Religion, Women of Color, and the Suffrage Movement

The year 2020 marks the centenary of the passing of the 19th Amendment that allowed for women in the United States to vote. The strategic struggle of women demanding equal dignity and the right to vote in the United States helped to shed light on the systemic evils that have plagued the collective history of the country. Ideologies of racism, genderism, classism, and many more were and continue to be used to deny women their dignities both in the United States and in other parts of the world. This work sheds light on the intersectionality of religion, class, gender, philosophy, theology, and culture as they shape the experiences of women, especially women of color. A fundamental question that this volume aims to address is: What does it mean to be a woman of color in a world where systems of erasure dominate? The title of this volume is meant to showcase a deliberate engagement with the uncelebrated insights and perspectives of women of color in a world where systemic discrimination persists, and to articulate new strategies and paradigms for recognizing their contributions to the broader struggles for freedom and equity of women in our world.

SimonMary Asese A. Aihiokhai is associate professor of systematic theology at the University of Portland and a fellow at the Westar Institute.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

SimonMary Asese A. Aihiokhai

Part One: Struggles for Freedom from the Margins

1. Black Women and Suffrage: A History of Political Freedom and Race in the United States

Christin Lee Hancock

2: National Association of Colored Women Clubs and the Fight for Freedom

Anita R. Gooding

3: Struggles from the Margins, Advocacy at Intersections: Muslim womens advocacy in Europe, Canada, and the United States

Lara-Zuzan Golesorkhi

4: Oppression, Resistance, and Reform: Revisiting the Catholic Discussion on Womens Ordination

Carol J. Dempsey, OP

Part Two: Undoing Dualism: Towards an Anthropology of Wholeness

5:The Evolution of Male and Female Anthropology Accommodation, Resistance, and Transformation

Christina Astorga

6: Does Christian Catechesis Have a Gender Problem? Towards A Catechesis of Wholeness

Valerie D. Lewis-Mosley

7: Gender, Race, God: A Case for a Pragmatic Theological Anthropology

Anthonia Bolanle Ojo, SSMA

8: Recovering an Ecologically Embodied Humanity: Insights from Native American Womens Experiences

Lisa Ann Dellinger

Part Three: Towards a Hermeneutic of Liberation

9: The Human Person as A Polyphonic Being: Giving Voice to the Experiences of Black Women

SimonMary Asese A. Aihiokhai

10: Religion, African American Women, and the Suffrage Movement: The Journey to Holistic Freedom

Kathleen Dorsey Bellow

11: Deep Down in My Soul: Black Women and the Spirituality of Freedom: Reading the Signs of the Times

C. Vanessa White

12: A Theology of Womens Rights: Bridge-Building Between Individual Rights and Communal Rights Insights From Africa

Camillus O. Njoku

Part Four: Towards Pedagogies of Wholeness

13: Towards the Flourishing of Women of Color through the Lens of Intersectionality and Neuropsychology

Sarina Saturn

14: Defining the Contours of Pedagogies for Holistic Anthropologies

Dawn Michele Whitehead

15:Discursive Interventions toward Gender Justice.The Academic Study of the Bible in the Neoliberal Age

Susanne Scholz

16: Slouching, together, after Pentecost. Towards a post-traumatic pedagogy of (de)formation, discomfort, and difference

Brandy Daniels

About the Contributors