Making it Make Sense: Womanist Ways of Reading Sacred Texts and Constructing Social Ethics in Black Baptist Churches Pubblico
Rice, Winford (Spring 2025)
Abstract
This subject matter – biblical hermeneutics and the construction of Black social ethics – is of particular import and keen interest to me because of the ways that scriptures have been historically weaponized against minorities. Particularly problematic is the way in which said literature has been used to justify virulent theologies, which have led to perverse material realities and carries grave theo-ethical implications for practitioners. The way [we] read, present, study, and make meaning of prose, narratives, and literary corpuses situated in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Testament often influences our ethical and ecclesial commitments and shapes our religious experiences, collective hermeneutic, and social imagination.
This project is an exploration of biblical hermeneutics and the correlation of social ethics as teased out by members of Beulah Baptist Church of Atlanta (Vine City). When referring to biblical hermeneutics, that simply means the way in which individuals read sacred literature and make meaning of said literary corpuses that is applicable to their lives and contexts. By that, I am asking what is normative and authoritative for them as they extrapolate meaning from the literature that drives their understanding of what is (socially) ethical and what is not?
This research project does not aim to homogenize the congregation or render a monolithic reading of the parishioners’ hermeneutics, but it is meant to help excavate the religious landscapes and the ways it shapes the contours of persons’ socio-political consciousness. Black religious landscapes includes practices, beliefs, traditions, theologies, sacred texts, and rituals that constitute the basis of one’s religious identity. For example, in some Black religious spheres, scripture is utilized as an authoritative document whereby individuals construct a moral compass and theological template predicated upon their interpretational gazes of biblical literature, which – prima facie – seems tenable. However, when it comes to robust sexual ethics and the ways scriptures are taken literally – perhaps through a fundamentalist reading of literature – there seems to be a disconnect that we might call “cherry picking,” or an ability to overlook certain passages that are antithetical to persons’ lived realities or contested praxis.
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