Hidden Histories: Faith and Black Lesbian Leadership

Monique Moultrie.

Durham: Duke University Press, 2023

Pages: 240

ISBN: 9781478016472

EISBN: 9781478023746

DOI: 10.1215/9781478023746

How and why do Black lesbian religious leaders focus on social justice activism? How is this

activism influenced by their spirituality, and how do their leadership practices provide an

example for future generations? These are the framing questions for Dr. Monique Moultrie’s

Hidden Histories: Faith and Black Lesbian Leadership (2023). In this work, Moultrie analyzes

interviews she performed with eighteen Black women religious leaders who publicly identified

as lesbian, same-gender-loving, or queer. Interviewing a sample of leaders who are open with

their identity is essential because Moultrie aims to explore the lives of Black lesbian religious

leaders who are “living authentically and working for social justice” (5). ß

Moultrie’s book is a work of oral history and womanist ethics. Oral histories serve to

center the stories of persons who have been excluded from dominant narratives and historical

records. Further, Moultrie explains that “listening to Black women tell their stories” (9) is her

greatest priority. Marginalized people narrating their own experiences and disrupting dominant

modes of historiography are methodological imperatives for Moultrie and are womanist in

nature. Thus, a womanist framework grounds Moultrie’s analysis of these interviews. Moultrie

does not make the claim that all of these leaders identify as womanists, but that she, as the

author, utilizes a womanist lens to interpret their stories. Referring to herself as a “Walker

Womanist” (132), Moultrie adheres to the definition of womanism put forth by Alice Walker.

However, she is also aided by other interlocutors, such as Layli Phillips Maparyan, who

characterizes womanism as intentionally anti-oppression, concerned with everyday experience,

nonideological, communal, and spiritual (13). Womanist thought emphasizes the knowledge that

comes from the everyday experiences of Black women and takes seriously their spiritual

concerns; thus, it serves as an essential and illuminating lens for understanding the activism and

resistance of the eighteen Black lesbian religious leaders featured in Hidden Histories.

With the goal of preserving the stories of Black lesbian religious leaders, Moultrie

ultimately distills traits of queer leadership that can be used to further models of ethical

leadership. Without reifying the troublesome idea that marginalized persons need to do the work

of educating others, Moultrie asks what we can learn from the lives of queer Black women who

are often excluded from leadership circles. Moultrie’s project does not work to essentialize the

Black lesbian experience or provide one universal model of leadership. To do so would

undermine the womanist framework upon which Moultrie builds. Rather poetically, Moultrie

states “…there is no ontological way to be a Black religious leader” (67).

The first chapter focuses on examples of Christian leadership that illuminate the fact that

Black women have had to continuously create spaces that address their own experiences and

resist structures that prefer for these women to be silent and invisible. Then, chapters 2 through 5

each correspond to a specific trait that characterizes the womanist ethical leadership Moultrie

identifies through her interviews: authenticity, social justice consciousness, spirituality, and

collaboration.

Chapter 2 examines the theme of womanist authenticity using Charles Taylor's

philosophy on authenticity and Stacey Floyd-Thomas's theory of radical subjectivity. Moultrie

explores how Black lesbian religious leaders claim and use their authentic selves to navigate

different ecclesial and leadership structures. Moreover, their authentic identities relate to their

call to advocate for justice in their communities. To live as one’s authentic self is to be conscious

of one’s agency and ability to resist injustice with integrity. Moultrie states: “Self-awareness of

one’s sexuality as nondeviant in a society that has deemed all Black sexuality deviant is a

monumental task. Historically, women and Blacks were deemed sexually loose, making Black

women doubly condemned for their gender and race” (40). Claiming the identity of Black

lesbian women is an act of resistance that challenges prevailing systems and requires living

authentically.

Chapter 3 explores social justice activism in the lives of these different Black lesbian

faith leaders. Throughout various interviews, Moultrie identifies a common commitment that

these women have to resistance, both for themselves and for their community. Commitment to

social justice on the part of the community is of particular importance and emphasis in Hidden

Histories: “It [holistic activism] spreads beyond the experiences of the leader and asks who still

needs to be liberated and saved. Yet the persons in need of liberation are involved in their own

salvation. This is not a model of activism that privileges isolated saviors; instead, this argues for

the necessity of being in community and allowing collaborative leadership models to dictate

where resources and personnel are allocated” (100). Womanist spiritual activism and the ethical

leadership that influences it are motivated by intersectional justice for all.

Chapter 4 asks how spirituality influences these Black lesbian leaders as they work to

build a new social reality based on justice and relationality. Here, Moultrie takes the opportunity

to expand beyond Protestant Christianity. While many of her interviewees were, in fact,

Protestant Christians, Moultrie did interview a Jewish rabbi, a Buddhist lay leader, and a

spiritualist. Interacting with the work of Emilie Townes and Layli Maparyan, Moultrie

emphasizes how womanist spirituality is dynamic, and continuously transforming; thus, the

womanist framework can properly interact with the spiritual foundation and moral wisdom of her

different interviewees. A “theistic connection to humanity motivates them to create a just world

for others” (124), and a womanist lens acknowledges this theistic connection as a common moral

thread in the work of Moultrie’s interviewees, regardless of doctrinal commitments.

Chapter 5 outlines a final aspect of womanist ethical leadership as narrated through the

lives of these eighteen Black lesbian religious leaders: collaboration. Collaborative leadership is

characterized by a commitment to interconnected and relational communities where “God has

gifted each community with talented individuals who can serve the whole” (152). The

collaborative leadership or relational leadership style of these Black women relies on community

and partnership. Collaborative leadership is based on the needs and ideas of the community, not

on individual leaders and what they think is best. Furthermore, Moultrie claims that there is a

common duty among many of those interviewed to form leaders for the next generation and

sustain social justice activism in future years. Many of these women's narratives demonstrate

how the traits of an ethical leader can belong to anyone and to many people at the same time.

Moultrie importantly acknowledges the limitations of Hidden Histories’ theorizing about

queer leadership: the absence of transgender voices. Moultrie emphasizes that her work is just a

starting point and that future work in this area will expand views and perhaps discover that other

leadership styles are present in the “pursuit of holistic justice.” There is more to be learned about

the lives of queer black leaders and how their leadership can serve as a framework for others.

Moultrie’s project is successful in its attempts to document the lives of Black lesbian faith

leaders and draw on their experiences to construct a model for ethical leadership, borrowing

from queer and womanist thought. This book will be useful in seminary classrooms and for

religious leaders interested in collaborative and social justice-oriented leadership.

Natalie Readnour is a Ph.D. student in Religion and Culture concerned with the Mexico-U.S. border, motherhood, and Mexican American religious identity and practices.