What does it mean to be God’s victim? For Octavia E. Butler, this question roils just below the surface of her novels Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Through these works, Butler both develops something like a new doctrine of God in which the divine is coterminous with change itself and also explores the nature of liberation and freedom in both divine and human terms. In doing so, she seems to anticipate womanist thought in the field of theology. Butler’s works have, in fact, proven fruitful as theological resources to theologians like Monica A. Coleman, who worked with Parable of the Sower in her own Making a Way out of No Way: a Womanist Theology. How might we read Butler’s doctrine of God-as-change, then? Is this a new way forward for liberation or does reliance on divine mercy and deliverance recommit believers to victimization? In the following, we will examine Butler’s notion of divine change in conversation with both James H. Cone’s understanding of theo-political liberation, Dolores Williams’s understanding of womanism (with its attendant critique of Cone), and also Coleman’s use of Sower as a womanist theological resource.
About the presenterPeter Charles Herman
Peter works at the intersection of Theology and Popular Culture to critique “whiteness” as a harmful structure in society. His work is informed by the Black Liberation Theology of James H. Cone, the Critical Theory of Adorno & Horkheimer, and the politics of Gramsci. He also works in Christian-Buddhist Comparative Theology. Peter holds a PhD from Georgetown University and presently teaches at Marymount University in Arlington, VA.