Katie Geneva Cannon and the Soul of Womanism

The first time I saw Katie Cannon was during my inaugural attendance of the American Academy of Religion's (AAR) annual meeting. "There's Katie Cannon," someone said. Katie was wearing a blue, gold, white, and black kente cloth dashiki and sporting her big, bushy afro. I was in a taxi approaching the conference hotel, and Katie was standing outside holding court. She was animated in her conversation. Without hearing a word that was being spoken, I could tell that the person whose scholarship and reputation made her the icon of womanist theology also was a woman of purpose. As I got to know her, I came to realize some measure of the depth of focus and commitment with which Katie Geneva Cannon lived purposefully to leave behind a legacy of womanist scholarship and womanist action.

I met Katie as she led the first AAR mentoring meeting the United Methodist Church (UMC) sponsored for women of color pursuing doctoral degrees in religion and theology. In her inimitable way, Katie provided access by sharing a story about the initial professional paper she presented: "I fainted the first time I stood up to give a paper," she said. Other details of Katie's talk escape me. The story about fainting is significant because it demonstrates that Katie Cannon lived and taught what it means to do the womanist work of "debunking, unmasking, and disentangling."¹ In this case, Katie demystified the idea of the academy's inaccessibility and created space for womanist religious thought by sharing from her experience as a scholar. As a first-year PhD student, I clearly remember thinking, "She fainted when she gave her first paper, and she still became Katie Cannon."

Katie, Cheryl Townsend-Gilkes, and Dolores Williams were the three "outrageous, audacious, courageous [and] willful"² persons who created the AAR's Womanist Approaches to Religion and Society Group. In joining this collaboration, Katie communicated clearly her desire "to know more and in greater depth" the meaning of being a full participant in the religious academy. Greater depth for Katie usually included setting the bar high. When she chaired the Womanist Approaches Group's steering committee, Katie not only led the organization of groundbreaking panels in womanist religious thought but also curated teaching and learning sessions and meet-the-womanist-author book events as auxiliaries of program panels. These auxiliaries were precursors to the current afternoon-long womanist ingathering that occurs annually, one day before the AAR meeting begins.

Katie's generosity and vision conveyed the womanist communitarian disposition: "I'm taking you and a bunch of other[s] with me." Katie positioned herself to easily be a lone bright star, which is one way to point toward "more and greater depth" of engagement within the academy. For Katie, greater depth also meant greater numbers of womanist excellence alongside her own brilliance. So, in addition to her significant and substantial scholarship, she mentored, organized womanist events, chaired and served as a reader on dissertation committees, made and received telephone calls, wrote recommendation letters, bridged participation of many persons in a variety of professional settings, sent personal cards and letters, encouraged, gave advice, told the truth, and much more in order to bring others with her in carrying and pushing womanist religious thought into the academy.

Some would question the characterization of Katie as one who "loves the Spirit." This may be especially unbelievable to those who know she combated anything like a move of the Spirit that might make her lose some level of control. (On more than one occasion, I heard Katie say that she would pinch herself to avoid this.) Still, Katie Geneva Cannon was a profoundly spiritual woman, and she loved being so. She loved setting (and seeking to establish) the standard of excellence, integrity, and camaraderie she embodied as a foremother of womanist religious thought and praxis. Katie loved and nurtured her inner core. Katie also taught and urged others to be true to their deepest selves. (She advised me once, as I prepared for an interview, to present my most radical thinking.) She was keenly attentive...