This project underscores the sacred, creative power of corporeality through an investigation of erotic defiance--a key component of black women's moral agency--to recover a Christian perspective of the body, that affirms its integral, generative role in the coming of the kindom of God on earth. It defines erotic defiance as the willful embodiment of a revolutionary and unapologetic love of and pleasure in the physical being of the oppressed. Examining black women's wisdom literature, spiritual practices, cultural productions and social protest, the project examines instances of black women's erotic defiance for what they can reveal about religious understandings of the erotic operative in black women's culture and its contribution to black moral agency.

Drawing on the work of black feminist, Audre Lorde, my project considers the erotic a sacred impulse and divine resource that fuels moral agency by animating concrete acts of love. It also employs secular humanist, Anthony Pinn’s and philosopher, Maurice Merleau Ponty philosophies of the body to gain insight into the role of the body and its capacity for erotic relationality in constructing meaning and generating substantive change in the world. Finally, it builds off of womanist theologian, M. Shawn Copeland’s analysis of the eros of Jesus, womanist ethicist, Katie Cannon’s apologetic on defiance as a Christian virtue, and the womanist theological critique of Kelly Brown Douglas to frame erotic defiance as an embodied Christian ethic of justice, congruent with Christian doctrine.

In line with Katie Cannon’s admonition that, “The real-lived texture of black life requires moral agency that may run contrary to the ethical boundaries of mainline Protestantism,” erotic defiance embraces self love instead of self denial and defiance instead of obedience as virtues necessary for the survival and liberation, providing perspectives from the marginalized on neglected resources for personal and political righteousness.