Alice Walker's Influence On Womanist Theology

Summary Alice Walker's Influence on Womanist Theology: A Minority Response by Gladys J. Willis, Ph. D. This short book consists of five chapters. Chapter I, "The Origin of the Idea," introduces the womanist theology idea as having its origin in Alice Walker's definitions of the womanist in her book entitled In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. Chapter II, "Stages in the Development of the Womanist Character," provides a detailed analysis of the key female protagonists in The Third Life of Grange Copeland and in The Color Purple as examples of Walker's womanist. Chapter III, "The Womanist Idea in Christian Theology," presents the thinking of several key womanist theologians - Jacqueline Grant, Delores S. Williams, Kelley Delaine Brown-Douglass, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes and Renita J. Weems. Chapter 4, "Toward a New Hermeneutical Approach," offers an alternative hermeneutical approach to that of womanist theology. Chapter V, "Appendix," is to this book what Frederick Douglass' "Appendix" is to his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, as it further clarifies the author's perspective of racism, sexism and classism in the world and in the Black church. The author proposes that womanist theologians who choose to adopt Alice Walker's womanist idea, rather than the Bible, as the basis for defining a womanist theology are in opposition to orthodox Christian theology.