Weaving the Spider's Web: 19th-Century African American Female Mystical Activism

Abstract

This article explores the mystical activism of nineteenth-century African American female religious leaders Jarena Lee and Rebecca Cox Jackson. It uses a composite notion of Anansi the spider as a metaphor to reveal the intricate interconnections of their sacred-social worlds. In particular, it analyzes how interpretations of Aunt Nancy the spider woman, the North American version of Anansi, relate to these women's mystical experiences and religious activism. The author contends that it is the Aunt Nancy figure that more specifically points to the ways in which these nineteenth-century women mediated sacred power and created emancipatory spaces they could call “home.”

Keywords:

• activism
• African Methodist Episcopal
• Anansi
• Jarena Lee
• Rebecca Cox Jackson
• mystical
• sacred power
• Shaker

Acknowledgments

“Weaving the Spider's Web” is a chapter adapted from Joy R. Bostic's book African American Female Mysticism: Nineteenth-Century Religious Activism as a part of the Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice, Series, edited by Dwight N. Hopkins and Linda E. Thomas, 2013, Palgrave Macmillan. Reproduced with the permission of Palgrave Macmillan. The full published version of this publication is available from: http://us.macmillan.com/africanamericanfemalemysticism/JoyRBostic

Notes

Diana L. Hayes, Forged in the Fiery Furnace: African American Spirituality (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2012), 2–3.

William L. Andrews, ed., Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women's Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century. Religion in North America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 30.

Raymond J. DeMallie, North American Indian Anthropology: Essays on Society and Culture, 356.

In this article I use different spellings to denote different characteristics of the spider deity/cultural hero/trickster. I use “Anansi” to refer to the West African deity or cultural hero, “Ananse” to indicate the “villainous trickster,” and “Anancy” to identify the North American/Caribbean figure who serves as cultural hero or healer and who, within the United States is transformed into “Aunt Nancy.”

Linda Goss and Marion Barnes, Talk That Talk: An Anthology of African American Storytelling (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 35.

Shanna Greene Benjamin, “Weaving the Web of Reintegration: Locating Aunt Nancy in Praisesong for the Widow,” MELUS 30, no. 1 (April 1, 2005): 55.

Ibid.

Renee K. Harrison, Enslaved Women and the Art of Resistance in Antebellum America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 21–22.

Ibid., 22.

Ibid., 23.

Ibid., 24.

Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology. Vol. 16 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 191.

Gay Wilentz, Healing Narratives: Women Writers Curing Cultural Dis-ease (Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 37.

Benjamin, “Weaving the Web of Reintegration,” 51.

Ibid.

Ibid.

See Anthony B. Pinn, What Is African American Religion? (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011).

William L. Andrews, ed., Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women's Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century, Religion in North America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 28.

Ibid., 29.

Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 1991), 95.

Ibid.

Andrews, Sisters of the Spirit, 35.

Ibid.

Mary Frohlich, The Intersubjectivity of the Mystic: A Study of Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 340.

Andrews, Sisters of the Spirit, 36.

Ibid.

Ibid., 28.

Stephen J. Stein, The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 209.

Catherine L. Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 239.

Jackson, Gifts of Power: The Writings of Rebecca Jackson, Black Visionary, Shaker Eldress, Illustrated ed. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981), 133.

See Bradford Verter, “Spiritual Capital: Theorizing Religion with Bourdieu against Bourdieu,” Sociological Theory 21(2) (June 1, 2003), pp. 150–174.

Stein, The Shaker Experience in America, 192.

Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit, 241.

Ibid., 240–241.

The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing or the Shakers.

Jackson, Gifts of Power, 231.

Ibid.

Andrews, Sisters of the Spirit, 43.

Ibid., 44.

Jackson, Gifts of Power, 241.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Andrews, Sisters of the Spirit, 146–147.

Jackson, Gifts of Power, 282. The Emancipation Proclamation only offered freedom to the slaves within states that had seceded from the Union and even then emancipation was dependent on Union military victories. Finally, lands already under Union control were exempted.

Ibid., 269. See note 55.

Ibid, 268.

Ibid., 269. See note 55.

Ibid., 268. See note 51.

Ibid., 269.

Ibid.

Andrews, Sisters of the Spirit, 36.

Ibid., 48.

Andrews, Sisters of the Spirit.

Jackson, Gifts of Power, 250. See note 31.

Ibid.

Ibid., 277. See note 7.

Frohlich, The Intersubjectivity of the Mystic, 140.