Seeking notable, female icons of color in Bible

Poor Jemima.

In the Bible, she's a lovely daughter of Job who inherits a fortune when the biblical poster boy for trial and tribulation dies.

But in 21st-century America, she's become a smiling black stereotype who peddles pancakes slathered in syrup.

That's always bothered the Rev. LaVerne Hall. So Jemima came to mind when the publisher of a new study Bible for African-American women asked her to contribute an essay. "Her name has special meaning to me," Hall says. "I'm very fond of her. Her name means `little dove' or `peace.' She's wealthy, educated and powerful."

"Of course, that's not the Jemima we know today - she's fat, she wears a rag on her head and flips pancakes. The question is, how did Jemima go from being a beautiful woman, equal to her brothers, to the image we recognize today on the pancake boxes."

Hall is one of 120 contributors to the "Women of Color Study Bible," which examines women in the Bible who may have been dark-skinned and of African descent. The essays consider such contemporary subjects as domestic abuse, single motherhood and sexism, seen through a prism of Christian teaching.

Four women from the Puget Sound area contributed - Hall, who has a prison ministry and works part time at the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle; the Rev. Naomi Peete of Mount Zion Baptist Church; the Rev. Jolene Josey, Eastside Baptist Church, Tacoma, and the Rev. Toni Booker of Martin Luther King Memorial Baptist Church, Renton.

Hall's essay urges parents to consider the power that spiritual names convey to the children who bear them. A proud name, she says, can help a child define herself.

Ironically, Hall doesn't mention Jemima by name in her essay. That name carries too much commercial and historic baggage to put on a child these days.

The history doesn't matter to Hall. What does matter is that a perfectly good Bible-based name is not available to African-American parents.

"It would be a little like that old Johnny Cash song, `A Man Named Sue,"' she says, laughing. "Let's not create problems for our children before they even get here."

Spiritual names don't have to be biblical, Hall says. They can be created.

Twenty-three years ago she named her daughter Mahji B'Vance, using letters and syllables from the names of two grandmothers, two aunts, an adopted relative and Hall herself. She later discovered that Mahji is an East Indian name meaning "eldest daughter."

"The point is that children's names should have special spiritual meaning," Hall says.

The study Bible's other contributors have taken their chosen topics in many directions.

Peete's essay on prayer speaks with authority to women who find themselves immobilized by poverty, abuse or poor health.

"Matthew reminds us not to worry about what we shall eat," she writes, "Or how we shall be clothed, meet our financial setbacks, or manage our health issues. We are more valuable than sparrows, more precious than purple lilies of the field and wiser than industrious ants."

Peete had occasion to test her faith when, as a younger woman with children, she escaped what she says was an oppressive marriage in Nigeria. She had no passport, she says, and as an American woman, she didn't know the local language. She prayed for help and found it in the story of Joshua, who marched around the walls of Jericho, praying, until they fell. "I was in a compound, and I walked the walls of that compound every day praying. When my children and I left, we could have been stopped at any place on the way to the embassy, but we weren't. We left by faith and we prayed all the way."

The Women of Color Study Bible ($35, Nia Publishing) is one of the dozens of custom-fit scriptures on the market, including versions aimed at children, teenagers, women and 12-step members. The first edition is the traditional King James version of the Bible; it will also be offered in the New International Version.

It took Nia Publishing more than a year to get the Study Bible on the market, said Mel Banks II, who owns the small Atlanta-based publishing firm.

Most of the contributors are clergywomen, Banks says, but they come from many denominations and all parts of the country. Besides the essays, the Bible includes the historical background of each book and traces the possibilities of a black presence in each era.

Take the long-suffering Job and his beautiful daughter, Jemima. There's no specific scriptural reference to identify them as black, but groups of people mentioned in the Book of Job likely lived in northeastern Africa, Banks says. The people there were dark-skinned and traced their ancestry to the beginnings of the race.

Hall's connection to Job's eldest daughter is so strong that she and the other women have joined together as Jemima Ministries and are planning a spiritual conference in Seattle in January.

"We want to look at Jemima and how we as women of color are going to define our own future," Hall says. "We want to look at her evolution and think about what she looked like and how she acted when she was powerful and rich and did something besides flip pancakes."

Sally Macdonald's phone message number is 206-464-2248. Her e-mail address is smacdonald@seattletimes.com