It makes sense that because white men created so much of religion, the image of God was an old white man with grey hair. However, this image needs a makeover because he’s no longer working.
—Jacqui Lewis, “She Is Love, She Is Love,” the Mendicant
Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis explores how oppressive images of God lead us to limit and even exclude ourselves from the divine image.
We know, despite preaching and teaching to the contrary, that our God is not on the side of oppression but on the side of freedom and justice. We know our God is a revolutionary lover who came as one of us to teach us how to love. We know that any Christianity practicing the tools of empire is not Christian and that Christian nationalism is not about Christ but is about propping up empire with God-talk.
What I am saying is this: Some of us are walking around like the god of the oppressor is our god. Oh, we’re talking about liberation, but we have not freed ourselves…. Our pulpits preach too much about who is out. We fear questioning the way the world works because we might leave ourselves out. We’ve forgotten ubuntu—that we are inextricably connected, and that we are indeed our siblings’ keepers…. Let’s turn away from the theologies that cause us to keep others in chains.… As an act of prophetic resistance, we need to boldly reject theologies that contradict God-is-love. [1]
In her famous speech advocating for women’s right to vote, the abolitionist activist Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) emphasizes the strength and power of women, as well as the critical role of women in God’s plan for salvation:
I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman’s rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?… I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now…. I can’t read, but I can hear. I have heard the bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again…. How came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and woman who bore him. Man, where is your part? But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them. [2]
References:
[1] Jacqueline J. Lewis, “What If We Dance? Prophetic Theology for Hot-Mess Times,” ONEING 12, no. 2, The Path of the Prophet (2024): 60–61, 62. Available in print and PDF download.
[2] Sojourner Truth, speech at the Women’s Rights Convention, May 29, 1851, Akron, Ohio, as reported by Marius Robinson, Anti-Slavery Bugle, June 21, 1851. See Treacherous Texts: U.S. Suffrage Literature, 1846–1946, ed. Mary Chapman, Angela Mills (Rutgers University Press, 2011), 24, 25.
Image credit and inspiration: Jyothisha R, woman holds the sun in her hands (detail), 2025, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The strong, soft light of the Divine Feminine is available for us all to touch upon.
Story from Our Community:
I recently practiced a lectio divina on the 7th chapter of Wisdom, which describes the many qualities of the Divine Feminine: gentle, warm, and also all-powerful. This contrasts so starkly with the toxic masculinity that pervades our world, which has such a spirit of violence, misogyny, and competition. I pray that as a culture, we learn to welcome the loving power of the feminine, from which both profound wisdom and powerful love flow.
—Robert O.
