Righteous Content: Black Women's Perspectives of Church and Faith. By Daphne C. Wiggins. New York: New York University Press, 2004. 256pp. $ 42.00, cloth.
Over the past century, scholars have meticulously developed a refreshing library of resources dedicated to the study of the institutional structure and clerical leadership of traditionally black religious organizations. This abundance of historical, theological and social scientific resources, however, often lack intimate attention to the lives and faith struggles of ordinary practitioners. Daphne Wiggins’ insightful research presented in Righteous Content: Black Women’s Perspectives of Church and Faith contributes to an important and burgeoning literature that considers how everyday laity experience life within traditionally black religious organizations. What are their serendipitous blessings, longings, satisfactions and frustrations? In this detailed intervention Wiggins asks two central questions. Given both the increased secularization of American society as well as the documented sexism of the church as defined by womanist critiques, “Why are women so faithful to the Black Church?” And, “How is the Black Church faring in the eyes of women?”
Based upon qualitative research methods of participant observation and semi-structured interviews, Wiggins presents the insights and faith experiences of thirty-eight women from two different churches in Georgia, Calvary Baptist and Layton Temple Church of God in Christ (COGIC). Representing parishioners from two of the largest black denominations in the country, the women interviewed cover “a spectrum of ages, occupations, and marital statuses” (17). Wiggins is clear to explain that she is not attempting to construct a master narrative or draw definitive conclusions about how all black women are experiencing the church. Rather, from this sampling she wants to introduce the reader to some of the ideas and concerns that black women bring with them to worship in black churches.
Wiggins situates Righteous Content as a “bookend” to Evelyn Higginbotham’s Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), which examines the feminist theology and social alliances created by black women at the turn of the century in their efforts to advance the race. In Righteous Content, a title which summarily removes the “dis”content of earlier women, Wiggins considers shifts in the social, political and economic standing of contemporary black women as a means of interpreting their differential commitments to the black church today. Unlike women one hundred years ago, contemporary women are not beholden to the black church as the only means of establishing and engaging in the public sphere. With the development of organizations like the NAACP, the Urban League and various women’s clubs/sororities, alternative public spaces exist through which women can advocate and engage in public debate. Furthermore, “new theological commitments” emerging from the prosperity gospel, as well as charismatic and “full gospel” forms of worship alter our understanding of traditional black churches. As a result of these changes, women’s interactions with and expectations of the black church differ. Nevertheless, there remain certain consistencies.
In the first four chapters Wiggins explores what women give and receive in their reciprocal alliance with the church. She considers each woman’s history within the church as a framework for how they set expectations of the church today – their expectations for individual worship as well as for meeting the personal and social needs of community members. In the process Wiggins examines how women themselves understand the mission of the black church in light of popular scholarly positions that have often identified it as the center of political and social life for African Americans. While women are still committed to the historic social work of the church, they are increasingly concerned about individual spiritual transformation. According to Wiggins, “the interpersonal, emotional or spiritual needs of church and community members were primary in the women’s minds, ahead of systemic or structural injustices” (98). These changes, Wiggins implies are a product of contemporary post-civil rights history.
Giving special attention to the issue of women in the ministry, in chapter five Wiggins captures the seeming ambivalence of lay women towards the need to advocate for more women clergy or for women in positions of pastoral leadership. While women appreciate women ministers, they are not inclined towards politically addressing the glass ceiling that is evident in most protestant denominations. In this chapter Wiggins clearly makes use of her comparative sample by opening up the diversity of the black church positions on women in ministry. From the turn of the twentieth century to now various Baptist and Pentecostal communities have differed and splintered on the issue of women’s ordination. Nevertheless, Wiggins contends that the focus on ministerial positions might camouflage the real power that women wield in churches as trustees, deaconesses and members of mothers’ boards.
The tenor and tone of Wiggins’ analysis can be understood with an initial glimpse of the concluding chapter. In it she writes that she wants to “shift” her approach, “from analysis of particular themes to a discussion of the implications of my findings for the vitality of the Black Church in this new millennium.” She goes on to state that she “offer[s] informed ministerial reflections about several dimensions of the Black Church that emerge out of this work and that warrant subsequent attention from the clergy, membership, and scholars” (italics mine). As one working from the position of two often conflicting but sometimes complimentary callings, Wiggins moves between voices of scholarly critique and ministerial concern. As a sociologist, she interjects into the social scientific literature the voices of those whose faith experiences often make up the quantitative and theoretical framework for interpreting the black church. Secondly, and possibly more important to Wiggins, she offers the church a blueprint of its exemplary practices as well as a prescription for how it might overcome latent practices of exclusion and hypocrisy in order to build a stronger community of faith.
The breath of insight gathered from these women could have only been deepened by a more ethnographic look into their everyday lives. After reading the text, I am still asking myself, “who are these women?” I wanted to see them coming and going, interacting with other members of their faith community, in contestation over biblical exegesis. I wanted to see them interacting with religious media and going to church conferences in order to understand how their expectations of the church are shaped by national and transnational impulses. I wanted to see more of how their narratives interact with the history of black women’s religious participation. In some, I wanted to see them living out the faith commitment that they describe given the real challenges of daily life. Beyond text, I wanted context. The “thick description” that anthropologist Clifford Geertz suggests is central to qualitative analysis is less of an emphasis in Wiggins’ work than the desire to articulate the multiple perspectives that church women have on specific topics. While Wiggins, a sociologist, moves away from the quantitative staple of her field in order to offer the more textured work of actually listening to the voices of women, offering a portrait of their social, economic and political contexts would have given even more insight into how they see themselves as persons of faith interdependent upon the institutions that they and their foremothers and fathers have built.
Wiggins’s text reminds me of Arthur Fauset’s Black Gods of the Metropolis in that over sixty years later he has left us a legacy of insights into how individuals came to decisions to join with Bishop Ida Robinson, Daddy Grace, Father Divine, Noble Drew Ali and a host of other charismatic figures of this seminal point in history. In much the same way, Wiggins is offering us a legacy, something to help us understand in historical reflection why women are where they are, despite and because of the internal workings of black churches. Like Fauset, she is non-judgmental in listening to women’s articulations, though unlike Fauset, and much in the spirit of her informants, she is decidedly and unapologetically sympathetic to the institutional church.
While I wanted more from this text, I am grateful for this important intervention into the study of black women’s religious experiences. It offers us yet another opportunity to interpret the religious worlds of women whose lives are often unexamined in scholarly literature. Wiggins has given us this legacy and I am grateful.
Marla Frederick, Harvard University