ABSTRACT

Although it is often overlooked, religion plays an important role in the story of Sojourner Truth. This chapter takes up the religious dimension of the story by analyzing the interpretations of Truth by the womanist theologian Jacquelyn Grant, the feminist theologian Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and the feminist philosopher Donna Haraway. In highlighting the religious dimension of the story, these readings common conflation between feminism and secularism, and point the way towards a critical feminist engagement with religious traditions that reworks religious traditions and doctrines from within. However, rather than looking at religion primarily at the level of individual belief, an intersectional engagement with religion also needs to have eye for religion as a historical and political force. The chapter turns to religious studies scholarship to thematize the entanglements between Christianity, colonialism and racialization.