Embodied Spirituality and Praxis as Envoiced Memories

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.

There are many hardships that are encountered by members of the Africana diaspora in efforts to remember and reclaim lost ancestral memories. However, the desire to belong to a communal identity located in a particular set of ancestral memories facilitate what Dionne Brand refers to as “way-finding.” In her book A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes on Belonging, Brand argues that religion is one of many methods of way-finding that can be used as a means to navigate the Black experience of a ruptured historical memory resultant from the practice of colonialism and slavery. Using Julie Dash’s film Daughters of the Dust to illustrate Brands notion of way-finding, this body of work contends that diasporic religious practices like Hoodoo, are legitimate methods of way-finding that have resulted in loving and caring connections to one’s lost ancestral past, themselves, and others.

This discussion explores some of the ways we catalog and document the Black, Latinx, and Indigenous cultures in our foodways systems, focusing especially on how history is passed down in the preparation of hand-patted foods at the kitchen table. Here is where we can reclaim the art of oral history, of inducting new griots in the skill of retelling our stories. Some attention will be given to food storytelling through film and television, including the 1997 Black film classic, Soul Food, Norman Lear’s classic 1970s sitcom, Good Times, and the 2001 comedy, Tortilla Soup. A cursory look will be given to Idiomatic and cultural expressions, like this food is so good you put your foot into it, or this food is bucklin’ or you did that! as a means of gratitude and extension of the social mores and values that are learned at the kitchen table.

This presentation will explore the concept of the “Womanist Athlete” as a framework for understanding the significance of Black women’s movement as acts of liberation. First, I will define the term Womanist Athlete, situating it within Womanist theology &  ethics. Second, I will examine the lives of Harriet Tubman, Angela Davis, and Serena Williams, demonstrating how each exemplifies athleticism: Tubman as an Endurance Athlete, Davis as a Political Athlete, and Williams as a Olympic Athlete. Third, I will argue that beyond their roles as historical & cultural figures, all three are theologians of liberation. Finally, I will engage the works Townes, Williams, Copeland, and Coleman to explore the role of imagination and hope in Black women’s experiences. By bringing these scholars into conversation with the lives of Tubman, Davis, and Williams, this presentation will illuminate how Black women’s movement—whether through escape, activism, or professional sports—serves as a theological act of liberation.