Finding God in the Wilderness
Delores S. Williams, "Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk"
The devastating stories of Hagar in Genesis 16:1 and Genesis 21:9-21 contain not only the first annunciation in the bible but also the first experience of God in the wilderness.
"Hagar has 'spoken' to generation after generation of black women because her story has been validated as true by suffering black people. She and Ishmael together, as family, model many black American families in which a lone woman/mother struggles to hold the family together in spite of the poverty to which ruling class economics consign it. Hagar, like many black women, goes into the wide world to make a living for herself and her child, with only God by her side."
This classic text sets an agenda for a Womanist theology addressing African-American woman who identify neither with Feminist theology nor with Black Liberation theology.
