Ch. 1-3 of Righteous Discontent

Discussion Questions to Lead Thinking for Religion 365 (11/2/2015)

Chapters 1-3 of Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s Righteous Discontent

 

Chapter 1 – The Black Church: A Gender Perspective

Accompanying poetry: Excerpt from I Sit and Sew by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson

• Non-authoritative roles do not mean necessarily equate to confinement within power structures (8). Have your thoughts on the “public sphere” for laywomen changed?
• How does the work of churchwomen create a safe, non-bourgeois public space post-Reconstruction during Nadir (5-8)? What are some of the outcomes of their work (7)?
• Do you agree that this movement created strides for women’s self-determination, in terms of education and employment (13)?
• Is gender inherently embedded in racial equality for the Baptist church (14)?
• What were some of the ideals spread by middle-class women through teachings (14)?
• How does respectability conflict with survival, as we have seen with the marginalized African American community throughout this semester (15)?
• How could have conscious respectability caused tensions or brought about conflicts within the movement(s)? How is this a reflection of bourgeois-dominant society during this era? (15)
• Higginbotham remarks, “the church connected black women’s spirituality integrally with social activism” (16). Is this true for other denominations or “women’s space” in bourgeois churches?

 

Chapter 2 – The Female Talented Tenth

Accompanying poetry: My Country… by W. E. B. Du Bois & To the Negro… by Dunbar-Nelson

• Organizations such as ABHMS saw education as a gateway to women fulfilling religious, wifely, and/or motherly roles rather than a means to self-determination. Was this intention sufficient for women of the Victorian Era, or was it accepted in order to better the agenda of husbands and the stability of the church (22)?
• How does the Talented Tenth vs. the majority of African American communities during this time compare with respectability vs. survival, in terms of education (25)?
• What do you make of racial uplift by the Talented Tenth being called both progressive and conservative (26)? Do you agree?
• “Although segregated, they reasoned blacks would be taught to mirror whites in their behavior, values, and modes of work” (30). Were the men and women of the Talented Tenth agents of white interest forcing assimilation onto low-income African American communities (28)? If so, how?
• Were teachings of middle-class, bourgeois ideals realistic, especially when only 1% of black women were considered middle-class in 1910 (40)?

 

Chapter 3 – Separatist Leanings

No accompanying poetry: wrap-up to class discussion

• What led to increased urgency for a separate imagined sovereign community for the Black Baptist Church (48-49)?
• Separatists were confronted with resistance from non-Black groups throughout their efforts. What can we interpret from the ABHMS’s suggestion to “Let the American spirit be dominant over the race spirit” (57)?
• What do we think of Baptist African American women collaborating with white women while seeking racial autonomy? Did this lead to a realization of a need for gender equity in the church? (50)
• Were Sabbath schools, which promoted black literacy and were church-housed, the best alternatives to post-Reconstruction public education (54)?
• Compare the roles of AME women at the local level to those of Baptist women who sought women’s state conventions. How do authority figures and members of the Baptist church receive these women (68-70)?
• How did Virginia Broughton use Bible Bands to garner support for her cause (71)?
• What came out of the women’s state conventions? How were the definitions of women’s roles of power shifted through these conventions? (74-76)

 

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Literature Cited:

Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. “The Black Church: A Gender Perspective; The Female Talented Tenth; Separatist Leanings.” Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1993. pp. 5-76. Print.