Abuelita Faith

After years of formal seminary education, Kat Armas found that one theologian emerged as the most impactful in her life: her abuelita. Armas, host of “The Protagonistas” podcast, realized there were voices she wasn’t hearing in the church and academia — those from the madres of the faith who had raised, shaped and formed her as a Cuban American. In “Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us About Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength,” releasing in August, Armas encourages readers to see the overlooked women in their lives — particularly Black, Indigenous and other women of color — as genuine sources of theology.

Read the rest of our coverage at Religion News Service at the link below. https://religionnews.com/2021/04/01/10-nonfiction-books-and-one-novel-to-keep-womens-history-month-going-all-year/

Armas has done an excellent job of blending stories of her own and her grandmother's lives with stories of courageous women from the Hebrew Bible and activists throughout history, creating her own "abuelita theology" that lifts up the voices of marginalized women without idealizing them. As I'm currently reading Womanist Midrash, most of the Bible stories weren't new to me, but they likely will be to most readers. Unlike in Dr. Gafney's book, which moves linearly through the Bible, Armas highlights themes and draws through lines from these Biblical figures to historical stories and those from her own life.

What I appreciated most was Armas' willingness to wrestle with complexity, or what she frequently calls the interstitial space. In many cases, marginalized people have been able to overcome seemingly impossible challenges only by navigating within, or even actively upholding, oppressive structures. Sometimes seeking justice or simply surviving means taking actions that may be considered underhanded or lawless. Armas also spotlights everyday women with hard-earned wisdom to share like her grandmother, while recognizing that these women of older generations might themselves hold outdated or harmful beliefs about gender and sexuality, for example.

My main frustration with the book, which was the same issue I had with Sister Citizen, is that Armas frequently includes direct quotations that have footnotes but otherwise stand alone and are given no attribution within the main text. (In most cases they're likely quotations from a previously mentioned work, but without any surrounding text it's impossible to know.) If the words need to be quoted exactly, then I think it's best to directly attribute them within the text; otherwise, I think Armas could have done more work to incorporate the ideas in her own words.

I'd recommend this to any Christian who wants to better understand the lessons that can be learned from voices outside the mainstream.

In Abuelita Faith, Kat Armas moves deftly between her personal family history(as a Cuban-American growing up in Miami), scholarly interpretations of biblical stories in which women played an integral and 9ften subversive part, and stories of everyday women carrying wisdom forward, telling the silenced truths, and resisting injustice.

I savored this book. Armas's family stories dropped me into places I've never been (Miami, Cuba) and drew my attention to the everyday love-soaked wisdom lived out by the women there. Her retellings and interpretations of biblical women's stories helped me see the usually-unremarked-upon throughline of faithfulness, blessedness, and love that runs through both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian New Testament. It was an inspiring and challenging read.

I will be looking for an opportunity to use Abuelita Faith in my parish ministry and will keep my copy close at hand for scripture study and sermon-writing.

I loved this book. The way Armas has interwoven her own story and the stories of her abuela and other marginalized women with the stories of women in Scripture is enlightening and eye-opening. Abuelita Faith reminds us, especially those of us who are white in the West, that theology is being done on the ground in communities all around us and it's just as true and just as powerful (and sometimes more so) as the theology being done in the academy or from the pulpits of our churches. It points us to the need to widen our perspective, to decolonize our ways of thinking about the world and our faith. Armas has given her reader a powerful exploration of the absolutely vital fact that if the Gospel we're preaching isn't actually good news for those on the margins, for the poor single mother, for the widow, for the struggling immigrant, then it's not truly the Gospel.

This was a fascinating look at the author’s experience of deconstructing and decolonising her faith. Drawing on liberation, mujerista, feminist, womanist and other branches of theology, she weaves in her own and her family’s stories with those from Latin American history and lesser known biblical texts. She recounts her struggles and her challenges honestly, and emphasises the importance of culture and heritage to engaged faith.

I have read quite widely in feminist theology and a little in liberation theology, so it was really interesting to see this different perspective on both. I picked this up expecting a fluffy, feel-good reflection on faith and family, but this was so much better. It was powerful, deep and challenging. I loved that the Bible stories she picked were not the common ones but the marginalised characters who are often overlooked (including my best girl, Rizpah). I did not know a lot about Latin American history or politics so it was great to learn more about this region and the cultural elements related to faith and religion both within this area and for those, like Armas, with roots there.

This book has been a game changer for me in my journey of walking in faith. It has given me space to honor those who women who have paved a way for me in the midst of injustice in the evangelical world. I have also learned so much about the Unseen hero’s of the faith. Kat’s writing is full of truth and passion. I couldn’t recommend more!

Kat Armas has masterfully woven together her own story of faith with Scripture and theology, drawing on liberation theology as well as postcolonial, feminist, and womanist theology. The driving question she wants us all to consider is “What if some of our greatest theologians wouldn't be considered theologians at all?” Throughout this book, Armas tells the stories of the overlooked theologians in the Bible and in our world today. And they have so much to teach us.

“For centuries Scripture has been used and misused to justify atrocities across the globe, and as a Western, biblically educated Christian, my conviction is to offer tools so that others can read and reread it through life-giving lenses, as I believe liberation is central to God’s story.”

Like Kat, I believe liberation is central to God’s story.

I found this part to be particularly encouraging:

“Ada Maria Isasi-Díaz once said that “La vida es la lucha—the struggle is life.” She explains that for over half of her life, she thought her task was to struggle and then one day enjoy the fruits of her labor—“but above all I have realized that I can and should relish the struggle,” she says. “The struggle is my life; my dedication to the struggle is one of the main driving forces in my life.” Relishing the struggle involves recognizing God’s presence within it, realizing that the struggle is sacred. And while la lucha is a personal struggle for survival, it also marks our collective struggle for liberation.”

“As Aboriginal elder Lilla Watson articulates so beautifully: our liberation is bound together. And that too—our collective struggle—is holy.”

Kat Armas offers a winding and winning meditation on the innate theological wisdom of our abuelitas, our spiritual ancestors and mothers in the faith. She deftly intersperses decolonizing Biblical interpretations with examples from modern headlines and the histories of colonized people, especially in the Americas, as well as with touching, intimate stories of her own life as a Cuban-American Christian raised by her madre and her abuelita.

One trend throughout her writing put me off at first but won me over by the end. Armas has a penchant for wondering. So many of her sentences begin with the words "I wonder," "perhaps," "I think," or "what if." These landed, at first, like guesswork, not what one expects to find in a deeply researched theological treatise. Partway through the book, I realized Armas' gentler approach was almost certainly deliberate. She is asking us to wonder along with her, to embrace less combative and less imperialist ways of thinking and knowing. Her writing shines in the moments of tension, asking the questions and suggesting, but not imposing, answers. She asks us to join a conversation, to wonder along with her, to pull up a chair at her -- and every abuelita's -- table.

My only critique is that the first two chapters, while providing a sound introduction to what Armas means by "abuelita theology," felt too lengthy and wandering. By chapter three, where she really dives headfirst into analysis and storytelling, Armas hits her stride and the book is more tightly written and compelling.

Kat Armas invites us to celebrate the women who go before us--our mothers and grandmothers and aunts and mentors--and learn about theology through their lives.

As a second-generation Cuban American, Armas draws on her rich experiences of both her Cuban culture from her family and her own American culture. In this book she weaves stories and life lessons from these experiences plus from stories of women in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

"Liberation theology has taught me that theology cannot be divorced from personal story. Story is what connects theory with reality, what gives life to our religious understandings."

Armas reminds us that we need each of us to learn more about God.

"There have always been wise women, and even though many of them go unnamed in Scripture, my hope is that they would not go unnoticed any longer, that their wisdom would be celebrated."

My thanks to NetGalley + Baker Academic & Brazos Press for the review copy of this book.