Up Against a Crooked Gospel: Black Women’s Bodies and the Politics of Redemption in Religion and Society

America’s white gaze toward the Black female body locates Black women in a crooked society that misrecognizes and misjudges their moral character. Moreover, the Black Church perpetuates a crooked gospel that reinforces society’s mischaracterization theologically. Up Against a Crooked Gospel takes up the narrative of the bent woman in the Gospel of Luke 13:10-17 as ripe for womanist theo-ethical inquiry because it parallels with the historical and contemporary narratives of the Black female body bent multiple by pervasive threats seeking to stifle survival in a multi-traumatic world. Through the perspective of the author’s grandmother’s story and critical analysis of Black women’s salvation politics, Up Against a Crooked Gospel articulates how Black women, in mutual partnership with God, possess ＂matter＂ mediated by their bodies necessary to confront a crooked moral fabric within Black religion and the broader American society.

Melanie Jones Quarles is a womanist ethicist, millennial preacher, and intellectual activist. Melanie is assistant professor of ethics, theology, and culture and the inaugural director of the Katie Geneva Cannon Center for Womanist Leadership at Union Presbyterian Seminary. Melanie engages womanist theological ethics and sacred texts, millennials and faith, and Black aesthetics and popular culture. Melanie is co-curator of #MillennnialWomanism Digital Forum and Co-Founder of The Millennial Womanism Project (TMWP) -- an enterprise committed to enhancing the well-being of Black millennial women of faith and justice and fostering trans-generational womanist dialogue.