GOD IS A BLACK WOMAN

In this timely much-needed book theologian social psychologist and activist Christena Cleveland recounts her personal journey to dismantle the cultural “whitemalegod” and uncover the Sacred Black Feminine introducing a Black Female God who imbues us with hope healing and liberating presence.For years Christena Cleveland spoke about racial reconciliation to congregations justice organizations and colleges. But she increasingly felt she could no longer trust in the God she’d been implicitly taught to worship—a white male God who preferentially empowered white men despite his claim to love all people. A God who clearly did not relate to advocate for or affirm a Black woman like Christena. Her crisis of faith sent her on an intellectual and spiritual journey through history and across France on a 400-mile walking pilgrimage to the ancient shrines of Black Madonnas to find healing in the Sacred Black Feminine. God Is a Black Woman is the chronicle of her liberating transformation and a critique of a society shaped  by white patriarchal Christianity and culture. Christena reveals how America’s collective idea of God as a white man has perpetuated hurt hopelessness and racial and gender oppression. Integrating her powerful personal story womanist ideology as well as theological historical and social science research she invites us to take seriously the truth that God is not white nor male and gives us a new and hopeful path for connecting with the divine and honoring the sacredness of all Black people.