Episode 56: Wylin D. Wilson - Womanist Wisdom for a Wounded World
In this episode of Faith for Normal People, nerds-in-residence Anna Sieges-Beal and Dr. Angela N. Parker talk with Dr. Wylin D. Wilson about the intersection of faith, justice, and healthcare through the lens of womanist bioethics. They explore how Black women’s lived experiences reveal deep ethical gaps in the medical system and how centering the most vulnerable offers a path toward collective healing and solidarity. Join them as they explore the following questions:
What is bioethics, and why does it matter in everyday life?
How did Dr. Wilson’s background in agriculture and rural health lead her to bioethics?
What is womanism, and how does it shape theological and ethical work?
Why was there a need for Womanist Bioethics as a distinct field?
How has the field of bioethics historically excluded marginalized voices?
What role did Dr. Jacqueline Grant and other womanist theologians play in shaping Dr. Wilson’s path?
How does womanist bioethics begin with Black women’s experiences but aim for the flourishing of all people?
Why is it important to name the dominant (often white) perspective in traditional bioethics?
How is faith—particularly Christian faith—woven into Dr. Wilson’s understanding of justice and care?
In what ways can stories act as both critique and healing in ethical and theological work?
How does the Black church’s origin reflect broader patterns of racial exclusion in American Christianity?
What does solidarity really mean beyond superficial unity or “kumbaya” moments?
Why is starting ethical conversations with the most vulnerable a more just and effective approach?
How can people of faith resist division and practice seeing sameness in those who seem different?
What story from her research most deeply impacted Dr. Wilson, and why?
Quotables
Pithy, shareable, sometimes-less-than-280-character statements from the episode you can share.
What womanism does is it allows us to expand our conversation, to include diverse perspectives of individuals who have historically been left out of the conversation that's been going on in mainstream theology. — Dr. Wylin D. Wilson
Womanist bioethics…really does center vulnerable populations. And it has, as its starting point, one particular experience—the experience of Black and women of color. That's only the starting point. But what's significant about womanism is the goal: the healing, the health, the liberation, the care and love and respect for all of humanity. You start in one particular experience, but the goal is for all of us to be whole, to be healed. — Dr. Wylin D. Wilson
Because eyes of love [are] eyes that see the flaws and can still hold that beloved so dearly in their heart. I still have that love for the church and what it has done, its amazing legacy of care, all of that. But I am very clear about how we have to hold the church accountable for what it has done and left undone with respect to women and other vulnerable populations. We gotta hold our institutions accountable. — Dr. Wylin D. Wilson
The Black church is a product of the church broadly in American society. The black church was not something that Black people set out to actually establish…it was literally forced into existence because of racial discrimination. Because unfortunately the color line in our nation went all the way through even into religion. — Dr. Wylin D. Wilson
In order for us to get an adequate understanding of what justice means in human relations, it requires that we start with the needs of those who are most vulnerable among us. And by listening to those who are vulnerable, we can get a fuller sense of concepts such as neighbor love, respect, dignity. We get a fuller sense of what these concepts mean. — Dr. Wylin D. Wilson
[Prioritizing] the perspective of vulnerable folk for the sake of the common good does not devalue the gifts of those who are not vulnerable. But what it does is acknowledges the necessity of the gift of solidarity. — Dr. Wylin D. Wilson
Womanist bioethics is about being and doing. What kind of person do I want to be? How do I wanna show up in this world? When I get up every morning, how do I want to show up? — Dr. Wylin D. Wilson
From a Christian faith perspective, justice goes beyond just the allocation of resources, whether you have enough or I have enough and whether we're sharing things equally. It's about the fidelity to the demands of a relationship. How faithful are we to the demands of our relationship with one another? 'Cause we have claims on one another, not only as fellow citizens, but as human beings. As a child of God who deserves love and care and respect. There are demands of our relationship to one another. — Dr. Wylin D. Wilson
How faithful am I to the relationship to water? To plants, trees, parks? You know, we need to think about being in relationship with all of creation. Are we faithful to the demands of those relationships? — Dr. Wylin D. Wilson
The lives of minoritized women do a lot of work for us. And so sharing these stories is really, really important, because not only do they help create empathy, but they help us to see where there is a lot of commonality between the different experiences that we have. And they help us see where we're connected, where our struggles connect. They help us to see how we're a part of one another's story. We have a hand in the health of each other. We all have a hand in that. — Dr. Wylin D. Wilson
History is not to shame you. It's not to guilt you. It's a part of what makes us who we are. The good, the bad, the ugly. Our nation is like a family—we have stuff that nobody wants to talk about, nobody wants to deal with. But the problem is as long as we keep burying it or try to take it out of the public conversation and take it out of the public square, then we can never heal. — Dr. Wylin D. Wilson
Mentioned in This Episode
Class: April class “Jesus and the Culture Wars” with AJ Levine
Books: Womanist Bioethics: Social Justice, Spirituality, and Black Women's Health by Wylin D. Wilson
Join: The Society of Normal People community
Support: www.thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give
-
Jared: You are listening to Faith for Normal People, the only other God-ordained podcast on the internet.
Pete: I'm Pete Enns.
Jared: And I’m Jared Byas.
Pete: Hey folks. We've been working on our children's Bible for over a year and it's a project we are extremely proud of. And guess what? It's finally here. God's Stories as Told by God's Children is out now and ready for you and your curious kids to read together.
Jared: Yes, it's informed by biblical scholarship, of course, with The Bible for Normal People.
It's inclusive, deeply respectful of children's imagination and intelligence. God's Stories as Told by God's Children is the storybook Bible you'll wish you had when you were a kid.
Pete: And it contains stories from over 50 contributors, including biblical scholars, theologians, and practitioners representing diverse religious traditions, locations, and lived experiences mirroring the many voices we find in the Bible.
Jared: God's Stories as Told by God's Children allows parents to introduce children to their own beliefs and traditions in conversation with the stories found inside the Bible. You can order your copyright now at thebiblefornormalpeople.com/godsstories
Pete: It's time to tell you about our April class, “Jesus and the Culture Wars: the Gospels as Guides” taught by none other than Amy-Jill Levine.
Jared: This live class will cover how stories told by and about Jesus help us ask the right questions about the issues fracturing society today, including healthcare, economics, ethnicity, slavery's legacy, and family values. By locating Jesus in the world of first century Jewish life, AJ will demonstrate how we can prevent the antisemitism that frequently accompanies Christian teaching and how Jesus offers nourishing guidance rather than pie-in-the-sky promises.
Pete: Join AJ Levine for the live class on April 24th from 8 to 9:30 PM Eastern Time, followed by an extended Q-&-A session for members of our online community, the Society of Normal People.
Jared: Just head to www.thebiblefornormalpeople.com/culturewars to sign up, it's pay-what-you-can until the class ends, and then it'll cost $25 to access the recording.
Anna: Hi, listeners, today on Faith for Normal People, we have a very special episode because this is the first episode hosted by two nerds in residence. I'm Dr. Anna Sieges-Beal.
Angela: And I'm Dr. Angela N. Parker. You have heard us on the podcast as co-hosts before, alongside Pete or Jared, but today we are your hosts and we are very excited to bring you this conversation, intertwining themes of justice, faith, healthcare, and ethics with Dr. Wylin D. Wilson.
Anna: Wylin is Associate Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School, where she teaches within the theology, medicine and culture initiative.
She's also currently principal investigator for the research project called Bioethics and Black Church, addressing racial inequalities and Black women's health in North Carolina. Dr. Wilson is the author of Economic Ethics and the Black Church and Womanist Bioethics: Social Justice, Spirituality, and Black Women's Health, which is the focus of our conversation today.
Angela: Don’t forget to stay tuned at the end of the episode for Quiet Time where Anna and I will reflect on what we learned and how the themes of this interview impact our own faith experiences.
Anna: With all that said, we hope you enjoy this conversation with Wylin D. Wilson.
Wyin: What's significant about womanism is the goal. Its goal is the healing, the health, the liberation, the care and love and respect for all of humanity, right?
So you just start in one place. You start in one particular experience, but the goal is for all of us to be whole.
Anna: Dr. Wilson, we are so happy to have you on the podcast today, and part of your work deals with bioethics. And I'm just wondering if you could tell us what, what is bioethics? That is not something that was covered in my seminary ethics class.
Wylin: Yes, yes. So I am just overjoyed to be here and be in conversation with the both of you.
So bioethics actually is, uh, the study of ethical dilemmas, um, ethical questions that arise in health, science and technology. And, and most people are really familiar with bioethics, although, although, you know, they may not have studied it, right? So you're, it, it, it addresses questions like the beginning of life, having to do with the beginning of life.
When does life really begin? When does the fetus become human? Right? Um, and that it deals with questions about end of life. So what is the definition of death? You know, death used to be really simple, uh, before we had technologies that could prolong our lives, right? Before we had ventilators and all of that.
So, so it, it, it deals with those kinds of issues, issues of suffering, um, the, your patient-doctor relationship. So, so you actually, you're actually involved in bioethics, in, in, in more ways than you probably, uh, think about, uh, just normally in life.
Anna: Interesting. So I noticed that your background, you have a lot of background in agriculture and so this is a little bit different than that. How was it that you got interested in bioethics?
Wylin: Yeah, so, so bioethics, it's, it's very interesting because I will say, I was really dealing, like I was dealing with bioethics even before I even knew what it was, right? Um, because it, it all, it all started way back when I was, a young person. So, so this is also the impetus for my book, like this is, this is how my book came about, right? And it contributes to this. So when I was, when I was born, I was born actually, um, about 10 years after the desegregation of hospitals. Now I know we talk about the desegregation of schools and restaurants and whatnot, right?
And we rarely probably, uh, talk about the desegregation of hospitals in the U.S. And so hospitals were desegregated in about 1963, 1964, right? And so because I was born, you know, not too long after that, I actually grew up hearing, um, stories. Uh, I call them horror stories, right? Stories from uh, family members, but also from, uh, church members.
I went to an African-American, uh, church and it was a rural church, right? So that's a whole nother dynamic. So church members stories and, and other folk just in the broader Black community, stories about their, um, engagement, their interaction in the healthcare system.
It was really unfortunate because here they were, you know, in the healthcare system, and this was an institution that was very much focused on cure, right? But where care was lacking for these individuals because of the, what I call deadly intersection of race and health.
Right? Uh, a lot of these stories where, uh, individuals felt unheard, uncared for unseen, right?
And so, so those stories are a part of what really, um, helped me to understand the significance of, you know, the field of healthcare in general. Um, and then, uh, I, later in life when I got older and I was working in the rural Alabama Black belt, in the heart of the Alabama Black Belt in Tuskegee, Alabama, um, and it was in a rural community.
And so that, I mean, let me tell you, that solidified it for me because looking at the issue of rural health in this nation is, it's eye-opening for us. Because if you look at- there've been so many rural hospitals that have closed, right? Um, there's been actually over 130 rural hospitals that have closed from about 2010 to about 2020, 2021.
And I know that sounds like a long period of time, but that's a lot of hospital closings. Um, and almost 20 of those closings happened in 2020 alone, right? Yeah, exactly. At the time when we really, we needed them! We needed them. Oh my gosh. And so, so, you know, so I'm just looking at the fact that, you know, many women in rural areas, they have to travel an hour or more, right? To deliver a baby.
When the hospital budget gets tight, though, the first ward to go is usually obstetrical ward. And, and of course the, the maternal mortality rate in rural areas, no matter if you're Black, white, you know, Latina, whatever the maternal mortality rate is higher in rural areas.
So, so, so kind of, you know, the culmination of these things really helped me, um, to understand how significant bioethics, uh, is right for our lives.
Angela: So, as I'm noticing your beautiful book in the background with the purple, purple hue, and the beginning part is “Womanist Bioethics.” One section of your book actually talks about how womanism is both theory and praxis or, so I think about it as theory and bodily almost.
So I think my question for you is, first of all, can you explain womanism for our audience, but also when did you realize you had to write Womanist Bioethics, and, and when did you kind of realize that you were womanist as well?
Wylin: Womanism, like you said, it's theory and it's practice. Right. Um, and in my book, in my book, I really deal with womanist theology 'cause that's foundational to womanist bioethics.
Womanist theology, actually what it is, it is a response to mainstream, uh, American theology, which left out, unfortunately, perspectives, a lot of perspectives of marginalized and minoritized populations. So, what womanism does is, womanist theology, is it allows us to expand. To expand our conversation, um, to include, uh, diverse perspectives, uh, of individuals who have historically been left out of the conversation that's been going on in mainstream theology.
And theology, of course, in America, uh, our, our Western theology has left out voices of, of African Americans in general. And so you have Black liberation theology that come about because of that. But Black liberation theology left out the experience of Black women. So, so womanism is also a response to that. Um, and a response to feminist theology, uh, which, which left out, um, minoritized, in its early, you know, earliest stages, left out the perspectives of minoritized, uh, women, women of color.
So you asked also , why is it that we needed womanist bioethics? Right? Um, and that's because just like with, uh, theology, unfortunately bioethics as a field, it also left out the perspectives, um, and experiences of, of minoritized individuals. Bioethics has been done particularly from, and historically from, European and European American male perspective.
And so, um, when I came to, I always say I came to bioethics through, through the rural southern, uh, you know, Alabama Black Belt, right? Um, and so coming to bioethics in a situation where I was always confronting, you know, health disparities, food insecurity, um, economically depressed communities, right? And all that.
So, for me, um, bioethics, it, it had to deal with these issues, right? It had to, to to center vulnerable populations. 'Cause that's what's so significant about womanist bioethics is that, um, it really does center, uh, vulnerable populations. And it has, as its starting point, one particular experience, right?
The experience of Black and women of color. That's only the starting point. But what's significant about womanism is the goal. Its goal is the healing, the health, the healing, the liberation, the care and love and respect for all of humanity. Right? So you just start in one place. You start in one particular experience, but the goal is for all of us to be whole, to be healed.
Angela: One element of womanism is that you always name yourself. So I don't mean to put womanism on you, but I, I wonder, um, just as you came to bioethics, I wonder how you came to womanism.
Wylin: So when I was in seminary, um, I went to the Interdenominational Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia, and that's where Dr. Jacqueline Grant was the professor of systematic theology. And so, so Dr. Grant was, actually, we call, she's one of the mothers of womanist theology, right? And so she, and, and, um, two other women, Katie Cannon, Dolores Williams, they were students of James Cone when they, you know, uh, were, were in graduate school.
And so she really, of course, shaped, she and Cannon and Williams. They really shaped what womanism looked like in theological studies. 'cause the actual term womanist was coined by Alice Walker, right? Cannon, Jacqueline Grant, uh, and Dolores Williams. They really helped to, to kind of operationalize it, right? Like, put hands and feet on it for us, uh, within womanist theology, which is within religious and theological studies.
And so I, I was a student of hers and I, I worked in her, her office, the Office of Black Women in Church and Society. And you know how it is when you are young, you know, like when you're a kid, you don't really understand a lot of the important things that are happening around you, right? So you can't really appreciate it.
So I just thought she was great. I was like, oh, she's wonderful, she's so brilliant, whatever. But I did not really appreciate that. Oh my goodness, this woman!
Now I really appreciate. But yeah, so when I was a student, you know, I was out there, I was working in her office and I was reading these texts. I'd not, I didn't know what womanism was, right? Even though I was a daughter of the Black church, right? Grew up in the Black church, but I had not heard of womenist theology, so I was introduced to it when I got to seminary and it was kinda, it was kind of uncomfortable, right?
It was really uncomfortable at first because, you know, I grew up in a, a rural Black Baptist church in the south, and so I had not even seen a woman preacher before I got to seminary. Like, I've seen women evangelists, like we, we would allow people to be evangelists, but like a woman leading a church? Or up in that pulpit? She could preach from the podium at the, on the floor, but in the, you know.
So I got there and I was like, hmm, you know, you're trying on something. It's like, this is a little uncomfortable, itchy, you know. Like, I was like, oh, this is not comfortable. So womanism. At first for me, when I first tried it on, I was like, “I don't know if this fits,” but, uh, but a funny, funny thing about seeing and hearing and learning about other women's experience, other people's experience in general.
Right? That's why I love books and I love writing. Because what books allow us to do, they allow us to enter other people's worlds and their experiences, but at a safe distance, right? At a really safe distance. And so, and so when I, you know, as I started reading and just hearing the stories of other women, um, and how they were treated and mistreated just because they were women in the church, uh, not allowed to have certain opportunities in the church in terms of leadership and whatnot, I really began to, to kind of think about “wow, wait a minute.”
You know, like, it just, it just, it just really helped me to, to think through “Well, yeah. Wait a minute. Is this right?” You know, and, and I still love, I love the Black church. I love the tradition that I came out of and grew out of. I still love it with all my heart. Right? Um, but it doesn't mean I cannot critique it.
Anna: Critique it, right.
Wylin: You know what I'm saying? It doesn't mean that I, I cannot. Because eyes of love, they're not eyes that don't see the flaws, right? They're eyes that see the flaws and can still hold that beloved so dearly in their heart. Right? And so I still, yeah. So I still still have that love for the, for the church and what it has done, its amazing legacy of care, all of that.
But I, but I am very clear about how we have to hold the church accountable for what it has done and left undone, right? And with respect to, to, to women, um, and, and other, other vulnerable, uh, populations. So, so yeah, we gotta hold our institutions accountable.
Angela: If I can take a point of privilege, because I know Anna's gonna come up with a question about faith in politics, but we're focused on Black church right now, and you engage the work of the Black church and you think about the Black church and you hold the Black church accountable, and you look at the Black church and you, you've opened up with thinking about racism and health.
And I'm wondering, knowing that a lot of our listeners are probably more white, are members of more white church communities, how would you think about this conversation that for those of us who have grown up in Black church, how would you think about this conversation as transferable for our listeners who are in more white church spaces?
Wylin: Yes. Yes. So it, it's, I think it's transferable in the sense of the Black church is, is a product of the church broadly in American society, right?
So the Black church was not something that Black people set out to actually establish. It came about under unfortunate circumstances, right? It was literally forced into existence because of racial discrimination. Because unfortunately, the color line in our, um, in our nation, it went all the way through even into religion, right?
So this, this, the racial, uh, segregation, the, the, the racism unfortunately, um, is even, it was even in the church, right from the very beginnings. And so the Black church literally came into being because, and, and there's a story about, you know, Richard Allen and Absalon Jones, um, who started, you know, they, the, the African, um, AME. African Methodist Episcopal Church. You know, they kind, that kind of came from, from under their leadership. Uh, but, but yeah, they were pulled from their knees at the altar while praying in a white church. And, and what I am glad that they did do, I'm glad that they did not stay.
I'm glad that they walked out in protest that we will not, we will not suffer, uh, inhumanity and, and blows against our dignity, because I think that was important, right? You should not stay and, and suffer abuse, right? And so, so yeah, so, so unfortunately, uh, the Black church came about because it was forced into existence, um, because of racial discrimination.
But yeah, so I think that churches in general, we all can look at like, the culture of the church in general. The church has struggled when it has come to issues of gender, right? So it's not just the Black church that, um, really suffers from, you know, I call it the, the, you know, this ailment of bad theology when it comes to, uh, issues of gender, how women are viewed, how women are treated, you know, historically, right?
Um, that's also, that, that is, that is an issue that is pervasive, you know, throughout churches, white, Black, oh my gosh, uh, the Latin American church, Asian American churches. So, so this is something that we will find across the board.
And, and so, uh, I, I usually, you know, I look at the significance. And that's one of the things that's really important about my book. And I try to show that the significance of this text is, I'm pinpointing one experience, a particular experience, right? Giving you a window into this particular experience. But a lot of the experience and the struggles of Black women are very much related to other women's experiences, right?
And, and so, and so having a window into our experience really and truly, um, is, is really powerful. And it can speak to the broader experience, you know, of, of women in our nation as well. So it's not a disconnect whatsoever.
Anna: I wanna circle back to something that you said. You said that “womanist bioethics begins with a particular lived experience of embodied people.”
Right? And it says it out loud. It says, and this is about Black women. Um, and the flip side of that, the thing that you're kind of coming up against is, bioethics had previously been about, uh, the white experience, but we didn't say it out loud. Um, and so I just think that it's so interesting that starting with, starting with the lived experience of Black women, you point to the flourishing of all people, right?
Like that's the end goal. But when we, when we start with, and we don't say out loud, “oh, this is about bioethics for white people,” We’d never get to the flourishes of all people. Um, and we, and I mean, and we don't say out loud that this is about white people. Um, and so I wonder if you could say just a couple of words about why you think womanist bioethics is so uniquely placed to really address that issue of the flourishing of all people. Like why is this such a good place to start?
Wylin: Yes, yes. Oh, excellent question. And I would say the reason why, it's because, well, one of the reasons why is because, um, in order for us to get an adequate understanding of what justice means in human relations, it requires that we start with the needs of those who are most vulnerable among us. Right? And, and, and, and it is, by listening to those who are vulnerable, we can get a fuller sense of what concepts such as neighbor, love, respect, dignity, right? We get a fuller sense of what these concepts mean, and if not a fuller sense, we can at least get kind of a, a nuanced sense of what these concepts mean.
And so and so my book actually demonstrates that, that in order to, to, to, to prioritize the perspective of vulnerable folk for the sake of the common good, it does not devalue the gifts of those who are not vulnerable. But what it does, it acknowledges the necessity of the gift of solidarity.
And that's what I want people, that's what I want people to really, you know, get from my text. The necessity of this gift of solidarity. And now listen, when I say solidarity, I don't mean something like this superficial kind of stuff, right?
Angela: You don't mean the kumbaya.
Wylin: Let's all hold hands and talk about just getting along. No.
I really and truly mean, because one of the things I talk about in the book, right, that I, I say that, uh, womanist bioethics is about being and doing, right? Like, what kind of person do I want to be? How do I wanna show up in this world? When I get up every morning, I do, I do think about like, you know, how do I wanna, how do I wanna show up?
Especially, how do I wanna show up to work today, right? Um, and, and one of the things that has really been a, a, a real blessing for me, oh my gosh. So I started this. I don't know, a, a while ago, I usually try to have, um, each semester I try to start with a touchpoint, some touchpoint, like a scripture, a poem, ah, anything, whatever, something that's just gonna keep me going, right? Give me encouragement.
And, and so I've been doing that now, over a year ago, I decided, “huh, this semester I want to use the love, what people call the love chapter, right? 1 Corinthians 13, right. Love is patient. Love is kind, all that. Yeah. And so I decided, yeah, that's gonna be my touchstone for this semester.
Y'all, it got so good. So each, so each day I would read that, you know, that chapter. Each day. Well, okay, I may have missed a couple of days 'cause let's be honest, nobody's perfect. Hey, but, but I read almost every day, almost every day of the semester, I would get up and I meditate on that. Right? And listen, that got so good to me that I've now been doing it, it's like over a year now.
Because, because I realized, I was like, this is exactly how I wanna show up in the world. That's how I wanna show up. Patient, kind. Love does not dishonor others. Oh my gosh. That right there, if we all just, like, stayed in that space of not dishonoring others, that is life changing in and of itself, right?
So, so yeah. So this notion of, of being, you know, what kind of person do I wanna be? How do I wanna be in this world? Um, I think is, is really important and just as important as doing, 'cause we always, we're in a culture that, we're so obsessed with doing, like, what can we do? Yes. You know, what we can do is figure out how to be, you know?
Anna: Yeah. No, I, I love that so much because, uh, because you say, uh, “how do I wanna show up in the world? How do I wanna be?” And it, it's so holistic. And, but, but in my mind, when I hear that you're dealing with bioethics, I'm like, “oh, that's the nitty gritty stuff.” But you're like, “no, no, no. It's much bigger than that.”
And, and I, I love that. I also, I kept thinking as you were talking about why, um, womanist bioethics is the best place to start. I was like, man, Dr. Wilson, that's the opposite of trickle-down bioethics. You know, we're, we're starting at, we're starting with the most vulnerable, with the, what a wonderful way to do it.
Angela: Yeah. So it flows up. But I also note that you are dealing with issues of the most vulnerable, and you're going from the particular then into the, the universal, if we would use universal language. But all throughout your conversation and your, your beautiful laughter as well, your personality, faith is infused in all of it.
And can you talk about how, how your faith has been infused in all of this and what that means to you as your faith is infused in all of this?
Wylin: Yes. Oh my goodness. Yes. Yes. Faith is the cornerstone, and that's one of the reasons why womanist theology and womanist theory really was, really resonated with me, right?
Because, because faith really is- faith-slash-spirituality, right? Some people are more comfortable with spirituality, so I'm like, okay. But yeah, that is it. It's, it's, it's a cornerstone, right? Um, to it.
And for me, I, I look at the fact that when we look at things like justice, justice particularly from a faith perspective.
And in my particular experience from, you know, from a Christian faith perspective, justice goes beyond just the allocation of resources, right? Whether you have enough or I have enough, right? And whether we're sharing things equally. It goes beyond that to the demands. It's about the fidelity to the demands of a relationship.
You know? You know, and, and so, so, so what it means then, it's about how faithful are we to the demands of our relationship with one another? 'Cause we have claims on one another, right? As fellow, as fellow citizens, uh, uh, uh, but not only as fellow citizens, but as human beings. Because we have people that come into our communities who they may not be citizens or they may not, uh, quote, have, you know, belong there in the sense that some people, you know, wanna talk about people belonging in a place.
But as a human being, as a child of God who deserves love and care and respect,
Angela: Yes.
Wylin: There are the demands of a relationship, our relationship to one another. And, and I, I wanna always honor that, right? And our relationship to creation. The demands of the relationship to creation, right? How faithful am I? How faithful am I to the relationship to water?
You know, plants, trees to parks, you know, like we don't think about, we, we, we kind of, you know, we, we need to think about being in relationship with all of creation and are we faithful to the demands of those relationships? And of course, uh, faithful to the, the, the relationship to divine mystery, right?
So, so, so, yeah. So, that to me, I think is, is so significant.
Angela: I wonder as you put all of that together and you, you've talked to us about your faith and, and just even this beautiful language of solidarity and relationship, what made you have to write Womanist Bioethics?
Wylin: As, as I was actually, um, working with, with churches in Alabama, in, you know, in the rural, in the rural south. I mean, there is so much history there, right? So, um, so I'm confronting, I'm confronting so much history just as I was walking around, um, I was working at Tuskegee University. I was on faculty there in the College of Agriculture, but also at the Bioethics Center there, right?
And so I'm walking around on that campus and I noticed, I always, when I first got there, when I first started working, I noticed some of the brick on some of the buildings looked so different. It was beautiful, but it just looked really different than other brick buildings. And so I asked the colleague, I was like, “Hey, what's up with these buildings that have this different kind of brick?”
It's really lovely, but it just, it's, it's strike- the difference is striking. They said, “oh, that was the original. Those are the original brick buildings that were built by formerly enslaved Africans.” I was like, shut up. So, so it was just ama- it is something to walk every day and look at some, something that was made by the hands of folk who just came outta enslavement in this nation.
Right? Like that just put, that put me in a whole different mindset of, of possibility. But then it also put me in the mindset of just that history. It ever, it kept the history ever before me. Um, and then the, and then on campus, of course is the, the grave of George Washington Carver, uh, and Booker T. Washington, uh, two amazing, uh, historical figures.
Um, not just at Tuskegee, in Tuskegee and at Tuskegee University, but just in our nation's history. Right? And so I would sometimes just walk, just walk among their graves. Because that history is profound. And so as I, as I also kept digging into the history, um, I started reading the narratives of, of enslaved, uh, African women, uh, who were breeders.
And you, and you, you know, I have some of those stories in, in the book. And, um, yeah. Looking at, at that history, looking at the history of the hospital there, um, that was in Alabama because it was, it was a hospital that served uh, African Americans and poor whites. 'cause poor whites were locked out of mainstream medical institutions as well, and foreigners, you know, like they were, I mean, discrimination was, was serious, right?
That segregation was really serious. And so a lot of vulnerable populations were locked out of our, uh, public facilities. And so, so really just, just digging into that history of how people were treated, um, in our healthcare institutions and whatnot, that, that is what further pushed me to write.
Right? Because, because I think these, these stories, um, these stories are really powerful because, um, one of the reasons why I have stories in the book, um, various stories is because the lives of African American women actually testify not just to the historical state of healthcare institutions, but the current state of healthcare institutions, right?
And they don't just testify to it, but they, they also, they also critique it and interpret it, right? So the lives of minoritized women do a lot of work for us, right. And so sharing these stories is really, really important. Um, because stories not only do they help create empathy, but they help us to see where, huh, we have, there is a lot of commonality between, between the different experiences that we have, right?
Um, and so they help us see where we're connected, where our struggles connect. They help us to see how we are a part, like we're a part of one another's story. We have a hand in the health of each other. We all have a hand in that. And stories are just absolutely healing.
Some of them, some of the, some stories can undo us, right? The, the stories that perpetuate, perpetuate the lies that we are all so different, and those people over there are so different. And they are, they don't deserve to be among us, right? They're, they're inhuman in some way.
Like, those lies. Stories based on lies like that. Those are the stories that undo us. Right? But stories that are based in truth, those stories heal us.
Angela: Heal us, and change us and help change the, the narratives that we tell ourselves too. You are a masterful storyteller in this work, so I wonder which story changed you personally?
Wylin: It, uh, gosh, that story of Adeline holding her baby and she's on the auction block, she's an enslaved woman on the auction block. And just to, just to- that story allowed me to, to really understand how dehumanizing it was to be considered less than human, but also just a breeder, like a woman who is just, you know, like a cat- Like, you know, like any other, you know, cattle, right? She was gonna just, just breed children. But, um, that story, it struck me, so, um.
Because I think, I think to be honest with you, when, when I, when you think about slavery in the U.S., a lot of times we think about folks just working out in fields, right?
Um, but we, we, so we think of manual labor in that sense, but we don't think of the, the added laboring that, that the women, that African American, African women did, um, um, by having- to have to breed more slaves and more, more enslaved persons.
Um, because slavery was officially outlawed in 18, I think it was 1808. And so the transatlantic slave trade was outlawed, right? So then that meant that the slave, the, the slave-ocracy that kept going had to, that it had, it needed breeders. And so, Adeline's story, I mean that, that story, and I'm gonna tell you reading, just digging into the history I did, I, I, I did a lot of crying.
I did, because I'm the kind of person that I don't, I don't believe in crying in public. I don't like crying in public, you know? But I do believe in releasing emotions. Like, you know, we shouldn't hold in emotions. And so reading our history, um, the, the, the painful parts of our history, I think it's important.
Shed those tears. You know, let it out. I don't think we should be ashamed of our history. I don't think we should feel guilty about our history. Like, whenever I teach, um, in my courses, I tell my students history is not to shame you. It's not to guilt you, you know, history. It is, it's a part of what makes us who we are.
The good, the bad, the ugly, right? It's, it's just like, it's just like a family, you know? Y'all know in y'all family. Y'all know that family history that nobody ever talks about, everybody looking sideways if somebody brings it up or mentions something related to y'all, like, “you know, we're not supposed to talk about that.”
Like, it's just like a family. Our nation is like a family. We have stuff that nobody wants to talk about, nobody wants to deal with. But the problem is as long as we, you know, keep burying it or try to take it out of the public conversation and take it out of the public square, then we can never heal.
Right? We will always, always, always have this unresolved racial past that is undealt with, and so I, so my, so I'm praying that my book is doing healing work as well. Because the story, because this book, I kid you not, it's a labor of love. Truly. It's truly a gift that comes out of love when people buy that.
I, I want, I pray that people feel that and know that
Anna: Well, and the way that you tell the stories, they, they point to those deep fractures like Adeline's story, the way that fidelity of demands of relationships was not being met, right? And so, and telling that story, like you said, helps shed light on our present.
Why are those fractures still here? They go back a long way. And so, yeah. So important. Such a good work. I'm, I'm so excited about it.
Wylin: Thank you.
Angela: So excited and so thankful for the work that you've done and the time that you've taken to have this conversation with us on faith and solidarity relationships, womanist bioethics, and why it's so important in present conversations today.
Dr. Wilson, you are a pleasure, and we just thank you. Thank you, thank you.
Wylin: Thank you. Thank you for, for just, oh, for allowing me to just be a part of such a lovely conversation. You two are just phenomenal women, and I appreciate you both.
Angela: Thank you. Well, thank you. Any final words you would offer to our Faith for Normal People listeners?
Wylin: Yeah. My final words are if you don't do anything else, please, on a daily basis, wake up and lean hard into care for one another, lean hard into connection, connecting with folks, um, and especially connecting with folks who may seem really different than you. There's a, there's an exercise that- I got this from an amazing rabbi.
She said that one of the things that she, um, she likes to do is when she sees someone who she really disagrees with on a political level, you know, uh, or a social level, someone who she, she's as totally opposite of herself, she likes to say to herself, we are the same. We're the same. And lemme tell you something.
So I was thinking, I was like, “oh, that's nothing.” But then I practiced it. As I ran into folk who I know are just on opposite ends of where I stand, you know, on issues about love and justice and all that. And I, and I was trying to say to myself, we are the same. And I'm like, “no, we're not. Because look, they don't-” And then I'm like, “no, but we are the same.”
So I'm telling you, it's like a tug of war, right? So, I just wanna challenge your listeners, um, to really push back on all of the division and the fear. All that is dividing us push back on all the, you know, kind of the internal scripts that we have in our minds when we see people, right?
We don't even think about- when we see people, we got a whole narrative that we have made up about that person. We don't know anything about this person. So I, I just challenge people to really push back on those, those narratives. Try saying we are the same. Because it is hard.
Angela: Well we have a task and we have homework.
Anna: That's right. We sure do. Dr. Wilson, thank you so much for being with us. This has been such a rich conversation and I mean, I just think that we should kick Pete and Jared off the pod much more frequently because this has been great and you have been such a delight.
Wylin: Thank you both.
Angela: Thank you.
Anna: And now it's time for quiet time.
Angela: With Anna and Angela. Wow, that was such a great conversation with Dr. Wilson. I think I've come away with this idea that I really need to be a better person with trying to think about this, the sameness that I can try to find with other people. I really do believe I've come away with homework on how I can really look at other people and note the sameness that I, I can at least find with people that I may perceive myself to be very different from.
I think that's my first major takeaway as I ponder this conversation, this beautiful and rich conversation that we just had with Dr. Wilson.
Anna: Well, that homework is homework I do not want to do. But I think it'll be so good for me. So, yeah. No, I hear you Good.
Angela: Yeah, and it'll be hard, but it's going to be important work. And also just thinking about how, how she infused faith in so much of everything that she, going from the particularity of womanism and then thinking about how it has conversations to the universal. How it actually flows from the bottom up, so to speak, and what that means for, for everybody.
I think that's a beautiful way to think about how, how it's not trickle-down. As we've been hearing a lot lately,
Anna: Well, and Angela have, you have been privy to a lot of my white lady epiphanies, and I-
Angela: Which is why I wanted to do this with you.
Anna: Oh my gosh, I was full of them tonight. But one of the, one of the ones that when I was reading through her book, I kept thinking, why, why womanist? Why do we start with Black women? And I knew like, you know, when you, you know that you're wrong, but you're not sure how yet.
And so it took, it took coming to this podcast for me to really figure that out, that like, if we start with the most vulnerable, everybody wins. You know? Um, I, that just hadn't really occurred to me when, when I was prepping for this interview. And I love it when we have these faith-filled conversations that help illuminate my blind spots, because that is, that's what community does, you know, and I feel like that's what she kept calling us back to again and again, our responsibility to one another.
I think, I think that, um, the more we can engage in that kind of deep community and deep listening, um, to the vulnerable, the better we're gonna be for it, the more we're going to recognize our responsibility to one another.
Angela: She held up solidarity, the gift of solidarity, and, uh, the fidelity to the demands of a relationship. And one thing about womanism is the idea or the tenet of traditional communalism. That means that. We don't, or as for myself, as another womanist, I don't see liberation just for myself. Part of my faith journey is to be and try to find liberation for all people.
It's not supposed to be a selfish liberation. It's supposed to be a liberation where we are not doing fake kumbaya, but we're actually doing that gift of solidarity. So I'm not supposed to get upset with you if you say, oh, why start here? I'm supposed to be like, “no, let's have a conversation about, yeah, let's sit down and, and just actually be honest about our feelings, our emotions, and even our starting points.”
And that's where we actually can look at one another and say, okay, what's the sameness that we have? And, and that's, you know, we actually do look at each other with hands open instead of clenched fists. And I think that's what I'm also taking from this, because that's, that's the, I really do, you know, some of us still actually do believe in the Jesus who walked to this earth and looked with people or looked at people with some kind of compassion and some kind of empathy.
And so starting with the least of these actually should open up larger faith pathways, I guess. For, for better relationships, for those fidelity, fidelity to the demands of a relationship, a relationship among humanity. I think one thing I've been wrestling with is the idea of faith being just a faith to God.
And it seems like the, the, a lot of the language of faith has been, “oh, I have faith in God. I have faith in Jesus.” But we've not had a good enough conversation about what our faith towards one another looks like. And I think that's what this conversation has really opened up. How can we really have a faith in one another and begin to heal that?
And I think when I ponder this conversation as well, how we actually had a divided church. Because we've had a divided segregated church, because we haven't had that faith in one another as a church. Just the passing comment of. Richard Allen and the beginning of the AME church. And the, the church beginning in segregation because we couldn't worship together.
The Black worshipers had to worship in the balcony. And because we decided, no, we're not gonna worship in the balcony anymore, we're gonna start our own churches because we don't, we don't believe in a segregated heaven. So why should we have a segregated church? And that's, that's how Black church began out of that necessity.
And that's a beginning of why we don't have that fidelity to the demands of a relationship, a faithful relationship with one another as well.
Anna: I loved when she pointed that out, that the, the Black church didn't, didn't start because Black people were like, “you know what we should do, have our own church.”
But, um, and, and the sad thing is that I had never thought about that before. You know, like, just hadn't even would have known it if I'd taken a breath and stopped to think about it, that segregation wasn't Black people's idea. You know, I've often heard this quote that at least in the United States, Sunday mornings are the most segregated time of the week.
And, and that is just shocking. It's always kind of jarring to hear, you know, 'cause you're like, oh no, we should all, we should be more united. Um, but very often, and I even find this within myself, um, to, to do desegregation on Sunday morning might mean people like me walking into a church experience where my Black brothers and sisters worship and sit and have me saying, “well, you're doing it wrong.”
Like, we're gonna come and worship with you, but you need to be more like us. You know? Um, and. Yeah, I just, I think about that a lot. Like, I think about my kids and you know, how she was talking about like the more vulnerable ones and like how we need to pay attention to that? So I've got one kid that's more vulnerable than the other one, and I just think about my daughter who is not vulnerable going into my son's space, like his room.
And I could just see her being like, “oh, you're doing it wrong. You need to do this more like me.” And, um, and how, yeah, I feel that impulse, like within myself. So having a desegregated Sunday morning sounds great, but I wonder if white people like me would get in the way of that actually happening.
Angela: And we can take that into so many different areas.
We also had a conversation in this moment about gender issues. Because think about churches that don't want to ordain women. We have other churches who look at those churches that do ordain women, and they're saying, “you're doing it wrong. You should not be doing that.”
Anna: Oh, that is so good. I hadn't even thought of that.
Angela: Right? It's the same power dynamic. For me, it always comes back to the power dynamic about how people are practicing their faith and someone is always trying to tell someone else how to practice their faith. Is it possible to live in a world where you are actually okay with people practicing their faith in the ways that they want to practice their faith and you actually have to be okay with it and they may not practice their faith the way you practice your faith?
I often ask students to go to different churches just to be in different spaces for a little bit. It may not be what you're used to, but it's, it's okay to see a high liturgical space where there's incense around just to have that experience. Or to go to a church that's more extemporaneous, or to go to a church that's more contemplative.
None, I mean, different people worship differently. They practice their faith differently. Can we live in a world where all of these different iterations of faith are actually okay? We're not all supposed to be the same, but we can recognize that there are some similarities. And still live in our differences.
Anna: Yeah. No, that's good. And I love, I love the idea of like- so one of the things that I love about this book and about womanism in general is that it starts with the lived experience of Black women, right? Like, you just take that as a starting point. And the way that I've been trained is to don't take your lived experience as a starting point.
You need to like, go to that empirical reality that is beyond the self that sounded. So, I don't know, that sounded so much like Jared. Um, anyway. No, but, um, but I love, I love that idea because so much of what I do does not focus on who I am and where I am and my embodied self and how I want to show up in the world and how I want to build relationship.
Um, and I just think that we all have so much to learn from womanism because it, it centers, it centers a real story rather than pretending that we don't all have real stories.
Angela: Exactly.
Anna: And so , yeah. I just think that's so rich and that's something that I'm going to keep on wrestling with, um, and coming back to again and again.
Angela: Well, I really did appreciate having this conversation with you because I know that's, that's a, it's a, it's a wrestling and I think for me it's very natural to come from my lived experience because as a womanist, finally when I got into my PhD program, that's how I was trained.
And I'm glad you were able to do this with me.
Anna: Me too. I had so much fun.
Angela: I had so much fun too.
Jared: Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you wanna support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just wanna give a little money, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give.
Pete: And if you wanna support us and want an all-access pass to our classes, classes, ad- free livestream of the podcast, and a thoughtful community of people asking tough questions about the Bible and faith, you can become a member of our online community, the Society of Normal People at thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join.
Jared: And lastly, it goes a long way. If you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show.
In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episode by emailing us at info@thebiblefornormalpeople.com.
Outro: You've just made it through another episode of The Bible for Normal People. Don't forget, you can catch our other show, Faith for Normal People in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for normal people team: Brittany Hodge, Stephen Henning, Joel Limbauan, Savannah Locke, Melissa Yandow, Tessa Stultz, Danny Wong, Lauren O'Connell, and Naiomi Gonzalez.
