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Book Reviews / Pneuma 35 (2013) 87-156
Valerie C. Cooper, Word, Like Fire: Maria Stewart, the Bible and the Rights of African Ameri- cans (Charlottesville & London: University of Virginia Press, 2011). xiii + 224 pp., $31.98 paperback.
The worlds of religions and politics have intersected, influenced and interpreted each other in multiple ways for most of our history. Yet in the last century Western society has spent much time pulling these two forces apart and arguing that they are distinct entities that do not or rather should not influence each other. In her elegantly written book Word, Like Fire: Maria Stewart, the Bible and the Rights of African Americans, Valerie Cooper brings a depth of biblical knowledge and insight to bare on the political speeches of Maria Stewart made in Boston and New York between 1831 and 1833. The result of this interdisciplinary approach opens up rich new ground for our understanding of the political, religious and gender strug- gles for the rights of black people in nineteenth century America.
Maria Stewart, who was a black free born woman, delivered a series of five political speeches arguing for the rights and freedom of black people in the early 1830s. While politi- cal in nature these speeches were grounded in quotations from the Bible. The insight and strength of Cooper’s work is her biblical scholarship, her historical insight, and her method- ology. Cooper highlights the direct and adapted Biblical texts that Stewart used and asks the question “how might understanding Stewart’s use of the Bible help us to understand Stewart?” (7). What makes this an exciting project is how Cooper shows that Maria Stewart is at times subverting scripture or undermining it, and at other time actually reinterpreting texts. Cooper shows how Stewart did not disregard the Bible because it has been interpreted as an instrument supporting the oppression of black people, but rather how she reinter- preted it to support the liberation of her people.
The insight of this work is in the methodology which Cooper uses to critically examine Stewart’s political speeches as hermeneutical interpretations of scripture. Cooper asks: how did someone in the Evangelical African American tradition of the 1830s interpret Biblical texts? This is a move away from asking how a text should be interpreted or understood to asking how people understood religious texts in the light of their own self-understanding, social location and political battles. The Bible, Cooper argues is a touchstone for black American culture — it is the key to interpreting the meaning they have made of their lives particularly in 1830s New York.
Cooper shows how Stewart finds the authority for her speeches not in her own voice but in the Bible. For Stewart her speeches had authority because she was speaking the Word of God; this explains why so much of the words in Stewart’s speeches were either direct or indirect quotations from the Bible. “Stewart’s proclamation that independence is a God- given gift serves as an accusation levelled by God against the United States, which purported to embrace independence as a virtue while denying it to large portions of its population.” (2011: 108). Using extensive reference to Stewart’s speeches, Cooper makes a convincing case that for Stewart her political battle was a religious one. Stewart reinterpreted the Bible to show that the United States was violating their God given call and it was her vocation to express the “spirit of independence” and sacrifice herself for God and her people (2011: 107).
Word, Like Fire is richly woven with Biblical insights because Cooper is able to show the reader when Stewart is drawing on a Biblical text, where this text can be found, and how it is
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15700747-12341291
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Book Reviews / Pneuma 35 (2013) 87-156
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interpreted by “mainline” scholars. Cooper shows how Stewart wove texts from different parts of the Bible, and by putting them together often gave new meaning to those texts.
In Chapter 3, Cooper examines Stewart’s understanding of women in the 1830s. She shows how Stewart is part of a world in which the “Cult of True Womanhood” placed pressure and responsibility on women to inspire virtue in other. In her speeches Stewart fought for her sisters to understand that they too were “True Women” even if they were black. “Daughters of Africa” is a phrase Stewart uses often, and was a reworking of Daughters of Zion found in the Old Testament. This is just one example of how Stewart reworked references to Scripture to promote her own political and social ideas while giving herself authority through Scrip- ture. This section of the book is rich with ideas but could have given us more insight into the voices of other black women in 1830s New York, few though they were. Cooper gives us an appreciation for Stewart’s battle to overcome gender, i.e. to convince others not to see her gender but hear her message; it would have been interesting if this section had engaged more critically with how women responded to Stewart’s message.
The concluding section of the book looks at Stewart’s attitudes to race and nationalism in America showing how Stewart used Scripture not to inspire a return of black people to Africa but a fight for black people to be fully integrated into the nation of America. America in the 1830s was a nation ordained by God, according to Stewart, where the Biblical princi- ples of justice and freedom should reign. Cooper does show to some extent how Stewart’s message was taken up and how it might have influenced future voices, but it would have enriched the study further if this theme had been more developed.
This is an interesting, insightful study which highlights the importance of exploring how different people have read the Bible and used their interpretations to shape their political voices. It is hoped that this work will be referred to as more work in America and particularly Africa is done in this vein exploring how on the ground political activists actually inter- preted Biblical texts.
Reviewed by Maria Frahm-Arp
School of Theology, St Augustine College of South Africa [email protected]
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