Delores Williams’s voice in the wilderness

Delores Seneva Williams’s pallbearers were listed simply as “Womanists.” On December 10, Black women scholars inspired and shaped by the theologian’s leadership and friendship came to Nashville to celebrate her life. They processed with her family and, after quick instructions from the funeral director, lifted her casket and placed it in the hearse that would carry her body to its final resting place in Louisville.

Like so much of Williams’s life, this unusual and precious moment was a first for all involved. Those of us who had made our way from New York, New England, Chicago, Atlanta and other places came to let her family and friends know that sharing her intellectual and spiritual gifts with the rest of us had made a world-changing difference. We wanted to rise up, stand with them, and “call her blessed,” in the words of the writer of Proverbs 31:28.

In the Black church, when a good woman joins the ancestors, family and pastors are often tempted to go straight to Proverbs 31 and its celebration of an overworked, high-energy, hetero-normative, cis-gender, wealth-building wife and mother whose patriarchy-complicit efforts supported her husband’s role in an Iron Age ruling class. Williams’s children wanted to choose readings for her “celebration of life” that moved beyond old church tropes and reflected her life’s work. We were not going to look to Proverbs 31 for a reading. But we did rise up during the service to cheer and shout and to affirm the many wonderful ways Williams touched and transformed our lives.