Podcast 6: Understanding Black Suffering with Rev. James Henry Harris: "Black Women Suffer Most"
by John Kendall Hawkins
Reverend James Henry Harris is a Distinguished Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology and a research scholar in religion and humanities at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, Virginia Union University. He also serves as chair of the theology faculty and pastor of Second Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia. He is a former president of the Academy of Homiletics and recipient of the Henry Luce Fellowship in Theology. He is the author of numerous books, including Beyond the Tyranny of the Text and Black Suffering: Silent Pain, Hidden Hope (Fortress Press, 2020). His latest book is N: My Encounter with Racism and the Forbidden Word in an American Classic, a memoir that describes and critically wonders about a graduate English class he took on Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and provides crucial insight into the CRT conundrum.
Harris and I conversed by Zoom about his book Black Suffering on September 6, 2022 for Podcast 6 in our series. We discussed his "Black Women." Here is an edited version of that exchange.
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Harris: [00:24:18]
Absolutely. Yeah. It's a mess. But then this might be a good point to vector into your questions regarding Black women [as I account for them] in my book Black Suffering. It's essentially the way you captured it -- Black women have borne the brunt, to a large extent of Black suffering, in many, many ways. In my book, I talk about some of the Black women preachers -- people like Jarena Lee and several others.
In some ways, even by the Black church, historically -- we're talking from the 18th century on, and maybe earlier -- I'm not sure, but Black women have been cast aside in terms of things like preaching the gospel. Preaching in the Black community was assigned to Black men. Black women [who wanted to be] preachers were seen as aberrant in some in some way. But certain women, like Jarena Lee, understood that, and were willing to stand up to it and fight for the right to even preach. Now, this is a prevailing phenomenon in in Black religion, particularly in the Black church, and in some denominations, maybe more than others.
[00:26:14] But. I speak from experience because when I first became a pastor in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1976, right after I had graduated from seminary, I was in my early twenties. There was a lady there and I talked about it in another book I've written called No Longer Bound. And in that book, I talk about this particular lady who had been trying to get a license to preach for 15 or 20 years before I arrived. And when I arrived, the issue was still there. And I had to try to cope with it and deal with it. So to make a long story short, I decided to push the issue and to license the lady to preach. Now, with the understanding that all of the established groups -- the ministers conference and other groups within the city -- were against it. This was one of the reasons she had not been licensed in the first place, because the Black church was not open to licensing women to preach.
[00:27:36] So, I came to town, and faced that issue, and licensed the woman to preach -- against the will of many of the women in the church, and against the will of the officers in the church. Because my philosophy is that in the Baptist Church, the policy is such that the congregation rules. The congregation determines the direction of the church. And so, the process is that you first present to your board or to your officers, which is what I did, and they rejected it. So, therefore, I sort of went further, went around them. The norm is, if the board rejects something, it should be over. That's it. That doesn't make it to the agenda. But I put the licence of the lady on the agenda anyway, even with the rejection of the board, and brought it before the entire congregation. The congregation, after much debate and rancor, decided to go ahead and licence the woman to preach. And so, that's my own personal story as it relates to the suffering of women, and particularly Jerena Lee and Sojourner Truth and others that I mentioned in the book that are more paradigmatic of the experiences of Black women.
Hawkins: [00:29:01]
Can you say a little bit more about the general reason why the application of a woman for the licensure would be rejected?
Harris: [00:29:16]
Well, you can't [see it as anything] other than patriarchy. I argued to the congregation that it was a form of oppression and a form of injustice. And I get that, essentially, that it was Black on Black oppression and injustice; that we, as a Black church, could not afford to treat Black women that way. It's a complicated issue, because it has to do with the way Black men have been treated as well. And it might have something to do with the psychology of it all, a kind of internalization of oppression and injustice, where you take out your oppression and injustice really against yourself or against those that look just like you. You know, most of the churches are led by Black men. I mean, that's just the reality. But most of the churches are denominated by Black women. And the women probably outnumber the men in the church by three or 4 to 1. So in some ways, it's the same argument that I have. That is, the Black women have the power, but maybe not the recognition, [and] have been have been treated so poorly for so long that they have internalized their own oppression and their own injustice.
There were times in the history of Virginia. When there were 10,000 Blacks, basically slaves, in the state of Virginia, or maybe even just in this local Richmond metropolitan area with just 1000 planters or white people. So Blacks outnumbered whites by 10 to 1. Yeah, but never rose up against them successfully to overtake the land and to overtake the direction of their own lives. So it's something about the internalization of injustice and oppression that perpetuates it to a large extent. I probably need to speak more thoroughly about it.
Hawkins: [00:32:37]
Well, the oppression of women goes all the way back to Eden -- women deserving to have these painful childbirths because they disobeyed the patriarch, the grand patriarch. And as a result, women have led us to exile. It's the same old story. And we're sort of still getting over that.
You know, John Lennon wrote a song called "Women are the N-words of the World." He'd sing that in concert, loving couples holding hands and candles, and he'd go, "If you don't believe me, take a look at the one your with." I mean, these couple were manic emulators of Lennon's in-bed-athon Give Peace a Chance thing. Now there's ice in the room. No one's getting peace that night.
Lennon seems to implying, all other injustice being equal, that women have had the worst deal because everywhere, no matter what culture or religion -- it just doesn't matter -- in France or Papua New Guinea or anywhere in Africa, you know, historically speaking, women are always subjected to male bondage and chauvinism. That's just women. And so Black women have probably seen the worst of the divisions of power, being disenfranchised even within the Black community by Black patriarchy.
So, back to Genesis. You'd have a better take on this than I do, but we tend to forget that -- even if it's metaphorically -- women are the Rib, Adam's rib, you know, she literally popped out of his rib cage in the story.
Harris: [00:34:30]
Thank you for that. But I'll let you be the theologian on this. Maybe I need to make a disclaimer: There are a lot of things in the Bible I just don't believe. Yeah. And I also want to state that there are also other things in the Bible that I consider to be fables and stories. Stories -- some of them as effective as, the novels we read. Yeah. They do have ethical and moral value, but I question the historicity of some of this stuff.
Hawkins: [00:35:12]
Yeah. Yeah, I don't believe any of that, literally.
A little bit of story. Bob Dylan was putting out his, Born Again stuff at the time. And he's putting out all of this religious music. "Pressing On" and "Slow Train Coming" and "Serve Somebody." And out of a whim, I decided to attend Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy. And then I was taking things like biology - with creationism and science, side by side, in the same course. And I learned a lot from that. It sounds crazy and nobody would ever do that today, but I did it because I just thought it would be fun to see what would happen.
But, yeah, I take the Bible literally. You know, it's metaphorical. But even metaphorically, to suggests that a woman started as Adam's rib, as a part of a man's body, that she doesn't have her own identity... An appendage removed and there to help the man. And I'm not, you know, I don't want to cast aspersions, but I'm just saying, you couldn't literally think of a woman being the rib of a man, you know?
Harris: [00:36:57]
Well, yeah, but the only response to that, John, would be this. And that is that within Protestantism, and even within the Baptist denomination, you have these strict conservative literalists. Honestly. The Southern Baptist. A lot of these denominations believe that the Bible is inerrant. That's the language they use, which suggests a kind of literal interpretation. And they're often not open to the meaning of the texts in front of it, or something like a recurrent phenomenology, or exegesis, something like that. I mean, it's a literal propagation of the gospel. And I think that that's really a dominant view, I would say. And I think we can extend that to say that there are these ministers and preachers who are preaching this and making all kinds of claims -- claims against critical race theory, claims against Liberation philosophy and theology, and that kind of thing.
For example, some evangelicals like Pat Robertson, I believe, and Jerry Falwell, who were the giants of this conservative political and evangelical movement - well, I remember one of them or both of them going to South Africa during the height of apartheid and coming back to the U.S. and saying that they didn't see any problems there. So, I mean, what? What? I mean, it's unbelievable. But I'm also extending this to say that a lot of these churches, and preachers within a kind of conservative evangelicalism, are propagating all kinds of notions that millions and millions and millions of people are just swallowing or taking at face value.
So that's the kind of thing that we are all up against. Because even on issues of justice, and so forth -- for example, when I talk about Jesus being a liberator, these people are like, No, that's not what Jesus is about. Jesus is in pastoral care. And I say, Hell no, Jesus is not a pastoral care giver. Jesus is a radical liberator. And so, I mean, it's just two different mindsets, even as we read the same scripture and read the Bible.
Harris: [00:42:43]
Yeah, you're absolutely right. The women in Scripture, women in the Bible, from my own hermeneutic perspective, we have to recognize, literally, who's telling the story and what kind of project is the storyteller propagating?
Hawkins: [00:52:23]
Let's move on. Black men like Nat Turner, MLK and Malcolm X are often cited as leaders of the Black rejection of white oppression historically. You have mentioned Sojourner Truth as a hero or heroine. So was Angela Davis, in my opinion. Can you name some more Black women and their importance in the resistance to white oppression? You know mentioned the female minister you advocated for with the congregation. Can you name some other women who worked, had a real major impact on Black history who are usually forgotten when we reference the master narrative of Black suffering?
Harris: [00:53:19]
Yeah. Particularly in this preaching tradition, I was talking about people like Jerena Lee, but there are others, like Julia Foot. And other women who were really forward. Ella Baker. Coretta Scott King, naturally, and others. But as a rule, even, the civil rights movement has highlighted the male leaders more than the female leaders who were often, in many ways, the boots on the ground and behind the scenes in making the civil rights movement successful in a very real sense. That would be my broad take on women and the role that they've played.
Hawkins: [00:55:48]
Would you would you count someone like Ma Rainey as a figure of significance, in terms of changing the dominant culture -- changing the music scene, changing what we listen to; the things that orchestrate our emotions as it were. Would you Ma Rainey was as valuable as, say, Sojourner Truth? Or are they different?
Harris: [00:56:23]
They're in different genres. But, yes, I would say just as valuable because all of these elements constitute culture and the promotion of equality and advancement and so forth. I don't I don't want to stratify them. Whatever area or genre or circle of influence they have had, that's been very important and very critical as well. Even Aretha Franklin, you know, was, in popular culture, one of the most important and influential women of recent times because of her role. And because of the fact that we are, as a people, very musical and we love music. Even though I have to issue a disclaimer: I can't really sing a note or anything, but oh, well.
And when I mentioned Aretha Franklin, but I also have to mention Mahalia Jackson, because she was the darling of not only the Black church, but of the civil rights movement and of Martin Luther King, who would always call on her to help lead the singing and the songs. And the movement itself was grounded in music. King was surrounded by a lot of musicians, actors, people from all walks of life. Jews and Christians. Rabbi Abraham Heschel. Other Jewish leaders. You know, a lot of people rallied around the whole notion of civil rights and social justice and so forth. And I think today people are rallying against it. It's irony par excellence. Yeah.
Hawkins: [00:59:28]
What about Angela Davis? Would you say Angela Davis is like the Nat Turner of Black women or was that going too far?
Harris: [00:59:55]
I'll tell you a story. I remember when I was in college at Virginia State University, just about 25 miles south of Richmond here, one of the longstanding HBCUs in Virginia and in the South. I remember that I was in college in the seventies, and Angela Davis was a really a hot topic; she was all over the country -- probably all over the world -- speaking. And the student body had invited her to speak at Virginia State. She was coming from California and was running very, very late. We had gathered at the student center -- maybe a couple thousand people - and nobody left the place. She showed up after 10 p.m. And we had been sitting there since maybe 7:30. But, you know, she was like a rock star. And, I mean, she walked in the room to thunderous applause. And constant standing ovations. And at the time, you know, she had this extraordinary afro. Long dangling earrings, knee high boots. It was stagecraft. She was awesome. And she was brilliant also. I mean, she could go back and forth between English and French. She was a philosopher of the first order. Yeah, she was a Marcuse prote'ge', a student. I think he was her advisor. She had studied at the Sorbonne, but I don't think she ever got the PhD in philosophy. But she certainly qualified for it and has been a professor of philosophy pretty much all of her academic life. But one thing that made her so interesting was that [she had] a degree from Brandeis in French literature, coupled with French philosophy. I don't know if you can separate literature from philosophy, really. She has such an interesting background. I was enamored with her for years. Just so powerfully engaging and so profound in her speech. Radical even in her demeanor.
Hawkins: [01:08:48]
I want to get back to the Black church and some more personal experience. Can you tell how some of the women in your life have become ministers and how that affects you and your ministry?
Harris: [01:09:48]
Well, you know, I've thought about this and I mean, you know, I'm a product of the same patriarchy, but with an understanding about what it is, and I try to distance myself, not practice a lot of that patriarchal behavior. My wife is a minister also. I have a sister-in-law who is a minister and I have first cousins who are ministers. These are all female ministers. And then my brother is a minister as well. So there are quite a few ministers in this family.
But the origin of all of that is - I talk a little bit about it in my memoir, N., we grew up pretty much isolated on a farm here in Virginia. It was, at the time, about 100 acres. Bordered to the south and to the north and to the west by white families. And then on the east, bordered by a little creek that ran along the along the back way. And growing up on that farm. We could hear the meetings taking place of the Ku Klux Klan, who were also in the same neighborhood and not far away. My father did not want us to go to the corner store, which was about a mile away from where we lived, because of the possibility of just disappearing or the possibility of being lynched, or killed because this was soon after the lynching of Emmett Till and so forth. So sort of living surrounded by all of those social realities. My grandmother's house, which we called the Big House, was where we gathered for prayer meetings and other kinds of things. And as I say early on in the memoir, that pretty much was our church.
Hawkins: [01:12:55]
Well, how about at the practical end? Do you guys do you share notes on how to deliver or come up with sermons?
Harris: [01:13:15]
Sometimes we do share ideas or share thoughts. And since I am the Homiletics professor, so, people tend to ask me more questions than I ask them.
Hawkins: [01:14:10]
We probably have to bring this to an end here tonight. You want to read a poem or something?
Harris: [01:14:17]
I'll read something. I have to deliver a paper on RicÃ..."ur and race and preaching at the Academy of Homiletics that's coming up this year. So I'll just read a little bit from what I'm working on for my Guggenheim Fellowship, which [which I hope to use] so I can finish my novel, The Fire This Time. Just a paragraph or two.
All he could do was cry. The suffering of the innocent and the suffering of the guilty are one in the same, in terms of form, but [also] in nature, he thought. They're not the same because one is evil and the other is justice. Pain and agony find relief only in death. There are no tears in Heaven, but in Hell. The heart, veil of tears, like rivers of hell, rolled down his cheeks, as a sign of sorrow and agonizing pain, but perhaps an unspeakable and unexplainable joy. All he could do was cry. A silent catharsis of the soul and a symbol of the grace and mercy of God on one hand, and guilt and shame on the other. There was something about the smell of ashes and the pall of dark grayish white smoke that filled the air. And he could hear the faint echo of words he had been made to memorize as a child as he read about the ironic suffering of the innocent and the utter pain in Jill's somber voice. The Lord gives and the Lord is taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. The fire had been set by someone who had an axe to grind. I guess their image of God and the church and against God's holy representative Elder Bishop Ambrose Augustine Jones, the presiding bishop of the Norfolk District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church of God. He had been struck by the Holy Spirit, one hot and sultry August morning at the little clapboard church not far from the banks of the James River, and close to where Annette Turner's rebellion took place in August of 1831.
Hawkins:
Excellent.
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James Henry Harris's books N (2021) and Black Suffering (2020) can be purchased at Fortress Press.
