Trauma Technicians and Wounded Warriors: Using a Black Feminist Lens to Understand How Black Women Clergy and Lay Leaders Resist Anti-Black State Violence

Black women of faith have always been critical to the mobilization of Black churches and communities resisting state violence and injustice. Yet religious institutions led by Black men are often perceived to be the most important conduits of Black progress. Moreover, the sociology of religion tends to center a Eurocentric male lens that marginalizes and erases the gendered experiences of women of color. This multimethod study employs a Black feminist lens to explore the activism of 28 Black women clergy and lay leaders in response to anti-Black state violence from the post-Ferguson era through the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings illuminate the ways in which Black women work to ensure the survival of their communities and other women in the face of trauma and their strategies to uproot racist systems that perpetuate state violence against Black bodies. Findings also illumine the ways in which Black church culture, gender, and race shape Black women’s theology, activism, and imaginings of justice.