Womanist Approaches to Religion and Society Unit

The Womanist Approaches to Religion & Society Unit welcomes papers that highlight one or more of the following topics:

Theme: Weary Throats & New Songs- 20th Anniversary Commemoration of Teresa Fry Brown's publication and contemporary challenges for Black preaching women
Integrating women's voices in proclamation, exhortation, and rhetorical methods, including "the work of exegeting lies." This session seeks to highlight the power of women's voices in light of the national gaze on the milestone of sermonic delivery of Rev. Dr. Gina Stewart, pastor of Christ Missionary Baptist Church as the first invited female preacher in the 129- year existence of the National Baptist Convention and the ramifications of the responses heard globally.

Theme: Embodied Leadership - Womanist Approaches to Leadership Thriving & Surviving
This session aims to focus on Womanist ways of leading including consideration of ways to embody our call and vocation in ordination and non-ordination paths. Survival in academia requires strategic navigation of tenure track politics amid conservative drives to scapegoat black female leaders. The discourse about modes to survive invites shared narratives to develop counter-hegemonic strategies amid theological oppression of church hurt, moral injury, and trauma to persist in an ontological call to thrive.

Theme: Mining the Prophetic Wisdom of Womanist Scholar Jacquelyn Grant
On the 35th Anniversary of womanist scholar Jacquelyn Grant's teaching career, a look at the constructive theological contributions in the seminal text, White Women's Christ and Black Women's Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Responses (1989), Perspectives on Womanist Theology (1995). Grant has been featured in many publications and media tributes, served on numerous international and national organizations as a noted pioneer in the first generation of self-identified Womanists matriculating from Union Theological Seminary.

Womanist Approaches welcomes compelling papers that utilize womanist methodologies and engage womanist topics beyond the themes presented above.