There Was a Prophet among Us:

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

A Tribute to Delores Seneva Williams, November 17, 1934-November 17, 2022

JEAN DERRICOTTE-MURPHY

Abstract

Honoring the memory of Delores S. Williams and commemorating the 30^th anniversary of Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, this essay reflects on and pays tribute to the life and works of Williams as one who influenced the author as a teacher, mentor, friend, and theological mother. While Sisters will always be pivotal in womanist scholarship, the author proposes that it be read in conjunction with Williams’ lesser-known published essays to position her as a major American prophetic voice of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. The essay asserts that as an ancestor Williams still has much to say to the country and the church in 2024. It argues that Williams addressed racism, white supremacy, and the possible demise of democracy in the 1990s, but her prophetic voice and warnings were not heard because so many of the less known essays are not as visible, appreciated or readily available. This article explores some of those hidden gems and re-presents Delores Williams’ prophetic words to be received again. The author concludes that in an era when white supremacy and hate groups are proliferating across the country, the need to hear again the warnings Williams laid out can aid efforts to combat these problems while clinging to hope for the future.

Dr. Williams and Me

On December 10, 2022, a host of womanist theologians and feminist scholars from across the country gathered at the First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill, in Nashville, Tennessee, to celebrate the life of Dr. Delores Seneva Williams. The theological world knew Dr. Williams as a founding mother of womanist theology and author of the groundbreaking, seminal book Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk.^[1] As one of the theologians and scholars gathered to honor her memory that day, I wanted to pay homage to someone who personally impacted me in profound and lasting ways. This essay is my public thank-you to Dr. Delores S. Williams for helping me to find, accept, and nurture the confident writer, artist, scholar, preacher, teacher, and womanist theologian who I have become. I honor Dr. Williams by re-presenting and identifying her prophetic warnings captured in nine less essays.

Delores S. Williams played a vital role in my life for almost 35 years. Before gaining notoriety as the Paul Tillich Professor of Theology and Culture at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, Williams was Professor of Theology and Culture at the Theological School of Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. I first encountered Dr. Williams as a student in her course, God and Community in the Literature of Afro American Women. She introduced us to Black women writers including Zora Neal Hurston, Jarena Lee, and Margaret Walker, as well as African American scholars such as C. Eric Lincoln, Gayraud Willmore, and Albert Raboteau. These were Black intellectuals who my previous educational institutions conveniently overlooked.

Her teaching style was engaging and challenging. Dr. Williams had an uncanny yet gentle way of meeting you where you were while moving you into a more enlightened theological and socially conscious space. She would begin most sessions standing or seated in front of the class, peering over her glasses, and asking in her unique voice, “Who do you say God is?” She gently pushed till each student could introspectively reflect on and express how God acted in their life. I loved that class and was totally hooked on the style, passion, and personality of Delores S. Williams. From that first encounter with her until I graduated in 1991, I took every class she taught: Introduction to Theology; Liberation Theology; Religion, Holocaust, and Survival; American Theology and Popular Culture. She carefully read and commented on every paper I wrote for her classes—sometimes there were four to six per class—gently nudging me to develop my writing style into scholarship without changing my voice. She challenged me to think more critically about social issues and social constructions, engage biblical texts more deeply, and expand my comfort zone to include ideas and practices beyond my traditional ways of thinking and being.

It was at the feet of Delores S. Williams that I cut my womanist theological teeth. She introduced me to Black, liberation, womanist, mujerista, and Asian theologies, as well as ethical, cultural, and theological critiques. Dr. Williams’ classes sparked my deeper social consciousness and sensitivity to oppressed peoples worldwide. This is where I first tried on womanist theology, liked how it fit, and discovered and accepted that I am a womanist.

At that time, only a handful of Black women, whether faculty or students, were on the Drew campus, and we formed a supportive community for each other. We often spent time after class talking about our lives. Delores and I discovered a unique connection: we were both the mother of four black children and life-long church women with a love for the musical expressions of our people in the spirituals. Occasionally, I took her to my home church in Newark, New Jersey, where she met my family and enjoyed worship services, gospel music, hospitality, and good soul food.

One day as graduation approached, she called me to her office to talk, or so I thought. Though, by then, we knew much about each other, it still felt like being called to the principal’s office. At first there was easy conversation about our children, church, and school. Then she handed back the last assignment I had written. Dr. Williams always wrote clear critiques with encouraging responses on each paper. This time, she looked me squarely in the eye and told me the same thing she had written on my paper. “Woman, you are Ph.D. material!”^[2] This brilliant woman, whom I held in high esteem, encouraged me to consider furthering my theological education beyond the master’s degree in theological studies. A Ph.D.! This was not in my thinking or plans, but her words struck, as the African American hymn writer Lucie E. Campbell wrote, “Something Within Me.”^[3]

I consider it a great honor and privilege to have been personally introduced to womanist theology when it was still in its infancy by a founding mother who is credited with giving the discipline its name.^[4] We stayed connected after Drew, and upon her recommendation, I entered a Doctor of Ministry program where she was my content specialist and a member of my committee. A few years later, I earned a Ph. D. in Theology, Ethics, and the Arts, the very thing Dr. Williams had seen in me and spoken into my life. Both degrees were legacies of her labor; all she poured into me so many years before came to fruition.

Introduction: More than Sisters

While Sisters in the Wilderness is and will always be a pivotal text in womanist scholarship that is worthy of recognition for thirty years of impact and continuous publication, I propose reading Sisters in the Wilderness in conjunction with Williams’ less well-known scholarship. Some are familiar with the articles “Womanist Theology: Black Women’s Voices”^[5] and “The Color of Feminism: Or Speaking the Black Woman’s Tongue.”^[6] However, few are aware that there are more than 60 additional works that were published as journal and magazine articles or anthology contributions from 1986 to 2006. Many of these addressed systemic racism and the rise of white supremacy inherent within American Christianity and society. This additional work by Dr. Williams offers ways to identify and combat these evils within our nation that, unchecked, threaten our very existence.

Dr. Williams was a regular contributor to journals and magazines including the Journal of Religious Thought, Christianity and Crisis, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Church and Society, Christian Century, The Other Side, The Living Pulpit, and Sojourners. Her essays also appear in womanist and feminist compilations edited by Emilie Townes, Cheryl J. Sanders, Layli Phillips, Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Phyllis Tribble, Letty Russel, and others.

This essay explores a small sampling of her additional writings that address racism, white supremacy, and democracy, areas not specifically dealt with in Sisters. The selected writings allow her full prophetic voice to continue speaking to those who are concerned with social justice and the mission of the church. The goal is to assist readers in more fully grasping Williams’ scope of theological understanding and inclusive passion for social justice, particularly the significance of her work for African American women, Black communities, and all oppressed peoples. Specifically, this essay probes the thoughts and arguments of Delores S. Williams from nine selected articles that highlight her keen observations and present her prophetic warnings which continue to speak loudly, boldly, and poignantly into today’s predicament. The words of these articles can pique our societal consciousness, and call us to be on guard, to re-examine our faith and reconsider how we express our belief in a God of love. Williams’ skillful, honest exploration and presentation of the groundings and undercurrents of America’s historical past explain our present social and political predicaments. Dr. Williams’ words call out the evil and demonarchy among us while offering encouragement, hope, and instructions for survival.

I posit that Delores Seneva Williams was a major prophetic voice of the 20^th and 21^st centuries whose words must be re-visited today. To this point and in honor of the 30^th anniversary of Sisters in the Wilderness, this essay encourages continuing reverence for Sisters and looking beyond it to hear more of Williams’ unique voice as she spoke loudly to the predicament of Black Americans and the shame of the dominant culture. She especially addressed white Protestant Christianity’s failure to recognize, contend with, and eradicate racism. There is so much more to Dr. Williams’ body of work that the world needs to know and hear right now. Interweaving two of her more familiar essays and seven of her other writings with Sisters reveals the fullness of her prophetic voice that continues speaking to those who believe eradicating racism is the mission of the church. In tandem with Sisters, these lesser-known articles provide a view of her significance more broadly in the theological world and in the church. Using Albert Raboteau’s description of a prophet, to assess Williams as a significant 20^th and 21^st century voice, this article analyzes her discussions of the impact of racism, white supremacy, and demonarchy on American Democracy; examines her warnings about the rightward turn in U.S. culture in relation to contemporary realities; and explicates Williams’ criticisms of the white church’s silence as well as her abiding hope for and challenge to the Church to be a healing balm that lives out its calling to love.

A Prophet: What and Who Is a Prophet?

Identifying Williams as prophetic is not new. As speaker for the April 17, 2017, Chicago Theological Seminary Obenhaus Lecture Series, my paper was entitled “Beyond Sisters in the Wilderness: The Prophetic Voice of Delores S. Williams.^”[7] In that lecture, I presented Williams as an American prophetic voice that the world, specifically the academy and the church, needed to hear. Drawing on Albert Raboteau’s American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals and Their Struggle for Social and Political Justice, the talk explored a correlation of Williams and Albert Raboteau’s description of a prophet as one who:

is in fellowship with the feelings of God, sympathy with the divine pathos, [and] in communion with the divine consciousness …. The prophet hears God’s voice and feels [God’s] heart, … is one who is impelled to speak because [she] feels the divine pathos like a “fire in the bones.”^[8]

Raboteau further argues that a prophet is moved to action by deep compassion for human suffering and analyzes theological and ethical positions to mobilize hearers to action that will effect social change.^[9] This aptly describes Delores S. Williams, who, from her understanding of the consciousness and heart of God, spoke truth to power through her written work. Passionate objection to suffering of Black women, Black communities, and oppressed peoples led Williams to fearlessly challenge the status quo and present probing questions intended to sear the consciousness and move persons to examine themselves and the social predicaments of the time in new and expanding ways. Williams’ ageless articles engage readers in critical thought and theological, cultural, and social reflection that challenge them to ponder again from individual and collective faith traditions: “Who do you say God is?”

Racism, White Supremacy, Demonarchy, and Democracy

In response to a 1990 article by Dr. Gar Alperovitz in which Alperovitz describes a vision of the political and economic restructuring needed to rebuild and correct the serious problems he saw in America, Williams wrote “Afflicted with Racism.”^[10] Alperovitz believed his restructuring model would create a “living democracy.” Dr. Williams reminded Alperovitz that his vision overlooked an important piece of American consciousness that is deeply embedded into the fabric of its political, economic, social, and religious structures: racism. She then raised the question: “Can this ‘living democracy… [that you imagine] ever be more than half dead if essential elements of a new vision do not give attention to restructuring America’s consciousness with regard to racism?”^[11] Williams contended that America will never be a living democracy until it is restructured to purge the nation of its racist anti-Black sentiments “that [have] been at the bottom of so much of social, political, and economic thinking and acting in this country.”^[12]

Williams’ prophetic warning about racism still holds true today. What we have witnessed in the past six years alone lays bare America’s refusal to recognize systemic racism as her original sin. More and more, white supremacy and its cult members are entrenching themselves by recruiting and radicalizing young white people, enacting unjust laws, banning books, disenfranchising Black and Brown citizens at the voting polls, and the list continues. In 1990, Williams described the societal integration of anti-Black racism:

The union of politics, science, religion, and economic practices for the sake of fostering and perpetuating the national anti-Black consciousness is still intact in America. A “living democracy” cannot be built here as long as the national consciousness is still infected with this cancerous “anti-Blackism” that is the heart of white racism.^[13]

In that essay Williams provided a brief historical background of American racism by highlighting the definition of black found in a 15^th-16^th century Oxford English dictionary. She noted its negative aesthetic to offer a partial explanation of the roots of the national anti-Black sentiment: “Black—deeply stained with dirt; soiled, dirty, foul… having dark or deadly purposes, malignant; pertaining to or involving death, deadly, baneful, disastrous, sinister.”^[14] This colonial era definition, Williams wrote, “suggests the kind of anti-black aesthetic [and religious] values [that] inform[ed the] consciousness [and rule of English settlers] during the colonial period of America.”^[15] For the most part, Black and Brown people are still seen through the lens of this definition and treated as less than human. The implication of Dr. Williams’ observations presents a clear connection to contemporary Christian nationalism that is built on anti-blackness which is not a new phenomenon.

According to Dr. Williams, the church itself has been and remains complicit in establishing, fostering, and perpetuating this national anti-Black sentiment in America. She identified a collection of historical documents and anti-black pamphlets that were “circulated widely throughout the United States between 1863 and 1925.”^[16] These pamphlets were efforts to “prove one thing—that African-Americans were inferior beasts, not humans.”^[17] Williams observed the “appalling fact that those who perpetrated and perpetuated these negative ideological thoughts were preachers.”^[18] Accordingly, this history “constitutes a terrible indictment of the church”^[19] and remains the undercurrent at the root of white nationalism and white supremacy.

Williams took an honest look at this country’s history to expose how “white supremacy has distorted both religion and … science.” These preachers based their arguments, she wrote, on false “biblical interpretations that were nothing more than lies, combined with the lies and misinformation [false propaganda] from the scientific fields”^[20] of physical anthropology, eugenics,^[21] and sociobiology. They were beginnings that allowed and justified a racist culture to generate and maintain itself in order to sustain its European American dominance.^[22]

Reports from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) confirm the present continuation of the false ideas and distortions Williams observed. In one report, the SPLC asserted “White Christian nationalism is a key ideology that inspired the failed Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and fueled multiple failed political campaigns in 2022. Even with these major public losses, however, white Christian nationalism remains a persistent and growing threat to U.S. democracy. … White Christian nationalism threatens democracy and human rights for all.”^[23]

It is 2024, and we face the same situations and ask the same questions Williams raised almost 30 years ago. Our present political climate allows us to easily recognize what Dr. Williams meant in 1986 when she coined the term “demonarchy,”^[24] and described it as institutional white rule using “racism, violence, violation, retardation, and death as instruments of social control.”^[25] Since the candidacy, presidency, impeachment, defeat, indictments, and 34 convictions of Donald Trump (2015-2024) and since his persistent lies about a stolen election being the cause of his defeat (2020-2024), white supremacy and the alt-right have reared their ugly heads as has not been seen in this country since the Jim Crow era.

Dr. Williams believed that our seemingly endless struggle for liberation was born as the direct result of the constant battle opposing racist activity against African American communities and individuals. Deeming racism demonic and calling its practice the demon in the land,^[26] she reminded us that racism is a traditional and collective expression of white government in relation to Black people, which has roots in American slavery and has prevailed until now.^[27] Demonarchy includes government and institutional systems targeting any and all non-whites (or whites) who threaten the idea of white nationalism.

Our present political climate has made it easy to recognize demonarchy, for we clearly see evil in very high (and low) places. There have been blatant acts of violence against minorities, some immigrants, or anyone considered outside of the realm of an envisioned “great America.” Acts of hate and domestic terrorism are on the rise. Since the 2016 election season, hate crimes against nonwhites by whites have made more news headlines across the country than we have seen in the time span since the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras. People of color have been physically accosted, shot, stabbed, and killed because of their ethnicity. Hateful propaganda has been posted in public places and spread throughout the internet in the name of white supremacy. White Supremacists and Christian nationalists, emboldened by the rhetoric and lies of a former president claiming to be a Christian leader, enacted racist voting laws to prevent people of color from being stakeholders in this nation. Some white individuals (dubbed Karens and Kens) have felt empowered to attack persons of color for frivolous reasons—co-captaining a river boat while Black, reading in a dorm while Black, barbequing while Black, dog walking or bird watching while Black, or jogging through certain neighborhoods while Black. These people claimed to feel threatened and believed they had a “right” to question, stop, accost, or fabricate stories about Black women or men that sometimes led to their death. Stand your ground laws embolden some to claim self-defense in the use of deadly force against African Americans. Black and Brown people continue to die at the hands of white vigilantes and rogue law enforcement officers, for the most part, with impunity. Yet, this was prophesied by Dr. Williams in articles written for Christian magazines and religious journals that few have read, can access, or know exist.

America’s social climate hasn’t gotten better since her articles were published; it seems to have gotten worse. As I pen this tribute to Dr. Williams, white supremacists and neo-Nazis raising fascist hand salutes, chanting “We are everywhere!” marched through a Florida suburb of Orlando on September 2, 2023.^[28] A 21-year-old white supremacist with an avowed hatred for Black people who painted Nazi swastikas on his AR-15, took the lives of three unarmed African American shoppers in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 26, 2023. In Missouri on April 19, 2023, a 16-year-old black teen ringing the wrong bell was shot in the head through the door by an 84-year-old white man, claiming he feared for his life. On May 14, 2022, in Buffalo, New York, ten unarmed Black grocery shoppers died at the hands of an 18-year-old white supremacist armed with assault weapons, espousing a “replacement theory”^[29] and live-streaming his carnage. Dr. Williams warned America of this type of behavior in her 1995 article “Could It Happen Here? Why Genocide against African-Americans Remains a Frightening Possibility.”^[30] Again, it appears the academy, church, and country are unaware of her prophetic predictions.

According to a Reuter’s Factbox report, hate-filled and racially motivated mass shootings have peppered America’s news over 27 times since 2009.^[31] ABC News reports that “White supremacist propaganda, including the mass distribution of flyers containing hateful language and images, projections on buildings and in-person gatherings, reached a record high in the United States in 2022.” They further report, “the FBI released data showing that hate crimes in the United States spiked by 35% in 2021. The bureau recorded a total of 10,840 hate crime incidents in 2021, up from 8,052 in 2020.”^[32]

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual report on extremism in America shared that hate groups across the country increased in 2016 to 917, up from 892 in 2015. The number of anti-Muslim hate groups tripled from 34 in 2015 to 101 in 2017. “Along with the rise of a president whose policies reflect the values of white nationalists,” one news reporter observed, “the country saw a resurgence of white nationalism that imperils the racial progress we’ve made.”^[33] Since giving my lecture in 2017, these groups have grown exponentially. “In 2022, the SPLC documented 1,225 hate and antigovernment extremist groups across the United States. Extremist ideas that mobilize these groups now operate more openly in the political mainstream.”^[34]

Cautiously, Williams also recognized that if racism is eradicated, it very well might “rend the entire fabric of our national consciousness and economic structure.” If the foundations of white supremacy and black inferiority are addressed and altered, Williams warned, “the national psychology might well collapse.”^[35] But, at the same time, if efforts to eradicate racism are not enacted, America may be headed for an even more destructive course.

Political Forces as Demonarchy

When I awakened after the November (8, 1994) elections to discover the Republican electoral sweep, I was shocked. Many of the leaders ushered into power in this election have expressed views deeply threatening to black Americans…. We black folk cannot help but fear that the clock will be turned back, and the meager social and legislative gains won through the civil rights movement revoked.^[36]

Penned after the elections of 1994, these words from Dr. Williams’ 1995 article “Could It Happen Here? Why Genocide against African-Americans Remains a Frightening Possibility” so closely mirrored my own feelings and anxieties after the November 8, 2016, election that I had to take a reflective pause. The 2016 Republican sweep of the White House, Senate, and Congress had left many feeling apprehensive, fearful, worried, agitated, and with a sense of foreboding. Though I was then and still am very concerned about the social and political predicament in which we find ourselves, Dr. Williams’ words helped me remember that we as a people and a nation have been here before.

In his book The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, Dr. Ervin Staub defines genocide as “an attempt to exterminate a racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, or political group, either directly through murder or indirectly by creating conditions that lead to the group’s destruction.”^[37] Dr. Williams expressed her concern that a government-sanctioned systematic genocide of specific people groups is possible within the United States, by observing “the ground work…has already been laid,” and some believe that it has already begun.^[38] Williams also observed:

Victories of the election of 1994 indicated a silent growing consensus … [among many whites] that black people [were] the cause of the problems in this country and ought to be put back into bondage – where they can be managed and controlled. How better to accomplish this than by giving congressional power to racist forces in the United States.^[39]

This animosity and hatred toward African Americans have continued and have expanded to include non-white Americans and immigrants more intensely. The building of the border wall, the Muslim travel ban, removing white supremacist groups from the national terrorist watch list, Standing Rock, police killings of Black and Brown people, the almost non-existent response to the COVID pandemic during the Trump presidency, which early on disproportionately killed Black and Brown people, the prison industrial system, past presidential advisory and cabinet choices, executive orders, vice-presidential tie-breaking votes against programs for women and the poor, Supreme Court appointments, and controversial Court decisions and legislative actions (the repeal of Roe v. Wade, dismantling Affirmative Action and Voting Rights) are all indicators of the groundswell of the racist, anti-Black and anti-other mood sweeping the nation. Dr. Williams might refer to these goings-on as acts of demonarchy.

The historic genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of African Americans, the internment of Japanese Americans, and the generations of anti-Black and anti-other sentiment in the United States have set a precedent for genocide that cannot be ignored. Writing in an online blog, Osita Nwanevu reported that an Alt-Right website once ran an essay titled “Is Black Genocide Right?” The following is a direct quote from the blog:

Instead of asking how we can make reparations for slavery, colonialism, and Apartheid or how we can equalize academic scores and incomes, we should instead be asking questions like, “Does human civilization actually need the Black race?” “Is Black genocide right?” and, if it is, “What would be the best and easiest way to dispose of them?”^[40]

The questions Dr. Williams posed to and for the African American community can be asked of all non-white communities. Do we recognize the warning signs of our times? Do we think re-enslavement or genocide could not happen because we live in a democracy? Williams reminded us that antisemitic and anti-Black sentiments have undergirded Western culture and white Western Christianity since the formation of this country. As the Jewish Holocaust occurred in Europe, many Christians were silent and passive, believing the false propaganda that claimed Jews were evil and the cause of the economic problems in post-World War I Germany. Williams reminded us of the words of a Jewish Holocaust survivor who warned, “Many Jews in Germany did not recognize early enough the signs of the times. They missed the signals because they thought it would not happen to them in Wagner’s Germany.”^[41] Another survivor observed that “the genocide of the Jewish people could not have happened apart from the many generations of anti-Semitism in Europe.”^[42] The signals are everywhere. Yet, many white Christians remain silently passive, conditioned to the anti-Blackness and anti-otherness embedded in America. Dr. Williams asked, “Where is the conscience of the U.S. public? Where are the con­certed and organized voices of moral outrage?”^[43]

The anti-immigrant and anti-woke cry heard in the United States today makes similar claims as those made during the antisemitic propaganda of Nazi Germany: “Jobs are being stolen from (white) Americans by immigrants.” “All Muslims and Mexicans present terrorist threats and should be banned from entering the country.” “Those Muslims and Mexicans who are here should be deported along with all other ‘illegal’ immigrants.” “African American history should not be taught in some public schools.” Many Christians remain silent while some vocal white fundamentalist evangelicals and self-avowed nationalist leaders disparage all non-whites and falsely claim that this is the will of God.

Dr. Williams would have us consider that “Western cultural traditions … have conditioned [negative] attitudes toward blackness” ^[44] and otherness, which can lead to the genocide of a people. She asked, “Are Black Americans today recogniz­ing the warning signs of our times? Do we entertain the illusion that re-enslavement or genocide cannot happen to us en masse because we live in a democracy?”^[45] She reminded us that:

1. Since the arrival of Europeans, violence against African Americans, Native Americans, Jews, Asians, women, and other ethnic groups has been deeply embedded in this country’s historical experience.

2. The public is addicted and conditioned to accept violence as an effective way to resolve conflict through movies, dramas, politics and politicians, popular music, video games, and the internet.

3. Scapegoating is a major genocidal tactic frequently employed in relation toward African Americans.

4. The public is conditioned to believe false propaganda, alternative facts, and big lies that claim Black people (and, by extension, all brown-skinned people) are intellectually inferior and, by nature, evil and violent.

5. False propaganda can be generated and advanced through media.^[46]

Williams was concerned that “ultraconservative Anglo-American forces and an ultraconservative Congress might easily convince non-black Americans that the removal… of American Blacks from the country would secure its well-being…[This] is not unfounded, nor without precedent.”^[47] She continued:

Some of the powerful new players in Congress have the kind of racist past that could feed genocide. Many Black folks believe these congressional figures remain committed to white racism and to the social, political, and educational bondage of African Americans. Those African Americans who have joined conservative congressional camps—possibly for financial and career advancement—must now ask themselves: “Am I being used as an instrument to reinforce the oppression of my people?”^[48]

Williams penned these words in 1995 as she expressed concerns about Republican lawmakers such as Newt Gingrich, Jesse Helms, and Lindsey Graham. The alarms she raised in 1995 reflect the very same uneasiness and concerns that many of us grapple with in 2024. They must be thoroughly examined, especially in light of the past administration’s policies and the present far-right Republican hold on Congress. Today’s far-right lawmakers are even more extreme in their thinking and behavior, revealing their commitment to white supremacy more than those within Dr. Williams’ purview. These include lawmakers such as Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Tommy Tuberville.^[49] Then there are the conservative African American lawmakers and judges who, Williams suggests, may be seeking “financial and career advancement”^[50]—persons such as Byron Donalds, Tim Scott, John James, Mark Robinson, and yes, Clarence Thomas—who should ask themselves if their publicly stated political positions are being used as an “instrument to reinforce the oppression of [their] people?”^[51]

Multiple conditions exist in the Unted States today that increase the possibility of genocide. Legal lynchings occur through vigilante and police killings of black and brown men and women. The prison industrial system incarcerates a disproportionate number of African Americans and Latinx Americans in comparison to white Americans. Most alarming among these conditions is the rise of alt-right groups and neo-Nazis as their genocidal propaganda becomes increasingly more prominent. In her 1997 article “Straight Talk, Plain Talk,” Dr. Williams wrote, “White hate groups did not disappear. They shrank from major visibility only to return in various places. … They are present in full array—organized, strong, numerous, proliferating and apparently determined to carry out genocide against black people.”^[52] She could have written these words today. Such hate groups have made themselves even more visible since the 2016 elections.

Bearing out Williams’ concerns, during an October 3, 2022, Congressional hearing on domestic extremism in America Susan Corke, Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, testified that:

White supremacy has gone mainstream, which increasingly threatens people of color and our communities, our education system, and democracy itself. The “great replacement” narrative has become thoroughly mainstream on the political right over the past few years. This racist conspiracy, which says there is a systematic, global effort to replace white, European people with nonwhite, foreign populations, provides the central framework, rooted in antisemitic ideology, for the white supremacist movement. The theory has motivated numerous deadly, terror attacks.

White nationalists seek to return to an America that predates the implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. … These racist aspirations to resist diversity and liberalism are frequently articulated as the desire to form a white ethnostate—with violence as the likely means to accomplish it. In sum, the hard right in America is steeped in white supremacy and sees America’s increasing diversity as a threat that must be countered in politics, in law, in court, in the media—and with violence.

After four years of national alignment with the Trump Administration, these groups have not gone back to the shadows. They have coalesced into a hard-right movement and have evolved their tactics. Hard-right hate and antigovernment extremists returned to their bread-and-butter focus on attacking local democratic institutions and rallying against the government. They are targeting local public health boards, school boards, libraries, and elections administration.^[53]

The Southern Poverty Law Center Hatewatch program reports on the activities of hate groups in the United States. As of July 2023, among groups they have so identified are the neo-Nazi Nationalist Social Club, the Proud Boys,^[54] the Patriot Front, the Goyim Defense League, the European Heritage Association, and the Blood Tribe, to name only a few.^[55] On July 19, 2023, Odette Yousef reported on National Public Radio that “‘Active club’ hate groups are growing in the U.S.—and making themselves seen.” She continued,

They are a strand of the white nationalist movement that has grown quickly during the last three years, and that has recently taken their message of hate into more public view. These decentralized cells emphasize mixed martial arts training to ready their members for violence against their perceived enemies … preparing for political and racially motivated violence.^[56]

Though there must be concern and vigilance related to hate groups that are preparing to engage in physical violence, there are other hate groups about which there is cause for equal concern. In a June 17, 2023, interview with John Yang of PBS News Weekend, Corke identified and named Moms for Liberty an extremist hate group that challenges school curriculums across the country to remove study of topics that include race, gender, or LGBTQ+ rights, while disguising itself as a parent’s rights organization.^[57] Black and Brown people face both intellectual and physical genocide as these hate groups proliferate and metastasize across the country. Dr. Williams predicted and warned us of this possibility, yet we were oblivious to her words, perhaps because we did not know these writings existed or because our focus was solely on her book Sisters in the Wilderness. Now that we know, what will we do?

I believe Dr. Williams would pose these questions: How have these supremacist ideologies been allowed to take root, fester and grow on American soil, in a nation that fought in two World Wars to combat fascism and the rise of Nazism and the Third Reich in Europe and Germany? How is it that the government does not outlaw, ban, squelch, and teach against what so many people lost their lives fighting against? Dr. Williams warned us, but we were not listening. Hence, here they are, growing and proliferating right on American soil.

The Church and the Balm in Gilead

In her 1994 article “The Raging Undercurrent: Is the Gospel Strong Enough to Encounter Persistent Racism?” ^[58] Dr. Williams observed that decades past the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s, when some thought that the issue of racism had been addressed, racism was still the underpinning and undercurrent of the nation’s social fabric. She wrote, “Racism—the view that a dominant group in a society inherently deserves its position of privilege—is as entrenched as ever.”^[59] Indicting the church, Williams asked, “Why has the church and the gospel not been … effective in eradicating racism in [the] United States?”^[60] Furthering the indictment, Williams wrote:

Although racism in this culture owes part of its established foothold to white religious leaders of the past, few contemporary white ministers and churches have made serious moves to refute and correct perceptions about the natural deficiency of black people. Most have made no real attempt to name and attack the racist consciousness endemic to this culture and their own church communities.^[61]

In an earlier 1993 article entitled “Lethargy in Christendom,” Dr. Williams wrote, “I have no desire to be a doomsday prophet. But I do know that when the voices of dissent are silenced and the advocates of justice ‘fold up,’ the Fourth Reich can step in, cloning whatever the Third Reich was. … Just when the gospel most needs to be expressed, we Christians lose our voice.”^[62] She warned us to be on guard and called on the church in all its forms to find its voice, to not remain silent, and to “ponder our faith deeply and seriously.”^[63] She chided white Christians who silently stand by while racist policies negatively affect so many, suggesting they have become indifferent to the pain and suffering of Blacks and other minorities because of the conditioning of their white Christian and cultural biases and the “symbols, signs, and images that Western culture [and religion have] used to support anti-Blackness” ^[64] and anti-otherness.

Today the climate in the nation is tense; many are fearful about its future and the course it will take, especially after a troublesome presidential administration, the insurrection and its aftermath on January 6, 2021, a rogue Supreme Court, and the increasing rise of white supremacy and Christian nationalism. In view of these events, there is another Delores S. Williams essay, “Searching for a Balm in Gilead,” that both uncovers her prophetic comfort and is a reminder that despite what is seen, heard, and felt, indeed there is still a balm in Gilead. Williams began this essay with words of the prophet Jeremiah (vv. 8:19-22): “’Is God not in Zion? … I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?’”^[65] Next Williams asks, “Where is the healing the church is supposed to offer?”^[66] She replies:

I have concluded that the prophet Jeremiah long ago provided a response that is relevant today. Speaking God’s word to the people, the prophet said, “Thus says God… I am God who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth: for in these things I delight” ^[67] (9:23).

Dr. Williams assured us that the same healing balm of Gilead sought by Jeremiah is still available to us. She believed that “this love, justice, and righteousness constitute the Balm in Gilead that all Christian churches, not only the Black Churches, are supposed to provide.”^[68] When the church is about the business of teaching, preaching, and living out this love, justice, and righteousness, it can become the Balm in Gilead, the “channel through which the church is supposed to send forth God’s healing power.”^[69] But she laid out conditions under which this healing power can be poured out and received.

Careful to distinguish between churches and congregations that offer a healing balm to all people and those that do not, she challenged the church to be “The Church,” calling it to action. Dr. Williams clarified the difference between Zion and Gilead. Using a Black Christian cultural interpretation of this scriptural passage, she argued that Zion represents the whole church, but more specifically, white Protestant, mainline denominations, many of whom have not been instruments of pouring out God’s love to all people. This interpretation also holds that Gilead represents the Black church in all its denominational differences because God’s healing power has historically been manifested and poured out on African American Christians through the Black church.^[70] A traditional African American Spiritual from the Black church experience expresses this sentiment:

There is a Balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole,

There is a Balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.

Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my work’s in vain,

But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.^[71]

Clearly, signifying what all congregations must do to fully be the church of Christ, Williams reminded us that there should be no distinctions between peoples, cultures, races, or genders. Christians are called to be the instrument through which God’s healing power is poured out into the world and to follow the one law that Jesus advocated: “to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves.”^[72]

Dr. Williams called the Church to stand firm in the face of the demonarchy we see in white-controlled institutions, particularly American-style white nationalist Christian churches. She admonished “African-Americans to challenge the whole Church to desist in its support of white supremacy,”^[73] asking us to ponder this: “If the gospel has no power to conquer the sin of racism, what meaning and value does it have at all?”^[74] Calling out the church’s seeming inability or unwillingness to step up and speak out against racism, injustice, and violence in the nation and the world, Williams’ prophetic words challenge all Christians to not lose their voices when the gospel needs most to be preached and modeled.

Williams reminded the Black church that it cannot underestimate the power of demonarchy and that it is challenged to recognize that its liberation struggle is against nothing less than radical evil.^[75] And this radical evil is racism. Dr. Williams exhorted Black Christians to consider the related responsibilities:

It is a time for Black Christians to ponder our faith deeply and seriously, a faith whose true roots lie not in racist White European culture but in the religious experience of Afro-Asian people. We must struggle to exercise wisdom endowed by God. That wisdom will reveal to us and our children the kinds of resistance activity that will help our people pass through this wilderness without unrelenting despair.^[76]

While she identified and called out the racism of demonarchy, white supremacy, and Christian apathy, and their threats to democracy, she also offers hope. Dr. Williams’ words should be read and re-read. This includes poring over her essays and her seminal womanist work Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk alongside the words of the biblical prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea.

Rightly, attention for the past thirty years has been focused on Sisters; but sadly, the wealth of Williams’ additional prophetic writings on racism, democracy, the church, white supremacy, and Black resistance have been, for the most part, overlooked or hidden in plain sight. Could we have been so intent on following a single path out of the wilderness that we failed to see the multiple roads Dr. Williams placed before us? Perhaps, had we been reading and teaching her prophetic words along with Sisters, we might have helped avert or have been better prepared for the 21st-century rise of hatred in our midst.

May these once hidden but now uncovered and revealed prophecies of Delores Seneva Williams, cause us, the church in all its forms, to behave like King Josiah.^[77] When he learned that scrolls hidden for years in the temple storeroom were found and contained instructions from God, Josiah was troubled. He knew God was not pleased because God’s commands had not been heard or followed during his generation. After consulting the prophetess Huldah, Josiah assembled all the people together, gave them God’s instructions, called the country to repent, and then mobilized all Judah to take action to rectify the wrongs that had been done before the scrolls were found. These visionary words written by Dr. Williams are no longer hidden. What will this generation do with them?

Delores Seneva Williams’ prophetic words were timely when written in the 1980s and 1990s and are even more important in 2024. They are hidden gems, but if they remain hidden and continue to be overlooked, ignored, or forgotten, we may find at our doorsteps the demise of democracy that she warned us about. By continuing to remind us that there is hope despite what we see and hear, Williams’ works offer a blueprint to follow as we continue to strive for racial, gender, class, economic and­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ political justice and equity.

The acute timing and urgency of this present moment requires Williams’ prophetic voice to be once again heard and heeded by those who take seriously the faith, the stance for social justice, and the call to tell the story. Read, share, and heed her warnings while never forgetting the hope and faith Williams had in God and for a future where racism will be dismantled and where the Christian Church will be a true Balm in Gilead. Perhaps it is not too late for salvation—salvation for the country, democracy, and the church.

FOOTNOTES

1. Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1993). ↑

2. The paper remains in the author’s possession. ↑

3. Lucie E. Campbell, “Something Within,” The New National Baptist Hymnal, ed. T. B. Boyd III (Nashville: National Baptist Publishing Board, 1977). ↑

4. In 2003, Emilie M. Townes wrote: “Delores S. Williams was the first to use the term ‘womanist theology’ in her 1987 Christianity and Crisis article, ‘Womanist Theology: Black Women's Voices.’” See Emilie M. Townes, “Womanist Theology” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 57, nos. 3-4 (January 1, 2003): 164. ↑

5. Delores S. Williams, “Womanist Theology: Black Women’s Voices,” Christianity and Crisis 47, no. 3 (1987). ↑

6. Delores S. Williams, “The Color of Feminism: Or Speaking the Black Woman’s Tongue,” The Journal of Religious Thought 43, no. 1 (1986): 42-58. ↑

7. Jean Derricotte-Murphy, “The Prophetic Voice of Delores S. Williams: Beyond Sisters in the Wilderness” Obenhaus Lectureship Series, Chicago Theological Seminary, April 25, 2017. This essay recaptures a portion of the lecture to remind us that the concerns and predictions Williams shared about this country and its racist infection during the 1990s are, sadly, still true, and valid in 2024, making her a prophet who lived among us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Krz2YUHemMc&t=178s. ↑

8. Albert J. Raboteau, American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals and Their Struggle for Social and Political Justice (Princeton: Princeton University, 2016), xiv. ↑

9. Ibid., xvii. ↑

10. Delores S. Williams, “Afflicted with Racism,” Sojourners 19 (1990): 21-22. ↑

11. Ibid. ↑

12. Ibid. ↑

13. Ibid., 22. ↑

14. Ibid. ↑

15. Ibid. ↑

16. Delores S. Williams, “The Raging Undercurrent: Is the Gospel Strong Enough to Counter Persistent Racism?” The Other Side 30, no. 1 (1994): 5. ↑

17. Ibid. ↑

18. Ibid., 15. ↑

19. Ibid. ↑

20. Williams, “The Raging Undercurrent,” 27. ↑

21. Eugenics is the science of seeking to improve a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis. See Nancy Ibarra, “The Power and Responsibility of Human Changes to Biology: Malaria, Mosquitoes, and CRISPR Technology,” Yale National Initiative to Strengthen Teaching in Public Schools, Yale University, ND, https://teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/viewer/initiative_18.05.05_u; Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, Yale University, September 2018, teachers.yale.edu/pdfs/curriculum_pdfs/18.05.05_guide.pdf. Also see National Human Genome Research Institute, Fact Sheet: “Eugenics and Scientific Racism,” last updated May 18, 2022, www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism. ↑

22. Delores S. Williams, “The Raging Undercurrent: Is the Gospel Strong Enough to Counter Persistent Racism?” The Other Side 30, no. 1 (1994): 15. ↑

23. Joe Winikka-Lydon, Emerson Hodges, and R.G. Cravens, “Old Bigotries Melded with New Conspiracies Burgeon White Christian Nationalism,” The Year in Hate and Extremism 2022, Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed August 28, 2023, https://www.splcenter.org/year-hate-extremism-2022/trends-and-threats#new-conspiracies. For current information on Christian Nationalism, see Drew J. Strait, “Our Moral Pandemic: Christian Nationalism and Political Idolatry,” Sojourners, May 9, 2022, accessed August 28, 2023, https://sojo.net/articles/sponsored/our-moral-pandemic-christian-nationalism-and-political-idolatry. ↑

24. Delores S. Williams, “Violence against God: Church Burnings, White Supremacy, and the Signature of Sin,” The Other Side 32, no. 5 (September-October 1996): 19-20. ↑

25. Delores S. Williams, “The Color of Feminism: Or Speaking the Black Woman’s Tongue,” The Journal of Religious Thought 43, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1986): 52. ↑

26. Ibid., 51. ↑

27. Ibid., 52. ↑

28. Anders Anglesey, “Videos Show Neo-Nazis Marching in Florida” Newsweek.com, September 3, 2023, accessed September 3, 2023, https://www.newsweek.com/nazis-marching-florida-chants-1824219. ↑

29. According to Reuters, this “conspiracy theory fosters the belief that leftist and Jewish elites are engineering the ethnic and cultural replacement of white populations with non-white immigrants that will lead to a ‘white genocide.’ According to this belief, the cabal of political and business elite would be kept in power by the masses of indebted non-whites.” See Reuters, accessed May 25, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/what-is-the-great-replacement-what-are-its-origins-2022-05-16/. ↑

30. Williams, “The Raging Undercurrent.” ↑

31. Reuters Factbox, “Grim Chronology of Mass Shootings in the United States,” May 24, 2022, accessed August 25, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/grim-chronology-mass-shootings-united-states-2022-05-15/. Sadly, this number has increased exponentially since this report. ↑

32. Bill Hutchinson and Josh Margolin, “Suspect Identified in Racially Motivated Killing at Jacksonville Dollar General,” ABC News Network, accessed August 31, 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/US/suspect-alleged-racially-motivated-killing-jacksonville-dollar-general/story?id=102599495. For updated FBI report on hate crimes released on March 13, 2023, accessed August 31, 2023, see https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressreleases/fbi-releases-supplemental-2021-hate-crime-statistics. ↑

33. Sara Ganim and Nathaniel Meyersohn, “‘A Resurgence of White Nationalism’: Hate Groups Spiked in 2016.” CNN Politics, accessed April 8, 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/15/politics/hate-groups-spiked-in-2016/index.html. ↑

34. Southern Poverty Law Center, “Year in Hate 2022,” accessed August 31, 2023, https://www.splcenter.org/year-hate-extremism-2022. ↑

35. Williams, “The Raging Undercurrent,” 27. ↑

36. Delores S. Williams, “Could It Happen Here? Why Genocide against African-Americans Remains a Frightening Possibility,” The Other Side 31, no. 5 (January-February 1995): 45. ↑

37. Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1989), 8. ↑

38. Williams, “Could It Happen Here?” 46. ↑

39. Ibid., 45. ↑

40. Osita Nwanevu, “Richard Spencer and His Alt-Right Buddies Launch a New Webite,”The Slatest: Your News Companion, January 17, 2017, http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/17/richard_spencer_launches_the_alt_right_s_newest_website.html, Accessed April 1, 2017. See the Colin Liddell blog “Is Black Genocide Right?” at the Wayback Machine Internet Archive, accessed April 20, 2024, https://web.archive.org/web/20120216183528/http:/www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/is-black-genocide-right. ↑

41. Williams, “Could It Happen Here?” 46. ↑

42. Ibid. ↑

43. Ibid. ↑

44. Ibid. ↑

45. Ibid., 44. ↑

46. Ibid. ↑

47. Ibid. ↑

48. Ibid., 47. ↑

49. Danielle Ivory, Charlie Smart, and Karen Yourish, “How Far Right Are the 20 Republicans Who Voted against McCarthy?” New York Times, January 17, 2023, accessed September 3, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/01/04/us/politics/house-speaker-republicans-vote-against-mccarthy.html, accessed September 3, 2023, ↑

50. Williams, “Could It Happen Here?” 47. ↑

51. Ibid. ↑

52. Delores. S. Williams, “Straight Talk, Plain Talk: Womanist Words about Salvation in a Social Context,” in Embracing the Spirit: Womanist Perspectives on Hope, Salvation, and Transformation, ed. Emilie M. Townes (Maryknoll, New York, Orbis, 1997), 105. ↑

53. Southern Poverty Law Center, “Countering Violent Extremism, Terrorism, and Antisemitic Threats in New Jersey,” Testimony of Susan Corke before the House Committee on Homeland Security, October 3, 2022, accessed August 31, 2023, https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/115162/witnesses/HHRG-117-HM00-Bio-CorkeS-20221003.pdf. ↑

54. The Washington Post reported on August 31, 2023, that a former lieutenant of the Proud Boys was sentenced to 17 years in prison for his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection and US Capitol attack, accessed August 31, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/08/31/proud-boys-joseph-biggs-sentencing-jan6-seditious-conspiracy/. ↑

55. Jeff Tischauser, “Neo-Nazi Ex-Marine Buys Up Land in Rural Maine for ‘Blood Tribe,’” Southern Poverty Law Center Hatewatch, July 27, 2023, accessed August 28, 2023, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2023/07/27/neo-nazi-ex-marine-buys-land-rural-maine-blood-tribe. ↑

56. Odette Yousef, “‘Active Club’ Hate Groups Are Growing in the U.S. – and Making Themselves Seen,” NPR National Security. July 19, 2023, accessed August 28, 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/07/19/1188111769/active-club-hate-groups. ↑

57. John Yang, “New Report looks at the changing face of extremist groups in America,” PBS News Weekend, June 17, 2023, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/new-report-looks-at-the-changing-face-of-extremist-groups-in-america. ↑

58. Delores S. Williams, “The Raging Undercurrent: Is the Gospel Strong Enough to Counter Persistent Racism?” The Other Side 30, no. 1 (January -February 1994): 15-27. ↑

59. Ibid., 15. ↑

60. Ibid., 15. ↑

61. Ibid., 27. ↑

62. Delores S. Williams, “Lethargy in Christendom,” Christianity and Crisis 53, no. 1 (April 12, 1993): 90. ↑

63. Delores S. Williams. “Could It Happen Here? Why Genocide against African-Americans Remains a Frightening Possibility,” The Other Side, 31, no. 5 (January-February 1995): 55. ↑

64. Ibid. ↑

65. Delores S. Williams, “Searching for a Balm in Gilead,” The Living Pulpit 9, no. 4 (October-December 2000): 6. ↑

66. Ibid. ↑

67. Ibid. ↑

68. Ibid. ↑

69. Ibid. ↑

70. Ibid ↑

71. Paul Robeson, African American Baritone, Performs the Spiritual “There is a Balm in Gilead,” YouTube, accessed September 9, 2023,

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okl2XbTM7xM&ab_channel=varadero1839; Harry Thacker Burleigh, Balm in Gilead: Negro Spiritual (S.I.: G. Ricordi, 1919) Notated Music, https://www.loc.gov/item/2009536934/. ↑

72. Mark 12:30-31, D. S. Williams translation. ↑

73. Williams. “Searching for a Balm,” 6. ↑

74. Delores S. Williams, “The Color of Feminism: Or Speaking the Black Woman’s Tongue,” The Journal of Religious Thought 43, no 1 (Spring/Summer 1986): 58. ↑

75. Ibid. ↑

76. Williams, “Could It Happen Here,” 55. ↑

77. 2 Kings 23:3

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