Table Of ContentBlack Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice
Series Editors Dwight N. Hopkins and Linda E. Thomas
Published by Palgrave Macmillan
“How Long This Road”: Race, Religion, and the Legacy of C. Eric Lincoln
Edited by Alton B. Pollard, III and Love Henry Whelchel, Jr.
African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of
Nimrod
By Anthony B. Pinn
White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity
By James W. Perkinson
The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity: Race, Heathens,
and the People of God
By Sylvester Johnson
Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic
Edited by Anthony B. Pinn and Dwight N. Hopkins
Transformative Pastoral Leadership in the Black Church
By Jeffery L. Tribble, Sr.
Shamanism, Racism, and Hip Hop Culture: Essays on White Supremacy and Black
Subversion
By James W. Perkinson
Women, Ethics, and Inequality in U.S. Healthcare: “To Count Among the Living”
By Aana Marie Vigen
Black Theology in Transatlantic Dialogue: Inside Looking Out, Outside Looking In
By Anthony G. Reddie
Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil
By Emilie M. Townes
Whiteness and Morality: Pursuing Racial Justice through Reparations and Sovereignty
By Jennifer Harvey
The Theology of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Desmond Mpilo Tutu
By Johnny B. Hill
Conceptions of God, Freedom, and Ethics in African American and Jewish Theology
By Kurt Buhring
Black Theology and Pedagogy
By Noel Leo Erskine
The Origins of Black Humanism in America: Reverend Ethelred Brown and the
Unitarian Church
By Juan M. Floyd-Thomas
Black Religion and the Imagination of Matter in the Atlantic World
By James A. Noel
Bible Witness in Black Churches
By Garth Kasimu Baker-Fletcher
Enslaved Women and the Art of Resistance in Antebellum America
By Renee K. Harrison
Ethical Complications of Lynching: Ida B. Wells’s Interrogation of American Terror
By Angela D. Sims
Representations of Homosexuality: Black Liberation Theology and Cultural Criticism
By Roger A. Sneed
The Tragic Vision of African American Religion
By Matthew V. Johnson
Beyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies
Edited by Bernadette J. Brooten with the editorial assistance of Jacqueline L.
Hazelton
Gifts of Virtue, Alice Walker, and Womanist Ethics
By Melanie Harris
Racism and the Image of God
By Karen Teel
Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology
By Phillis Isabella Sheppard
Black Men Worshipping: Intersecting Anxieties of Race, Gender, and Christian
Embodiment
By Stacy C. Boyd
Womanism against Socially-Constructed Matriarchal Images: A Theoretical Model
towards a Therapeutic Goal
By MarKeva Gwendolyn Hill
Indigenous Black Theology: Toward an African-Centered Theology of the African-
American Religious
By Jawanza Eric Clark
Black Bodies and the Black Church: A Blues Slant
By Kelly Brown Douglas
A Theological Account of Nat Turner: Christianity, Violence, and Theology
By Karl Lampley
African American Female Mysticism: Nineteenth-Century Religious Activism
By Joy R. Bostic
African American Female Mysticism
Nineteenth-Century Religious Activism
Joy R. Bostic
AFRICAN AMERICAN FEMALE MYSTICISM
Copyright © Joy R. Bostic, 2013.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-37372-4
All rights reserved.
First published in 2013 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
I SBN 978–1–349–47676–3 I SBN 978–1–137–37505–6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137375056
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: November 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of my father
James Earl Bostic Jr.
And my maternal grandmother
Mozella Hoskins
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
1 African American Female Mysticism:
The Nineteenth-Century Contextual Landscape 1
2 Defining Mysticism and the Sacred-Social
Worlds of African American Women 2 7
3 Standing upon the Precipice: Community,
Evil, and Black Female Subjectivity 49
4 God I Didn’t Know You Were So Big: Apophatic
Mysticism and Expanding Worldviews 7 1
5 Look at What You Have Done: Sacred Power and
Reimagining the Divine 95
6 Weaving the Spider’s Web: African American
Female Mystical Activism 119
Notes 143
Bibliography 1 67
Index 1 75
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Acknowledgments
I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all of those
who have provided support and critical feedback during the
research and writing of this book. First of all, my warmth and
appreciation go to my dissertation advisor Delores Williams
and dissertation committee members Alton Pollard III and
Hyun Kyung Chung. Their encouragement and affirmation of
my work have continued to sustain me over the years. I would
also like to thank my c olleagues in the Department of Religious
Studies at Case Western Reserve University: my faculty advisor
Tim Beal who gave generously of his time to advise me and read
my work; my departmental chair Peter Haas for his continued
promotion of my research and for being available when I needed
to “talk through” my ideas; and my colleagues Bill Deal and
Deepak Sarma who have supported me as a colleague and served
as “sounding boards” for my theoretical musings. Special thanks
also to Larry Murphy and the late Lowell Livezey for whom I
served as a research assistant as I was completing my Master
of Divinity and who continued to advise and mentor me as a
scholar as I worked on this book project. Christopher Morse,
James Cone, Vincent Wimbush, and the late Jim Washington
also served as mentors and advisors during my days as a doctoral
student at Union Theological Seminary. They have provided
invaluable support along the way. I also want recognize Linda
Thomas and Carol Duncan for validating this project at critical
stages of the research and writing process.
I am indebted to a host of friends and colleagues: Renee Harrison,
Martha Wiggins, Kimberly Jordan Vaughn, Lisa Weaver, Raphael
Warnock, Adam Clark, Lorena Parrish, Sally MacNichol,
Kanyere Eaton, Dianne Diakité, and Violet Dease. Words cannot
express how much I appreciate the laughter, honesty, compassion,
