| The purpose of this study was to examine how black women define and talk about spirituality in their every day lives. My objectives were to capture the voices and narratives of black women as they described how spirituality is manifested in their lives; sustains them during challenging times, consists of an ethic of resistance and resiliency, and connects (or does not connect) to organized religion. First, in this dissertation I develop an extensive definition of spirituality. This definition includes how spirituality differs from religious affiliation, spirituality as a personal journey, spirituality as a life-long “hand-on” process, spirituality as having the determination and ability to transcend ourselves and our situations, spirituality as a social witness, and the social components of spirituality. Second, I ground this definition of spirituality in an historical examination of the literature, including modernism and post-modernism, and in theoretical works of black spirituality, and black womanism (black feminism) as resistance and resiliency.; Ten black women participated in two focus groups about spirituality. All were black females, with an age range of 25–52. The black females were recruited from a variety of civic groups, religious groups, socio-economic statuses, educational backgrounds, and political affiliations. In addition, an in-depth one-on-one interview from one participant from each group was also done. Each focus group and interview was taped and the tapes transcribed. Careful analysis of the transcripts was conducted, and emphasized how the participants defined spirituality, how spirituality was/was not connected to religion, enacting spirituality, connection to family, and resistance and resiliency. |
