The Cosmic Womb and the Universalist Spirit: Womanist/Motherist Theology and the Reclamation of Divine Space

"The People that built their heaven on your land are telling you yours is in the sky" Nina Simone

Nina Simone’s statement exposes the paradox embedded within Black women’s theology: an imposed either/orframework—rooted in colonial and patriarchal epistemologies—conflicts with a universalist understanding of Spirit as immanent, relational, and all-encompassing. As one whose life is centered in a universalist approach to spirituality, I affirm that the Divine speaks in many languages and through diverse traditions. No single path holds the monopoly on completion.

Black women stand at the confluence of the Womanist and Africana Womanist traditions, embodying what may be called the Cosmic Womb of Creation—dark, mysterious, hidden, fertile, and unapologetically powerful, possessing the capacity to generate life and meaning through pure spiritual energy. This cosmic Black womb represents the theological DNA of Black women’s ability to multiply, divide, and create within a world that demands singular answers. Like galaxies and stars, Black women’s spirituality is abundant, multidimensional, and infinite in possibility. This framework does not deny the value of religious tradition but insists that spiritual wholeness cannot be contained within institutional boundaries.

The concept of space serves as a critical lens for distinguishing spirituality from religion. Religion, particularly in its institutional form, functions through systems of control—rules, dogmas, and hierarchies that delineate belonging and exclusion. Within the Hebrew Bible, the notion of defilement exemplifies this process of othering, extending from physical marks such as birth defects to the social marginalization of the eunuch. Similar patterns appear in Christianity and Islam, where “defilement” has been associated with homosexuality or other expressions of sexuality that transgress heteronormative frameworks. Spirituality, by contrast, resists such boundaries. It does not confine the self to race, gender, or sexuality, but embraces fluidity, recognizing that Spirit transcends corporeal limitation and social hierarchy.

At the intersection of womanism and theology lies the dynamic process of constructing a spiritual praxis grounded in the lived experiences of Black women. Womanist theology, informed by Black women’s Christian experience, engages Hebrew scripture as a mirror reflecting their struggles, resilience, and divine agency. The narratives of Hagar, Ruth, Zipporah, and the Song of Solomon articulate this resonance: Hagar encounters God in the wilderness; Ruth, bereft of family, perseveres in faith; Zipporah negotiates racial and cultural boundaries in her marriage; and the unnamed woman in the Song of Solomon celebrates the beauty of her dark skin. Each story represents divine encounter through marginalization, displacement, and survival—conditions central to Black women’s historical and spiritual reality.

African Traditional Religions (ATRs) remain integral to this womanist theological imagination, though often veiled or demonized as “pagan” or “primitive.” The remnants of ATR—frequently labeled “hoodoo” or “old ways”—are in fact sacred technologies that sustained Black survival and nurtured collective identity. The God of the ancestors who sustained Africans through the Middle Passage has too often been diminished or displaced by colonial Christianity. Yet these ancestral traditions embody a salvific force that situates divine power within nature, healing, and communal interdependence.

Within Africana Womanist thought, spirituality is inherently relational, emphasizing divine partnership among God, humanity, and the cosmos. The natural world—earth, water, plants, celestial bodies—participates actively in the healing and wholeness of the spirit. Black women’s spirituality is thus ecological, communal, and restorative, rooted in ancestral memory and divine immanence.

This multidimensional spirituality is vividly portrayed in Ryan Coogler’s The Sinners. In the film, Anne—a practitioner of ATR and lover of the soldier Smoke—embodies what may be called Motherist spirituality. Smoke, disillusioned by war and skeptical of faith, dismisses belief as ineffectual. Yet Anne’s handmade mojo bag, imbued with prayer and ancestral intention, becomes his unseen protection. When she asks, “How do you think you survived when others didn’t?” she reclaims spiritual authority through ancestral knowledge. Her spirituality, like the West African Sankofa bird, looks backward to ancestral wisdom while moving forward toward collective renewal.

Anne’s healing praxis stands in contrast to Reverend Jedidiah Moore, a zealot whose rigid Christian dogmatism alienates him from his son—a blues guitarist condemned as playing “the devil’s music.” This juxtaposition dramatizes the tension between the inclusive ethos of African-derived spirituality and the exclusivism of colonial Christianity, revealing the limitations of a theology constrained by “Jesus only” ideology.

Womanist theology thus poses a critical question: can two spiritual realities coexist? The answer, unequivocally, is yes—but not within the restrictive logic of institutional religion. Religious purism, whether within ATR or monotheism, constrains divine possibility. The universalist claim of womanist spirituality asserts instead: My God is always bigger than your God.