Black women in theological and ecclesial spaces are what sociologist Patricia Hill Collins refers to as “the outsider within.” These spaces were not built for our leadership. They were designed to be organized and controlled by men, often White men in particular. Black women exist within these spaces but often never fully as insiders.
Activist, artist, and public theologian Tricia Hersey looks at the radical biblical instruction to rest and how claiming it can be a form of resistance.
The woman in the bed was pale. Not just her ashen skin but her presence, her being, seemed translucent. As we approached the bed, her eyes opened to reveal the child she had been once, expectant but uncomprehending.
In 1974, Katie Geneva Cannon was the first Black woman to be ordained as a minister of Word and Sacrament in the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, an antecedent denomination of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).