The resurgence of the “divine feminine” as a discursive concept and framework in religious studies and in popular practice in Europe and the United States, raises the question of the salience of the concept in African Religions. Although the presence of female deities in several African religious pantheons including Ifá in Nigeria and the understudied Luba of the Democratic Republic of Congo would indicate potential resonance with Western understandings of the “divine feminine”, African indigenous ontologies and epistemologies resist framing the divine as feminine. Drawing from ethnographic research with Luba women whose religious practice informs their positionality in war, Georgette Mulunda Ledgister demonstrates the African indigenous orientation towards un-gendered expressions of religion that allow practitioners to transcend the strictures and the structures of gender.
Georgette Ilunga-Nkulu Ledgister is a Congolese-American Visiting Research Associate in the Women’s Studies in Religion Program (WSRP) at Harvard Divinity School. She was 2020-2021 WSRP Research Associate and Visiting Instructor at Harvard Divinity School, and a Visiting Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. Ledgister’s research lies at the intersection of African Religions, gender, and social ethics. Her current project focuses on African Religions in general, and Kongo and Luba religions in particular, as understudied sources of agency and empowerment for women in a context otherwise characterized by sociopolitical instability and precarity. Beyond the academy, Ledgister uses African indigenous epistemologies to develop training models that assist universities, organizations, companies, foundations, and faith communities to develop the skills and strategies to tap into the creative and constructive possibilities of conflict.
Jacob Olupona (HDS) will serve as a respondent.
“Your First Heart is Not in Your Chest: An African Indigenous Interrogation of the ‘Divine Feminine’ ” is part of the CSWR’s new initiative, “Transcendence and Transformation."
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