“Doubly Marked in the American Empire”: Considering the Experiences of an African American Woman Reading Revelation

The woman Babylon in the Book of Revelation has had more than her share of violence, both in the Christian Bible, as well as in the scholarly writings about her text. Having the name, “Babylon,” she is automatically negatively perceived before one gets a chance to know her. Yet the woman Babylon is so much more than her name. She is so much more than a female-gendered metaphor for a city - representing the Roman Empire - that will be overturned by God’s Empire. She just may be more akin to us than we would ever dare to imagine.

By considering issues of empire and the experiences of African American people, the Rev. Dr. Shanell T. Smith will highlight the woman Babylon’s simultaneous identification as a “brothel slavewoman” and as an “empress/imperial city.” This two-sided characterization of the woman Babylon incites tension within Dr. Smith because she reflects ever so sharply her own continual conflicting reality of being simultaneously a victim of, and participant in, empire. In today’s troubling times, Dr. Smith hopes that these conflicting realities will lead not to paralysis or neutrality, but to action.

Dr. Smith's book, The Woman Babylon and the Marks of Empire: Reading Revelation with a Postcolonial Womanist Hermeneutics of Ambivalence, was published by Fortress Press in 2014.

This event is part of Black Heritage Month.