God Is a Black Woman

A timely, much-needed book that weaves personal pilgrimage and societal reckoning to dismantle the cultural “whitemalegod” and uncover the Sacred Black Feminine—and ultimately hope, healing, and liberation. For years, theologian, social psychologist, and activist Christena Cleveland spoke about “racial reconciliation” to congregations, justice organizations, and colleges. Yet over time, she felt she could no longer trust in the God she’d been taught to worship—a God who, she realized, did not affirm a Black woman like her. Her crisis of faith sent her on an intellectual and spiritual journey through history and across France, on a four-hundred-mile walking pilgrimage to the ancient shrines of Black Madonnas, where she discovered the healing power of the Sacred Black Feminine. In recounting her mystical journey, Cleveland reveals how America’s collective idea of God as a white man has perpetuated hurt, disillusionment, and racial and gender oppression. Integrating her stirring personal story, womanist ideology, as well as theological, historical, and social science research, she invites us to dismantle the cultural “whitemalegod” and encounter the Sacred Black Feminine, giving us a new and hopeful path for connecting with the divine and honoring the sacredness of all Black people.

A timely, much-needed book that weaves personal pilgrimage and societal reckoning to dismantle the cultural “whitemalegod” and uncover the Sacred Black Feminine—and ultimately hope, healing, and liberation. For years, theologian, social psychologist, and activist Christena Cleveland spoke about “racial reconciliation” to congregations, justice organizations, and colleges. Yet over time, she felt she could no longer trust in the God she’d been taught to worship—a God who, she realized, did not affirm a Black woman like her. Her crisis of faith sent her on an intellectual and spiritual journey through history and across France, on a four-hundred-mile walking pilgrimage to the ancient shrines of Black Madonnas, where she discovered the healing power of the Sacred Black Feminine. In recounting her mystical journey, Cleveland reveals how America’s collective idea of God as a white man has perpetuated hurt, disillusionment, and racial and gender oppression. Integrating her stirring personal story, womanist ideology, as well as theological, historical, and social science research, she invites us to dismantle the cultural “whitemalegod” and encounter the Sacred Black Feminine, giving us a new and hopeful path for connecting with the divine and honoring the sacredness of all Black people.