Redemption&black Women's Surrogacy: Analysis of Delores Williams' Work

In the essay by Delores Williams, “Black Women’s Surrogacy Experience and the Christian Notion of Redemption”, Williams articulates her issues with the troublesome characteristic of most atonement theologies relying on a surrogate model to understand Jesus’ death.

The majority of atonement theories state how Jesus died in the place of sinful humans, thus saving humankind from undergoing a similar or worse fate. This essay will focus on primarily analyzing the possible implications of Jesus’ surrogate like nature in the context of African American women’s own surrogate roles through a feminist gender lens and as a result, salvation. Specifically, Williams articulates on paragraph two in page two how African American women have had a long history of oppression and as result, were forced into different kinds of surrogate roles, coerced and voluntary. As an example, she refers to a popular coerced surrogate role of “mammies” that fed into the stereotype of black women “being nurturers, asexual, religious, overweight, and self-sacrificing”. It can safely be said that surrogates is dehumanizing; it strips away the liberty to choose, so black women were deprived of self-autonomy, a product of racist systematic oppression.

As a result, I can agree with Williams on how the notion of Jesus dying on the cross in our place as a surrogate can be troublesome for African American women (or anyone) trying to make sense of the death of Christ as something positive and liberating, since there is nothing positive about the notion of an innocent person being forced to die; neither is it liberating. This notion makes surrogacy sound like something sanctified instead of calling it for what it is, a structure of oppression. But that fact isn't so shocking considering how atonement theologies are reflective of the time period, and such notions are in accordance with the prevalent Patriarchy of the time which is still present today. If we are to reference the theme of patriarchal values and their role in theology inside the context of Black women surrogacy, I believe one can make the argument of how Jesus sort of played the role of a “mammy”, and in a way, played the role of a feminist that brought on salvation for humanity. If we are to look at it from a discerning feminist perspective, one of the reasons black women were made to undertake the surrogate role of “mammies” is because it follows the Patriarchal guidelines of women’s duty to nurture, take care of the household, clean, do anything that is stereotypically associated with being feminine; a woman’s duty.

William states how “coerced roles involving black women were in the areas of nurturance, field labor, and sexuality”. If one is to agree with William’s claims that she makes at the end of her essay of Jesus, rather than coming as something like a sacrificial lamb for Human’s sins, but instead coming “for life, to show humans a perfect vision of ministerial relation that humans had forgotten long ago”, in a way, one can argue that Jesus in this context defied patriarchal notions of gender. A mammy’s role in the field of a household was to educate and play the role of a mother for slave owners’ children. In the power hierarchy in patriarchy, slave owners are at the top, and mammies were “empowered (but not autonomous) house slaves who were given considerable authority by their owners” whilst always subject to the control of slave owners. If we are to follow this logic, in parallel terms, one could compare God as the one holding supreme power like the slave owners and Jesus Christ as the “empowered” but not autonomous being (mammy) who came to serve as a role model for humans (the children) under God’s will. Also, mammies “managed the big and mixed household” ... all applications were to go through them”. This is basically saying how mammies were the mediums between the high class of slave owners and then the lower classes of lower tasked slaves; sort of how Jesus serves as the medium connecting us lowly humans to God, there to make amends and fixed troubled relations between God and humans. This is connected to William’s interpretation of black motherhood. Black women sacrificed their bodies and maternal connections as their mothering became work due to their surrogate roles (through biological or white children).

So in a way, Jesus, in his role of a “mammy”/ mother figure, defies gender norms since his actions (self-sacrifice) and making human connections are associated with female expectations of motherhood. As maternal figures do, they work to teach those in their care to be good (humankind in the case of Jesus).