Attached Paper In-person November Annual Meeting 2025

Altar Work: Black Women, Sacred Reclamation and the Fourth Wave of Womanism

Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

Altars have long served as sacred spaces of memory, reverence, revelation, and restoration, evolving to meet the spiritual needs of various communities. This paper explores how altars function as a metaphor for Black women’s evolving spirituality in the fourth wave of womanism. Like altars, Black women’s spirituality embodies both tradition and fluidity, as they reclaim ancestral practices and craft autonomous, inclusive faith traditions beyond Christian doctrine. Through the dimensions of remembrance, reverence, revelation, and re-membering, Black women create spiritual spaces that honor ancestors, engage divine presence, receive wisdom, and heal from systemic oppression. Drawing from historical shifts in Christian altars, womanist theology, and contemporary critiques of religious exclusion, this study highlights how Black women’s spirituality is a site of liberation. It argues that the fourth wave of womanism calls for a faith that is expansive, self-determined, and rooted in radical wholeness, offering Black women sacred autonomy in their spiritual journeys.