Mammy God

A Black Eyed Story

Samantha Keely Smith | Issue

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The reason I like Genesis more than any other book in the Bible is because its creation story is proof that we are not alone—for there are many, many origin stories about this good earth. The Hebrew story is just one of them, and even though Genesis isn’t the oldest or the most clever creation story of them all, like Tolkein’s Ring of Power, it’s the One to Rule Them All.

In 1925, Tennessee passed the Butler Act, making it illegal for teachers to teach anything other than the seven days of creation as laid out in the Book of Genesis. This law made it illegal for any public school to teach evolution thanks to the handywork of John Washington Butler, a farmer and the head of the World Chrisitian Fundamentals Association. The act remained a law in Tenessee until 1967. It stated:

That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.

When asked about his eponoymous law, Butler said: “I didn't know anything about evolution ... I’d read in the papers that boys and girls were coming home from school and telling their fathers and mothers that the Bible was all nonsense.”

Later that summer, high school teacher John T. Scopes was accused of violating the law and hauled into court. Reporters came from as far as London, England to cover the proceedings. During the trial, Butler told newspapers: “I never had any idea my bill would make a fuss. I just thought it would become a law, and that everybody would abide by it and that we wouldn't hear any more of evolution in Tennessee.”

One origin story to rule them all…

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Samantha Keely Smith | Harbinger

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But how did such a lovely story become such a tyrannical force? Mention Adam and Eve in a mixed crowd and sit back and watch the debators go at it from all sides: new earth vs. old earth, He vs She, She vs. They, original sin vs original holiness, original holiness vs original justice, intelligent design vs. evolution—and of course, the biggest debate of all: God vs no god.

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Samantha Keely Smith | Mutiny

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In his poem, The Creation, James Weldon Johnson writes about a lonely God:

And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely—
I'll make me a world.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That's good!

Here’s a god who’s more like a blend of DIY-gardener-meets-carpenter-meets-amateur-astronomer than an omnipotent, ever-present, all-knowing being. The poem ends:

Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in is his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen.      Amen.

I would imagine that Butler would have been astonished (and not in a pleasant way) at the metaphor of God as mammy. While the iconography of the “mammy” is majestic and even almighty, she is not all-powerful.

Samantha Keely Smith | Vessel

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But how could one man read Genesis’ creation story and find a God who’s so sensitive and so fragile that “He” (because that God is only thought of as “He”) would need halflings of himself to come to his defense against halflings of himself in a courthouse that is far beneath the Tabernacle of the Heavenly Hosts, before a judge who will always be far less venerable than a Burning Bush or a Pillar of Cloud, or a Pillar of Fire?

And how can another man read that same story and find a God who is as tender and as lonely as a mammy? Perhaps Thomas Merton has our answer in his book A Book of Hours:

“We are what we love. If we love God, in whose image we were created, we discover ourselves in him and we cannot help being happy: we have already achieved something of the fullness of being for which we were destined in our creation. If we love everything else but God, we contradict the image born in our very essence, and we cannot help being unhappy, because we are living a caricature of what we are meant to be.”

May we all be the imprint of James Weldon Johnson’s Mammy God who smiled, “and the light broke,” and it was good.

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