God Is a Black Woman


Book Description

In this timely, much-needed book, theologian, social psychologist, and activist Christena Cleveland recounts her personal journey to dismantle the cultural “whitemalegod” and uncover the Sacred Black Feminine, introducing a Black Female God who imbues us with hope, healing, and liberating presence. For years, Christena Cleveland spoke about racial reconciliation to congregations, justice organizations, and colleges. But she increasingly felt she could no longer trust in the God she’d been implicitly taught to worship—a white male God who preferentially empowered white men despite his claim to love all people. A God who clearly did not relate to, advocate for, or affirm a Black woman like Christena. Her crisis of faith sent her on an intellectual and spiritual journey through history and across France, on a 400-mile walking pilgrimage to the ancient shrines of Black Madonnas to find healing in the Sacred Black Feminine. God Is a Black Woman is the chronicle of her liberating transformation and a critique of a society shaped by white patriarchal Christianity and culture. Christena reveals how America’s collective idea of God as a white man has perpetuated hurt, hopelessness, and racial and gender oppression. Integrating her powerful personal story, womanist ideology, as well as theological, historical, and social science research, she invites us to take seriously the truth that God is not white nor male and gives us a new and hopeful path for connecting with the divine and honoring the sacredness of all Black people.




Red Lip Theology


Book Description

A moving essay collection promoting freedom, self-love, and divine wholeness for Black women and opening new levels of understanding and ideological transformation for non-Black women and allies “Candice Marie Benbow is a once-in-a-generation theologian, the kind who, having ground dogma into dust with the fine point of a stiletto, leads us into the wide-open spaces of faith.”—Brittney Cooper, author of Eloquent Rage and co-editor of The Crunk Feminist Collection Blurring the boundaries of righteous and irreverent, Red Lip Theology invites us to discover freedom in a progressive Christian faith that incorporates activism, feminism, and radical authenticity. Essayist and theologian Candice Marie Benbow’s essays explore universal themes like heartache, loss, forgiveness, and sexuality, and she unflinchingly empowers women who struggle with feeling loved and nurtured by church culture. Benbow writes powerfully about experiences at the heart of her Black womanhood. In honoring her single mother’s love and triumphs—and mourning her unexpected passing—she finds herself forced to shed restrictions she’d been taught to place on her faith practice. And by embracing alternative spirituality and womanist theology, and confronting staid attitudes on body positivity and LGBTQ+ rights, Benbow challenges religious institutions, faith leaders, and communities to reimagine how faith can be a tool of liberation and transformation for women and girls.




Too Heavy a Yoke


Book Description

Black women are strong. At least that's what everyone says and how they are constantly depicted. But what, exactly, does this strength entail? And what price do Black women pay for it? In this book, the author, a psychologist and pastoral theologian, examines the burdensome yoke that the ideology of the Strong Black Woman places upon African American women. She demonstrates how the three core features of the ideology--emotional strength, caregiving, and independence--constrain the lives of African American women and predispose them to physical and emotional health problems, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and anxiety. She traces the historical, social, and theological influences that resulted in the evolution and maintenance of the Strong Black Woman, including the Christian church, R & B and hip-hop artists, and popular television and film. Drawing upon womanist pastoral theology and twelve-step philosophy, she calls upon pastoral caregivers to aid in the healing of African American women's identities and crafts a twelve-step program for Strong Black Women in recovery.




When God Was a Black Woman


Book Description

A few years ago I read a book by Merlin Stone called When God Was a Woman, in which she wrote that "in the beginning, people prayed to the Creatress of Life, the Mistress of Heaven. At the very dawn of religion, God was a woman...the female deity in the Near and Middle East was revered as Goddess-much as people today think of God...the original status of the Goddess was as supreme deity...the Great Goddess was regarded as immortal, changeless, omnipotent; and the concept of fatherhood had not yet been introduced into religious thought." As a critical thinker, I know that sometimes a lie is told when the truth is declared halfway or haphazardly. Stone, who happens to be a White female artist and college professor, never mentioned the racial make-up of the female divinities of the world's earliest civilizations she wrote about. I don't know understand how Stone could write a book about When God Was a Woman and then later write a book on Three Thousand Years of Racism, which focuses on uncovering evidence of racism imposed by Indo-Europeans after they conquered most of the same regions discussed in When God Was a Woman, and fail to connect the probability that the Goddesses she first wrote about were originally depicted as Black women. How can she admit that "historical, mythological and archaeological evidence suggests that it was these northern people who brought with them the concepts of light as good and dark as evil (very possibly the symbolism of their racial attitudes toward the darker people of the southern areas) and of a supreme male deity;" but not admit that the Goddess of theses Black people was also Black before they and She were conquered by White people (i.e., Indo-Europeans). Whether this failing was accidental or intentional is irrelevant, yet one could assume that the Goddesses would originally resemble the people who worship them. According to Albert Churchward, "the earliest members of the human race appeared in the interior of the African continent about two million years ago, then from the region of the Great Lakes they spread over the entire continent. Groups of these early men wandered down the Nile Valley, settled in Egypt, and then later dispersed themselves to all parts of the world...As these early Africans wandered over the world, they differentiated into the various human subspecies that now inhabit our planet. The men who remained in the tropical and equatorial regions retained their dark complexions, whereas those that settled in the temperate zones lost a portion of their dusky pigmentation and developed a fairer skin." Provided that the original racial profile of the Nile, Indus, and Tigris-Euphrates River Valley as well as the Aegean civilizations has been clandestinely confirmed as Black/African, then the female divinities worshipped in these civilizations should also logically be Black/African. Accordingly, in the beginning, to revise Stone, God was a Black woman.




The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales


Book Description

This volume contains George Bernard Shaw's collection of short stories entitled "The Black Girl in Search of God, and Some Lesser Tales". It was first published in 1934. "The Black Girl In Search Of God" is a short story that follows a young girl who is newly converted to Christianity - and who embarks on a literal search for God. On her way, she comes into contact with a number of religious figures, each trying to convert her to their own faiths. This wonderfully sardonic allegory highlights Shaw's unorthodox ideas on faith and race, and was highly controversial when first published. George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950) was an Irish playwright who co-founded of the London School of Economics. Many vintage texts such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this book now, in an affordable, high-quality, modern edition. It comes complete with a specially commissioned biography of the author.




She Speaks


Book Description

She Speaks helps African-American women find relevance, purpose, and identity in the Word of God. Each chapter offers a complete list of references to help the reader locate the stories of these inspirational women in the Bible with ease.




God Is a Black Woman


Book Description

Yara, a native of Mozambique, have written, designed and illustrated this poetic and interesting story, based on her experience of being brought up in a country that is truly multi-ethnic and multi-tribal community of 24 million people. The story is inspired by a matriarchal tribe, The Macua, and blends in background and myths of other tribes, creating a fable that shares much with well known Creation Myths of many regions and epochs of the world. The Author wrote this book in hopes to place myself squarely with those who are committed to peace, in every sense of that word. This includes peace between the genders, the races, the Faiths, as well as our painful common history. She also identifies strongly with the many efforts to resurrect The Sacred Feminine, so its long overdue merging with a largely unguided and love-starved Sacred Masculine, can be brought into common awareness. The Author believes that many African tribes illustrate the strength that Community, in its best sense, gives to its individual members. Some also illustrate the ways in which communities are led from their path, when fear rules. Knowing our spiritual stories and histories can prevent repetition of our most catastrophic mistakes, and that may well happen if we sincerely so, wish.




Disunity in Christ


Book Description

Despite Jesus' prayer that all Christians "be one," divisions have been epidemic in the body of Christ. Though we may think we know why this happens, Christena Cleveland says we probably don't. Learn the hidden reasons behind conflict and divisions, the unseen dynamics at work that tend to separate us from others. Here are the tools we need to build bridges.




A Rhythm of Prayer


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • For the weary, the angry, the anxious, and the hopeful, this collection of moving, tender prayers offers rest, joyful resistance, and a call to act, written by Barbara Brown Taylor, Amena Brown, Nadia Bolz-Weber, and other artists and thinkers, curated by the author Glennon Doyle calls “my favorite faith writer.” It’s no secret that we are overworked, overpressured, and edging burnout. Unsurprisingly, this fact is as old as time—and that’s why we see so many prayer circles within a multitude of church traditions. These gatherings are a trusted space where people seek help, hope, and peace, energized by God and one another. This book, curated by acclaimed author Sarah Bessey, celebrates and honors that prayerful tradition in a literary form. A companion for all who feel the immense joys and challenges of the journey of faith, this collection of prayers says it all aloud, giving readers permission to recognize the weight of all they carry. These writings also offer a broadened imagination of hope—of what can be restored and made new. Each prayer is an original piece of writing, with new essays by Sarah Bessey throughout. Encompassing the full breadth of the emotional landscape, these deeply tender yet subversive prayers give readers an intimate look at the diverse language and shapes of prayer.




When God Was A Woman


Book Description

Here, archaeologically documented,is the story of the religion of the Goddess. Under her, women’s roles were far more prominent than in patriarchal Judeo-Christian cultures. Stone describes this ancient system and, with its disintegration, the decline in women’s status.




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