Join the Book Club This Thursday!

We are reading Sisters in the Wilderness this month by Delores S. Williams. Please join us even if you haven't cracked the spine! There will be plenty to discuss no matter your familiarity with the text. 

Book club meets in the undercroft at 7pm--dinner will be served! Enter through the Senior Center door on Seventh Street.

This landmark work first published 20 years ago helped establish the field of African-American womanist theology. It is widely regarded as a classic text in the field. 

Drawing on the biblical figure of Hagar mother of Ishmael, cast into the desert by Abraham and Sarah, but protected by God--Williams finds a prototype for the struggle of African-American women. African slave, homeless exile, surrogate mother, Hagar's story provides an image of survival and defiance appropriate to black women today. Exploring the themes implicit in Hagar's story (poverty and slavery, ethnicity and sexual exploitation, exile and encounter with God) Williams traces parallels in the history of African-American women from slavery to the present day. A new womanist theology emerges from this shared experience, from the interplay of oppressions on account of race, sex, and class. Sisters in the Wilderness offers a telling critique of theologies that promote liberation but ignore women of color. This is a book that defined a new theological project and charted a path that others continue to explore.