They’ll tell you that you can’t be a woman of faith and a feminist. That believing in God somehow means you must stay silent, small, or submissive.Th
They’ll tell you that you can’t be a woman of faith and a feminist.
That believing in God somehow means you must stay silent, small, or submissive.
That faith and feminism can’t walk hand in hand.
But they are wrong.
Throughout history, Black women have proven that faith and feminism not only coexist — they ignite each other.
Our foremothers prayed with one hand and wrote manifestos with the other.
They laid hands on the sick and called out the powerful in the same breath.
They built churches, founded schools, raised nations, and refused to bow to systems that told them to “wait” or “hush” or “obey.”
✨ They Believed — and They Fought
Sojourner Truth didn’t separate her theology from her truth.
When she thundered, “Ain’t I a Woman?”, she was calling heaven and earth as witnesses.
Her question still echoes in every woman who demands to be seen as whole — body, soul, and spirit.
Jarena Lee, filled with the Holy Spirit, refused to accept “no” when men told her she couldn’t preach.
She said, “If the man may preach, because the Savior died for him, why not the woman?”
Anna Julia Cooper called Black women “the lever which moves the world.”
She saw education as sacred — a divine act of reclamation for her people.
Mary McLeod Bethune said, “Without faith, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.”
Her belief didn’t keep her docile; it made her unstoppable.
And Pauli Murray — priest (ordained in the Episcopal Church as a deacon in 1976 and a priest in 1977), poet, and prophet of justice — believed that God’s justice must be big enough for everyone, or it isn’t justice at all.
🌿 Faith Was Never the Problem
Faith was never the chain.
Patriarchy was.
Misinterpretation was.
The audacity of men to use God’s name to demand women’s silence — that was the sin.
These women knew the difference.
They didn’t reject God; they rejected control.
They didn’t walk away from the sacred; they redefined it.
And because of them, we can stand here today knowing that God’s voice has always spoken through women too.
🔥 The Faith That Liberates
The faith of these women wasn’t soft.
It was a revolution in prayer form.
They believed that if God created them equal, the world had no right to treat them otherwise.
They worshipped through song, sermon, protest, and poetry.
They made altars out of kitchen tables, schoolhouses, and marches.
They didn’t need permission to be powerful — they were already anointed.
✊🏾 Their Legacy Lives in Us
Every time we speak our truth, we honor their courage.
Every time we refuse to be silenced in the name of “decency” or “tradition,” we echo their holy defiance.
Every time a Survivor says, “God loves me — and I love me too,”
we carry their torch.
Because real faith doesn’t demand that women shrink.
It demands that the world make room for all that God has placed inside us.
Reflection
Maybe faith and feminism were never meant to be enemies.
Maybe they’ve always been two names for the same sacred struggle —
the struggle to honor what God created in us:
voice, worth, power, and purpose.
💬 Call to Action
Tell your story.
Preach your sermon.
Live your gospel.
Don’t let anyone convince you that your faith and your fight for justice can’t share the same breath.
They were born together in you.
“The God of Sojourner, Jarena, Anna, Ida, Bernice, and Mary still speaks —
and She is still calling women to rise.”