Writing As Spiritual Practice

Writing As Spiritual Practice

Yolanda Pierce, PhD

As a womanist theologian, writing is a form of spiritual discipline for me. Like reading, meditating, or praying, writing is how I dare to engage in divine practice to better understand both myself and all that is sacred and holy around me. Theologians write about weighty matters: the nature of God; forgiveness and salvation; the beginning of time and the end of the age.

Because the subject matter is so heavy, much of theological writing is dense and impenetrable. My writing is how I work through what it means to be a theologian who is committed to conversations with those outside of academic circles. I want to tell the stories of those on the underside of history, why and how they journey through their faiths. I care about the theologies of those who have their “backs against the wall” as Howard Thurman calls it; the outcast, the marginalized, and the silenced.

It is Paul Tillich who reminds us that a theologian is one who has made “an existential decision” to stand on the boundary between commitment and alienation and faith and doubt. That is a space I occupy as a womanist theologian: a deep and abiding belief in my Christian faith; along with plenty of doubts and fears about that same faith. I live in the tension between my commitments to these communities (the local church body and the larger body of believers) even as I’ve gone through seasons of alienation and isolation from those very same communities. 

I wrote my latest book, In My Grandmother’s House: Black Women, Faith, and the Stories We Inherit, at the juxtaposition of all those tensions. I was raised by grandparents and elders in a tight-knit Holiness-Pentecostal community, who taught me to love God with my whole heart, and to love all those around me. But as my grown-up faith matured, I was plagued with questions, and doubts, and unresolved uncertainties I was never allowed to express as a child. I cherished the deep piety I saw expressed, but I also questioned the legalism which condemned and punished too many. In a world that despises blackness, I was taught about a God who deliberately created me in God’s own image and likeness. And called my blackness “good.” But I had to reconcile that goodness with hymns of my tradition which equated “whiteness” with “righteousness.”

In a series of essays, In My Grandmother’s House explores the Black religious community which raised me and left me a powerful legacy of traditions which sustain me in the darkest hours. This same tradition has given me the vocabulary to write about soteriology, ecclesiology, and eschatology in ways that are accessible for a broader audience – and also deeply contextual. The book illuminates what any good theologian knows: we live in the beauty of contradictions, with our doubts and fears coexisting along with our faith and beliefs. Yes, contradiction can be messy, but it can also be beautiful.

As I sat at my kitchen table writing this book, I was particular in my daily practice. I offered a prayer of thanks for the elders and ancestors, whose survival made my life, education, and career possible. And I offered a prayer of supplication that the stories of my grandmother and elders would resonate with the readers, wherever they may be on their faith journeys.

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Dr. Yolanda Pierce is a professor and dean of Howard University School of Divinity. She is a scholar of African American religious history, womanist theology, race, and religion, as well as a public theologian, activist, and commentator. An alumna of Princeton University and Cornell University, Pierce served as the founding director of the Center for the Study of African American Religious Life at the National Museum of African American History & Culture. Pierce’s writing has appeared in Time, Sojourners, and The Christian Century, and she is the author of the book Hell Without Fires. Pierce lives in Washington, D.C 

IN MY GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE

What if the most steadfast faith you’ll ever encounter comes from a Black grandmother?

The church mothers who raised Yolanda Pierce, dean of Howard University School of Divinity, were busily focused on her survival. In a world hostile to Black women’s bodies and spirits, they had to be. Born on a former cotton plantation and having fled the terrors of the South, Pierce’s grandmother raised her in the faith inherited from those who were enslaved. Now, in the pages of In My Grandmother’s House, Pierce reckons with that tradition, building an everyday womanist theology rooted in liberating scriptures, experiences in the Black church, and truths from Black women’s lives. Pierce tells stories that center the experiences of those living on the underside of history, teasing out the tensions of race, spirituality, trauma, freedom, resistance, and memory.

A grandmother’s theology carries wisdom strong enough for future generations. The Divine has been showing up at the kitchen tables of Black women for a long time. It’s time to get to know that God.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing