's Shay. I'm deeply, deeply grateful for your time and I'm just just thank you so much for saying yes to coming on the show and thank you for the ways that you have. Really, I think your work has kept me from drowning in some ways, and in other ways it's just kind of taught me how to breathe underwater, so it has been extremely helpful through so many seasons of my life and I'm incredibly grateful to you oh you're welcome, you're welcome.

Speaker 2: 33:14

I really do believe in this that Zany back and help somebody along the way, Because somebody helped me and I know what the difference it has made. Thank you for listening To pick your money and your heart is donate to Subquatcher Inc.

Speaker 1: 33:34

And clear the path for black students today.