Delores Williams

Delores S. Williams Delores S. Williams
Born	United States
Theological work
Language	English
Notable ideas	Womanist theology

Delores S. Williams is a theologian notable for her formative role in the development of womanist theology and best known for her book Sisters in the Wilderness. Her writings over the years have discussed the role intersecting oppressions of race, gender, and class have played in the situation of black women. As opposed to feminist theology as it was predominately practiced by white women and black theology as predominately practiced by black men, Williams argues that black women's oppression deepens the analysis of oppression in theology. In Sisters in the Wilderness, Williams' primarily develops a rereading of the biblical figure, Hagar, to illuminate the importance of issues of reproduction and surrogacy in black women's oppression. According to Aaron McEmrys, "Williams offers a theological response to the defilement of black women.... Womanism is an approach to ethics, theology and life rooted in the experiences of African-American women". The term "Womanism" was coined by a contemporary of Williams, Alice Walker, used in her 1979 short story "Coming Apart" and again in her 1983 essay collection In Search of Our Mothers Gardens. Williams wrote the eighth chapter of Transforming the Faiths of our Fathers: Women who Changed American Religion (2004), edited by Ann Braude.

Womanism is a byproduct of Black feminism for which both are derivatives of feminism. The emergence of both Black feminism and later Womanism is due to black women not being able to identify with the issues presented by the Feminist Movement led by white women, who were more or less looking for various forms of both individual and relational equality with white men so as to eliminate sexism. For the African–American woman equality would include the elimination of racism and classism, something that feminism did not directly address. Feminists' main focus was on the disparity between white men and women and did not consider the plight of black women in relation to her counterpart alongside the other oppression that would impact directly on the black women’s true liberation.

The theory of womanism is intended to provide black women a platform where they can freely relate their stories of oppression, which are inherently different from the feminist groups, which are led by mostly middle-class white women. The goal of the womanist movement was not only to eliminate inequalities but to assist black women in reconnecting with their roots in religion and culture and to reflect and improve on "self, community and society".

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