Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee, All the Best. As a thought experiment, I would like you to picture God. What comes to your mind? My guess is that regardless of your own gender, you picture God as a man. And my guess is that regardless of your race, you picture God as white.

An old white man, probably with a beard, maybe with a white robe.

And I'd like to start our discussion of the book that we'll be discussing today with a quote from its pages.

Quote, everywhere we turn, there are pictures of God as a white male in churches,

films, and everyday conversation.

The prevalence of white male images of God easily leads us to conclude that God is definitively

and exclusively white and male.

And like many culture-shaping ideas, we don't even question the idea or how it

shapes our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. For most of us, regardless of what we might want to

believe or claim to believe, the image that immediately comes to mind when we imagine God is that of a

powerful white man who is for and with powerful white men.

It's a deceptive idea that flies under the radar powerfully shaping us without our consent.

End quote.

Today we'll be discussing the book, God is a black woman by Dr. Christina Cleveland.

And I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Cleveland to the

podcast today. Welcome, Christina. Thank you. It's so great to be here. I'm so excited to have this

conversation with you. We were just discussing your book actually at the dinner table last night

with my husband and my kids. And when I mentioned the title, he had seen

me reading it my husband had, but it had been a little while. And I said, yeah, we're recording

about God as a black woman. And he just sat there and he said, wow, I just don't even realize

how it has impacted my psyche to have grown up with a God that looked like me. Because when you say

God is a black woman, my initial response, this is what he said, my initial response is, no, God is not a

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