Immaculate Misconceptions: A Black Mariology

A layered journey is offered through art, theology, and culture to consider a theology arising from the condition of the Black Mother, a theology following the condition of the Black Madonna, a theology for the consideration of all those who pursue justice and life at the spiritual intersections of the world, questioning the ‘legislative doctrine’ around our perceptions of Mary as the mother of God, and extending conversations forward to consider the what else of life.

Immaculate Misconceptions considers how Christian collusion with colonialism, capitalism, and anti-Blackness have worked theologically to deny Blackness from the realms of the sacred. Through the lens of art and icon, the treatise thinks through Black women’s reproductive legacies, and revisits the figure of the Black Madonna, as a necessary return to the womb as hush harbor, birth as liturgy, and Black life as holy.