Up Against A Crooked Gospel

An essential text for students and scholars of womanist thought, ethics, biblical studies, and Black religion.

Drawing upon her grandmother’s personal struggles with physical “bendedness” and the narrative of the bent woman in Luke 13:10-17, Melanie Jones Quarles engages Black religious thought and cultural criticism to expose how the Black Church paradoxically nurtures Black women while also sustaining their oppression. Quarles mines the prophetic imaginations of influential womanist thinkers, crafting a liberating vision that resists serving as surrogate “saviors” in society and religion.

With insights into politics, Christology, and biblical interpretation, this book boldly calls Black women to unbend their bodies and reclaim their moral agency in the face of crooked systems that attempt to constrain their freedom.