Womanist Theology of Worship: Liturgy, Justice, and Communal Righteousness

Author Lisa Allen, a scholar and teacher of liturgical music, begins by explicating the Black Church's legacy of equating liturgy with justice. She then explores the development of liturgy in the Black Church and how Black congregations adapted liturgies from Euro-descended churches for their own use. Finally, Dr. Allen offers a new paradigm for Black worship that reimagines liturgy through a womanist lens and works to dismantle white supremacy in the Black Church. This paradigm centers African and African-descended cosmological and theological worldviews that employ a liberative hermeneutic of communal empowerment and agency.