A Practice of Weaving: The Life and On-Going Legacy of Womanist Liturgical Praxis

Abstract

To look back on the journey of womanist scholarship within liturgical scholarship is to be radically honest about the lack thereof, abundantly grateful for the work that has been done, and actively hopeful for what is to come. As a Black feminist and womanist practical theologian who prioritizes the practices of proclamation, ritual, and worship, I found myself searching for a lineage when entering into the scholarly guilds. When I began to understand more fully that much of what I had been taught as “foundational” had been rooted in white supremacy, scholarship that put Black women at the center ignited my own scholarly curiosities and offered me an intellectual home. Many theories and terms that have been considered classic and critical have often left out the voices of all women and Black people. Although the experiences of Black women have been given the least amount of consideration as central to liturgical theology, some scholars have laid a foundation that is steadily being built upon by present womanist liturgical scholars. This is where my hope for liturgical scholarship stems. Scholarship that prioritizes the experiences and practices of Black women is not an optional epistemological and theoretical perspective for liturgical scholarship. Black feminist and Womanist scholarship that begins with Black women not only contributes particular wisdom to the guild, but methodologically offers critical insight in how liturgical scholarship might be engaged at large. In this essay I assert three ways that womanist thought contributes to liturgical scholarship and what it asks of the study. Womanist liturgical scholarship challenges normative views of liturgy by prioritizing resistance, embodiment, and esthetic disruption as critical markers of womanist liturgical scholarship. This is not an exhaustive list, but it does allow for an opening to the conversation of the contribution and critical impact.