The Role of African American Women in the Black Church

The Role of African American Women in the Black Church Faith is a strong guiding force in the lives of many African American women. And for all that they receive from their spiritual communities, they give back even more. In fact, black women have long been regarded as the backbone of the black church. But their extensive and significant contributions are made as lay leaders, not as religious heads of churches. Women Are the Majority The congregations of African American churches are predominantly women, and the pastors of African American churches are nearly all male. Why arent black women serving as spiritual leaders? What do black female churchgoers think? And despite this apparent gender inequity in the black church, why does church life continue to be so important to so many black women? Daphne C. Wiggins, former assistant professor of congregational studies at Duke Divinity School, pursued this line of questioning and in 2004 published Righteous Content: Black Womens Perspectives of Church and Faith. The book revolves around two main questions: Why are women so faithful to the Black Church?How is the Black Church faring in the eyes of women? Devotion to the Church To find out the answers, Wiggins sought out women who attended churches representing two of the largest black denominations in the U.S., interviewing 38 women from Calvary Baptist Church and Layton Temple Church of God in Christ, both in Georgia. The group was diverse in age, occupation, and marital status. Marla Frederick of Harvard University, writing in The North Star: A Journal of African-American Religious History  reviewed Wiggins book and observed: ...Wiggins explores what women give and receive in their reciprocal alliance with the church....[She] examines how women themselves understand the mission of the black church...as the center of political and social life for African Americans. While women are still committed to the historic social work of the church, they are increasingly concerned about individual spiritual transformation. According to Wiggins, â€Å"the interpersonal, emotional or spiritual needs of church and community members were primary in the women’s minds, ahead of systemic or structural injustices†.... Wiggins captures the seeming ambivalence of lay women towards the need to advocate for more women clergy or for women in positions of pastoral leadership. While women appreciate women ministers, they are not inclined towards politically addressing the glass ceiling that is evident in most protestant denominations.... From the turn of the twentieth century to now various Baptist and Pentecostal communities have differed and splintered on the issue of women’s ordination. Nevertheless, Wiggins contends that the focus on ministerial positions might camouflage the real power that women wield in churches as trustees, deaconesses and members of mothers’ boards. Gender Inequality Although gender inequity may not be of concern to many women in the black church, it is apparent to the men who preach from its pulpit. In an article entitled Practicing Liberation in the Black Church in the Christian Century, James Henry Harris, pastor of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Norfolk, Virginia, and adjunct assistant professor of philosophy at Old Dominion ​University writes: Sexism against black women should...be addressed by black theology and the black church. Women in black churches outnumber men by more than two to one; yet in positions of authority and responsibility the ratio is reversed. Though women are gradually entering ministry as bishops, pastors, deacons and elders, many men and women still resist and fear that development. When our church licensed a woman to the preaching ministry over a decade ago, almost all the male deacons and many women members opposed the action by appealing to tradition and selected Scripture passages. Black theology and the black church must deal with the double bondage of black women in church and society. Two ways they can do so are, first, to treat black women with the same respect as men. This means that women who are qualified for ministry must be given the same opportunities as men to become pastors and to serve in such leadership positions as deacons, stewards, trustees, etc. Second, theology and the church must eliminate exclusionist language, attitudes or practices, however benign or unintended, in order to benefit fully from the talents of women. Sources Frederick, Marla. Righteous Content: Black Womens Perspectives of Church and Faith. By Daphne C. Wiggins.  The North Star, Volume 8, Number 2 Spring 2005. Harris, James Henry. Practicing Liberation in the Black Church. Religion-Online.org. The Christian Century, June 13-20, 1990.

Archaeology of Olive Domestication

Archaeology of Olive Domestication Olives are the fruit of a tree that today can be found as nearly 2,000 separate cultivars within the Mediterranean basin alone. Today olives come in a huge variety of fruit sizes, shape, and color, and they are grown on every continent except Antarctica. And that may in part be why the history and domestication story of olives is a complicated one. Olives in their native state are virtually inedible by humans, although domestic animals like cattle and goats dont seem to mind the bitter flavor. Once cured in brine, of course, olives are very tasty. Olive wood burns even when wet; which makes it very useful and that may be one attractive characteristic that drew people towards the management of olive trees. One later use was for olive oil, which is virtually smoke-free and can be used in cooking and lamps, and in many other ways. Olive History The olive tree (Olea europaea var. europaea) is thought to have been domesticated from the wild oleaster (Olea europaea var. sylvestris), at a minimum of nine different times. The earliest probably dates to the Neolithic migration into the Mediterranean basin, ~6000 years ago. Propagating olive trees is a vegetative process; that is to say, successful trees are not grown from seeds, but rather from cut roots or branches buried in the soil and allowed to root, or grafted onto other trees. Regular pruning helps the grower keep access to the olives in the lower branches, and olive trees are known to survive for centuries, some reportedly for as much as 2,000 years or more. Mediterranean Olives The first domesticated olives are likely from the Near East (Israel, Palestine, Jordan), or at least the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, although some debate persists about its origins and spread. Archaeological evidence suggests that the domestication of olive trees spread into the western Mediterranean and North Africa by the Early Bronze Age, ~4500 years ago. Olives, or more specifically olive oil, has a significant meaning to several Mediterranean religions: see the History of Olive Oil for a discussion of that. Archaeological Evidence Olive wood samples have been recovered from the Upper Paleolithic site of Boker in Israel. The earliest evidence of olive use discovered to date is at Ohalo II, where ca 19,000 years ago, olive pits and wood fragments were found. Wild olives (oleasters) were used for oils throughout the Mediterranean basin during the Neolithic period (ca 10,000-7,000 years ago). Olive pits have been recovered from the Natufian period (ca 9000 BC) occupations in Mount Carmel in Israel. Palynological (pollen) studies on the contents of jars have identified the use of  olive oil presses by the early Bronze Age (ca 4500 years ago) in Greece and other parts of the Mediterranean. Scholars using molecular and archaeological evidence (presence of pits, pressing equipment, oil lamps, pottery containers for oil, olive timber, and pollen, etc.) have identified separate domestication centers in Turkey, Palestine, Greece, Cyprus, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Corsica, Spain, and France. DNA analysis reported in Diez et al. (2015) suggests that the history is complicated by admixture, connecting domesticated versions with wild versions throughout the region. Important Archaeological Sites Sites Archaeological sites important to understanding the domestication history of the olive include Ohalo II, Kfar Samir, (pits dated to 5530-4750 BC); Nahal Megadim (pits 5230-4850 cal BC) and Qumran (pits 540-670 cal AD), all in Israel; Chalcolithic Teleilat Ghassul (4000-3300 BC), Jordan; Cueva del Toro (Spain). Sources and Further Information Plant Domestication and the Dictionary of Archaeology. Breton C, Pinatel C, Mà ©dail F, Bonhomme F, and Bervillà © A. 2008. Comparison between classical and Bayesian methods to investigate the history of olive cultivars using SSR-polymorphisms. Plant Science 175(4):524-532. Breton C, Terral J-F, Pinatel C, Mà ©dail F, Bonhomme F, and Bervillà © A. 2009. The origins of the domestication of the olive tree. Comptes Rendus Biologies 332(12):1059-1064. Diez CM, Trujillo I, Martinez-Urdiroz N, Barranco D, Rallo L, Marfil P, and Gaut BS. 2015. Olive domestication and diversification in the Mediterranean Basin. New Phytologist 206(1):436-447. Elbaum R, Melamed-Bessudo C, Boaretto E, Galili E, Lev-Yadun S, Levy AA, and Weiner S. 2006. Ancient olive DNA in pits: preservation, amplification and sequence analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science 33(1):77-88. Margaritis E. 2013. Distinguishing exploitation, domestication, cultivation, and production: the olive in the third millennium Aegean. Antiquity 87(337):746-757. Marinova, Elena. An experimental approach for tracing olive processing residues in the archaeobotanical record, with preliminary examples from Tell Tweini, Syria. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, Jan M. A. van der Valk, Soultana Maria Valamoti, et al., 20(5), ResearchGate, September 2011. Terral JF, Alonso N, Capdevila RBi, Chatti N, Fabre L, Fiorentino G, Marinval P, Jord GP, Pradat B, Rovira N, et al. 2004. Historical biogeography of olive domestication ( Journal of Biogeography 31(1):63-77.Olea europaea L.) as revealed by geometrical morphometry applied to biological and archaeological material.