Summer Reading -- Transforming Scriptures: African American Women Writers and the BIble, by Katherine Clay Bassard

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If you want to understand how the power of scripture and belief in the God of scripture can transform, empower, and elevate the believer, you must read Transforming Scriptures: African American Women Writers and the Bible by Katherine Clay Bassard (University of Georgia Press, 2010). 

If unknown to you, allow Clay Bassard's book to introduce you to the work of Maria W. Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Harriet Jacobs, Hannah Crafts, Harriet E. Wilson (19th century African American women writers/public speakers) and to the work of more recent and perhaps familiar names Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Shirley Anne Williams. 

What you will find, particularly in  some of the 19th century authors, is a tradition of extreme discipleship. Stewart and Harper, in particular, demonstrate in their lives and writings the power of God working in women who trusted God's purpose for them more than they listened to a hostile world's assessment of them.

In this book, you will find insight into how African American Christians embraced God and the Bible while rejecting the racist and worldly church traditions focused on assigning people of color to permanently inferior statuses--in this world, and in eternity. God's love and care reach beyond the limitations any organizational structure can establish.

Were these believers bamboozled and brainwashed into a faith that made them complacent participants in an economic and cultural system that condemned them to servitude and struggle? No. Why not? Because these women, and others like them, could see beyond "the world" to connect with and follow an unlimited God who loved them more than society hated or suppressed them. Read and learn what these women knew and how their faith transformed them. 

Read the meditations of Maria W. Stewart at Internet Archive.

Read the poetry of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper at Internet Archive.

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