Ain't I a Womanist, Too?: Third Wave Womanist Religious Thought

5 Confessions of a Ex-Theological Bitch

5 Confessions of a Ex-Theological Bitch The Thickness of Black Women’s Exploitation between Jacquelyn Grant’s “Backbone” and Michael Eric Dyson’s “Theological Bitch” Elonda Clay Hi, my name is Elonda.1 I am an ex-theological bitch. I am in recovery from being a strongblackwoman2 who was theologically restrained, socially silenced, and physically sacrificed. Yesterday, I was silent, “respectable,” expendable. Today I “talk back” and take back the power of my own Pussy and voice. I liberate them both from being treated like a bitch. And these, these are my confessions . . . Inspired by Karrine Steffans’s Confessions of a Video Vixen,3 I attempt here to break the silence on the ways that black liberation and womanist discourses can reinforce a “missionary position”4 Christian identity. In writing this essay, I confess that I have kept my thighs closed or worse, covered my scuffed-up knees with the lap scarf of pretense that purports to speak for black women but denies the power of the Pussy and the resolve of black women on the bottom to do for themselves what no respectable theology will do: speak from a “woman on top” point of view. This chapter flows in four sections. I begin by discussing black women and black churches, drawing from the works of Jacquelyn Grant and Michael Eric Dyson. Turning attention to the gender metaphors of “backbone” and “bitch”—particularly how they function within and outside of the texts—I seek to find links between these two metaphors, touching on their historical usage and what they signify about black women. Drawing also from the works of philosopher Michel Foucault, music artist Jill Scott, theologian Laurel Schneider, and others, I seek to problematize Christianity as a “confessional” 93 religion. The thickness of gender oppression in Christianity is not only what is said (confession), but it is also what is not said (silence) about gender injustice. I conclude by imagining what black women and men’s religious lives might look like if they challenge the “missionary position” of their Christian identities and practices, and move toward a transformation in sexual politics. Gender Metaphors for Black Women in Black Religious Thought (USA) Jacquelyn Grant and Michael Eric Dyson have written on the collective silences in churches and communities on the oppression and exploitation of black women. Although they critique sexism and sexual segregation practices, they present the “backbone” and “bitch” statuses of black women as a tragic, inevitable fact. Therefore, they remain silent on the heterosexist bias of their metaphorical concepts. In her essay “Black Women and the Black Church,” Jacquelyn Grant brings attention to the well-worn adage that women are the “backbone” of the church.5 Grant states that while backbone is a metaphor for the function of women in the black church, the word also refers to their location—the back. She observes, “What they really mean is that women are in the background and should be kept there; they are merely support workers.” Grant goes on to say that women are accorded greater participation in decision making at smaller rather than larger churches. She proposes that women are penalized for trying to move from the backbone to the head position—the leadership of the church.6 There is another image conveyed by the backbone metaphor related to labor; one of carrying the weight of others, bearing the bulk of others’ share of work on your back. So the multiple meanings of “support” not only work in and around the metaphor “backbone” to reference the supporting role and spatial regulating of women to the background, as Grant argues, but they also point to the internalized expectation of black women’s self-sacrifice on behalf of “the body,” whether “the body” represents their church, black communities, employers, families, or partners. Michael Eric Dyson, in his 2003 Boardman Lectureship in Christian Ethics titled “Religion and Terrors,” brings attention to the reality that while some blacks are outraged at the explicit expression of misogyny in hip hop culture, especially the use of words like “bitch” and “ho,” they are silent concerning the routinization and banalization of misogyny in everyday life. Recognizing interconnections between speech and silence as they are operational within black churches concerning misogyny, Dyson states, “So you haven’t been called a bitch, but you dangum been treated like one!”7 He has also publically 94 | Ain't I a Womanist, Too? described this as...