MARIA STEWART'S BIBLICAL THEOLOGY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
A Black woman who was born free in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1803, Maria Stewart is widely believed to be the first American woman of any race to have given a political speech to an audience including both men and women and to have left copies of her texts to posterity. Stewart wrote and delivered a series of five political and theological speeches in Boston and New York between 1831 and 1833. Collected with additional meditations and prayers, these speeches were published in 1835 as Productions of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart and again in 1879--the year of Stewart's death--as Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart. A student of the radical abolitionist David Walker, Stewart taught a similar brand of African American exceptionalism after Walker's death and used the Bible extensively to argue for Blacks' rights, for women's rights, and for the end of chattel slavery in the United States. This essay examines the biblical use and hermeneutics in Stewart's published texts: although she takes a fairly literal approach to the Bible, she derives from it fairly progressive theological viewpoints: that God would free enslaved blacks and judge America for having enslaved them, and that God wanted to empower and promote both Blacks and women.
