GOD IN ALICE WALKER’S THE COLOR PURPLE;

A PARADOX OF THE DIVINE

Nailil Muna Yusak

Graduate School of Global Studies
Doshisha University
Karasuma Campus Room #209
Kyoto, Japan
Sultan Agung Islamic University
Semarang, Indonesia
naililmuna@unissula.ac.id

ABSTRACT

Over time, as secularization took root in Black churches during the Civil
Rights era, the prevalent framework in understanding African American
spirituality discourse has shifted from theology to sociology. This paper tries
to discern this major shift from the black literature perspective. It aims to
discuss the main charachers’ paradoxical state of mind in understanding
God in the novel The Color Purple. The 1982 Pulitzer Prize for fiction winner
is organized around an intimate conversation between two female
characters, Celie and Shug Avery, whose understanding of God were
challanged by complexity of sexism and racism in the black family.
Sociological approach is adopted to understand the characters’ dynamic
concept of God. Discussion in this paper suggested that Alice Walker’s
naturalist theology is embodied in Celie and Shug Avery’s conceptualization
of God in the novel.

Keywords: Black Theology, The Color Purple, God in Black Literature.

I. INTRODUCTION

Black literature arose out of the experience of blacks in the United

States, especially with regards to historic racism and discrimination, and was
an attempt to refute the dominant culture's literature and power. Beginning in
the 1970s, black literature reached the mainstream as books by black writers
continually achieved best-selling and award-winning status (Hoffman, 1951, p.
23). This was also the period when the works of black writers began to be
accepted by academia as a legitimate genre of American literature. As part of
the larger Black Arts Movement, black literature began to gain momentum in
the late 20th century America. Some of the most prominent black scholars and
writers contributed in promoting and (re)defining Black literature during this

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time period, including fiction writers are; Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison, James
Emanuel and the one I am about to present; Alice Walker.
Understanding historical as well as sociological background of the black
community at large is important to understand what happend to the black
theology and how it affects black woman’s role in black America. Darlene Hine
(1997, p. 2-3) explains that when Christianity was introduced in North
America to the slave community, it came with a set of rules and norms; “...
slaves were often required to attend the same churches as their masters. They
were given religious instructions”. Around the turn of the century, black
American were already tired of the discrimination they experience in the
‘house of God’ and started to form separate black churches. Slowly,
throughout the nation, Black churches offered black community from freedom
of oppression to conscious separatism with a spiritual focus on the secular,
and social as well as political concerns of the black community. Following
emancipation, the church continued to exist at the center of black community
life.
Religion and black women have always been closely interwoven in Black
America, as they were in Africa. In Black churches, they are responsible in
prayer, music and testimony. Black women also served as missionaries, but
their role were usually limited. Preaching, officially, was left to men (Hine,
1997, p. 4). When secularization started to took root in Black churches during
the Civil Rights era. The prevalent framework in understanding African
American spirituality discourse has then shifted from theology to sociology.
I subscribe to critics Miller’s notion (1965, p. xxiv) that literature is a
form of consiousness. It is the act where a mind takes possession of space,
time, nature or other minds. Literature may also express consciousness of the
self to God. To certain extent, it can also express consciousness to God himself.
This paper aims to discuss the main characters’ paradoxical state of mind in
understanding God in The Color Purple. The 1982 Pulitzer Prize for fiction
winner is organized around an intimate conversation between two female
characters, Celie and Shug Avery, whose understanding of God are challanged
by complexity of sexism and racism in the black family. In addition to
historical studies of the Black Americans, sociological approach is adopted to

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present an elaborative analysis to the discussion. Although other major

Abrahamic religion, such as Islam, is popular in the Black theology, this study
limits its discussion by focusing on Christianity with a particular attention on
the doctrine of General Revelation.

II. DISCUSSION

God and Revelation in Black Theology

Tradionally, religious issues have always been central to literary works
worldwide. Writers of all times and ages, different socio-cultural backgrounds,
and various ideological leanings have made religious issues an important
focus in many of their works. Religiosity has become an inseparable part
within the history of black literature. One proof is that during the slavery time,
it was typical for a slave autobiographer to satirize American religious
institutions i.e. the Church and the practitioners, for their continued support
to the enslavement of the black race in America. Frederick Douglass, for an
example, has repeatedly indicted American Christianity for its double
standards and hypocrisy in the face of slavery. Many other slave narrators
have equally shown how the practice of slavery in America depended much on
religious institutions for its survival.
The emergence of Modernism and Liberalism in America in 1920s has
definitely played a major role in Black theology. Literary critics respond
differently regarding this particular issue. American literary critic Hillis Miller
(2000, p. 1) believes that the role of God was weakening that He is no longer
prevalent in modern Black literature. Miller asserts (in Erickson, 2007, p. 2)
that “… God, it seemed, now truly dead and modernism had sounded its dead
knell”. A gradual withdrawal of God from the world, he adds, is reflected in
many Post-Medieval literary records. Black scholar-pastor Thabiti Anyabwile
presented a slightly different perspective. Anyabwile pointed out in The Decline
in American Theology; From Biblical Faith to Cultural Captivity (2007) that
although God has not disappeared in Black American’s life, there was a
noticeable decline in Black theology. However, this paper argues that God

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concept is not completely absent from modern literature, especially black

literature. In response to Miller’s proposition, Erickson (2007, p. 3) introduces
an alternative upon seeing the godlessness of modern literary work suggesting
that “… God did not disappear, but inscribed and disguised within the
difficulty and contradictory nature of many modernist works’ structures and
ideologies.” Discussion on God-nature relation, as an alternative to
understand the divine will be elaborated further in the next section.
I believe in CS Lewis when he argues that human-God relation is the
most intimate and private relation a person could possibly have. After all, who
knows a creation better than its creator? In their attempt to know the
unknown, each person often develops a unique relationship which is different
from one another. For centuries, study on religion has been a method in
understanding a complexity of human’s relation to the divine power — God,
spirituality, and nature. Some longstanding questions that have been around
for decades include: How does one understand God? Is studying the sacred
text the only prescribed way to know God? Can one’s understanding of God be
different from others? Historically, Protestant Christianity resolved the
problem of knowing God by considering two types of individual revelation from
God: general or natural revelation and special revelation (Anyabwile, 2007, p.
24). The doctrine of general revelation held that God left his imprimatur on the
design of the universe and in the conscience and moral laws of humanity. This
doctrine believes that the Creator communicated something of his person and
divine through the created order, including the conscience and moral laws
ingrained in the individual and human society. This explains that with
application of reason, the natural order reveals God in a real and true sense.
Special revelation, on the other hand, answered church’s need for more
particular information regarding the character and plans of God, his command
of people, the way of salvation. Both the Old and the New Testament, in fact,
contained this doctrine of special revelation to God. Holy scripture defines and
explains the attributes of God; his wisdom, holiness, mercy, love, supremacy,
sovereignty, justice, etc. This doctrine offers human beings to know and relate
to God with accuracy.

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Anyabwile (2007, p. 26) further contrast the two doctrines in the

following manner:
Where general revelation provided awareness of the existence of God as
demonstrated by his creation, special revelation particularized who this God
was in his triune character, what his intentions were vis-a-vis humanity and
history, and how God and humanity could be joined in meaningful
relationship. The page of scripture contained this message and provided the
one sure means of knowing the person and the mind of God. In these pages,
God disclosed himself and crossed the epistomological chasm between his
infinite existence and humanity’s finite reson.
Special revelation and general/natural revelation are complementary
rather than contradictory in principle. At the twilight of American realism
where events and social conditions are frankly represented without
idealization, depiction of the latter in black literature writings started to
emerge. Central to the study of natural revelation in black theology is Bishop
Daniel Alexander Payne (1811 – 1893). Many of his writings were chronicles of
the feeling of enslaved Africans to the religious hypocricy of those who profess
Christianity yet hold slaves (Pinn, 2009, p. 13). Bishop Payne’s view of natural
revelation (in Anyabwille, 2007, p. 31) explains that God can condescend or
lowered himself to the level of man’s ability in order to communicate with his
believer. Further, he concluded that “ ... if people would simply apply their
minds to the study of the universe, which is suitably fashioned to fit their
intellectual abilities, they may come to understand the character, eternality
and power of God.” For Payne, the idea that God speaks and can be heard in
and through the created universe was unquestionable. In Payne’s thought, not
only the incommunicable attributes of God were revealed in the physical
universe, but the moral laws of God were also codified into the structure of the
universe. Payne’s view on God and nature relations is also shared with English
poet and Jesuit priest Rev. Gerard Hopkins (1844-1889) who considers nature
as a remarkable medium to get to know Christ and oneself, believed that “ ...
each natural things is also a scape of Christ. To know nature is also to know
oneself for the natural world is a mirror in which a man see hints and
reflections of his selfhood.” And therefore, to know himself and God better, Rev.

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Hopkins believe (in Hillis, 2000: p. 317) that one should perceive himself as
the scape of of the common nature and recaputulate in little all the variety of
the creation, dragonflies, stones, trees, flowers – everything, for to know them
is to know oneself and Christ.
Understanding God vs. men’s law from a universal natual law persective
suggests that human’s moral agent will be governed fairly if it is based on the
universal natural principle of humanity. Unlike rest of the nature, men was
created with self-consciousness and freedom including freedom not to praise
God and choose not to conduct righfully on Earth. Right action does not come
spontaneously to man. Miller (2000, p. 328) explains this rationale as follow:
The inscapes of nature can die, but they cannot be evil, for nature is
incapable of producing beautiful evil. As long as natural things exist,
they do what comes naturally: kingfisher catches fire, dragonflies draw
flame, and stones ring. This spontanious expression of their inner
nature is their way of praising God. Such praise is unintentional, and
therefore neither right or wong, merely good ... Natural things can
never fall short of that degree of perfection in which thery are created.

Supporting Miller’s proposal, Payne opinied (in Anyabwille, 2007, p. 31-

2) , “the heart of the legislator is always seen in the laws he enacts; if he be
just; his laws will be just and equitable; if he be a tyrant, his laws will be
unjust and tyranical.” This moral law applied itself universally and
indiscriminatively, favoring no particular ethnicity as human laws will most
likely do. It is for this reason that religious naturalism is also refered to
religious humanism. Rather than perceiving religious naturalism as the
opposite of supernaturalism, this paper follows a more general definition by
Jerome Stone (2008, p. 1) as the type of naturalism (set of beliefs and
attitudes that focuses on this world), which affirms that there are religious
aspects of this world which can be appreciated within a naturalistic framework.
Charles Hardwick (in Stone, 2008, p.3) summarizes five implication of
naturalistic outlook in religious thinking: (1) that God is personal, (2) that
some form of cosmic theology is metaphysically true, and (3) that there is a
cosmically comprehensive conservation of value”. Religious naturalism and the
role it plays in Alice Walker’s concept of God will be adressed in the next
section.

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Alice Walker’s Naturalistic Outlook of Religion

Theologians argue that women in general and black women in
particular are more religious than men because of their experience with
oppression. Rahiel Tesfamariam (2012) support the idea saying that, “ ... black
women can bury bullet-filled sons, accept collect calls from imprisoned lovers
and medicate HIV-infected bodies and still hold claim that God is not only real,
but that God loves unconditionally. Through faith, we find the power to stop
asking why and how.” Further, Tesfamariam adds that faith to God enable
African Americans to be connected with their ancestor. Being immigrants who
had to fight with their complex identity reconciliation, faith to God leads to the
sense of belonging. The exceptionality of women’s vision of religiousness is well
explained by Wirba Ibrahim (2002, p. 1) saying that:

Women's vision of religious issues is unique and tends toward

subverting the established order and unsettling fixed racist/sexist/
capitalist meanings. They debunk traditional religious beliefs through a
language that is frank, stripped of euphemisms and abstract
symbolisms and attain spiritual individualism that [is] pregnant with
potential.

Ibrahim’s statement was my starting point to investigate further and

deeper about uniqueness feature of religion in The Color Purple. Attention to
religious discussion within African American communities typically held
reductionist assumptions that African descendants in America are all theists.
In fact, there are substantial historical and cultural evidence to suggest that
many Black Americans stands on a wide-ranging standpoint towards religion.
One particular standpoint that I would like to specify is religious humanism.
Examples of humanism as life orientation, as religious system, are found
throughout Black American culture, from slavery period to date. And perhaps
the most forceful and clearly presented presentation of humanism as religion
is found in the literature produced during the Harlem Renaissance onwards.
Explaining black female writers' perspective on religion, Ibrahim (2002:
p. 5) observes that Alice Walker stands a particular humanist standpoint
towards religiosity that makes her a prolific writer. She expresses a vision of
religious issues that is humanist and committed to spiritual survival and

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wholeness of entire peoples. She proffers “ … a vision in which women can

attain spiritual self-fulfillment within the patriarchal order. By working
ceaselessly to change the basic system of logic, which governs the patriarchal
orthodoxy, she has opened up black women to spiritual possibilities that have
hitherto been absent.” The self-proclaimed human rights activist who is a
staunch defender of rights of all living being is widely known for her concern
for the black community.
Alice Walker’s naturalistic humanism thoughts are reflected in many of
the characters she created in her works. Celie and Shug Avery of The Color
Purple might provide us insights into how Walker voices her liberative
thoughts. Quoted by Anthony Pinn (in De La Torre, 2008, p. 64), she writes “I
create characters who are not passive but active in the discovery of what us
vital in this world … who explore what it would feel like not to be imprisoned
by hatred of women, the love of violence, destructiveness of greed taught to
human beings as the ‘religion’ by which they must guide their lives.” In this
regard, Alice Walker acknowledges naturalistic humanism’s potential as an
active agent to recognize, cope, and address multilayered of oppression.
Walker pinpoints spiritual self-fulfillment as a crucial medium that will enable
(black) women to change society’s system of logic. Unlike other women writers
counterparts who believe that that patriarchy is irredeemable and women have
no choice but to set up an alternative separate female culture (Preston, 1997,
p. 4), Alice Walker stands on the opposite; she believes that if women are
spiritually fulfilled, they will be able to challange the society’s conception of
women and their position in a patriarchal world order. This concept of
spirituality is reflected in an interview with Claudia Tate (Ibrahim, 2002, p.6):

I've been trying to rid myself of the whole notion of God as a white
haired, British man with big feet and beard. As a subjugated people,
that image has almost been imprinted on our minds. It's there because
of the whole concept of God as a person. Because if God he has to look
like someone. But what I've been replacing that original oppressive
image with every thing there is; so you get the desert, the trees, the
birds, the dirt, everything.

Engaged in a long spiritual jouney, Alice Walker came to conceptualize

(and re-conceptualize) her vision of God from a man-like being to natural being

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who is a non-sexist, non oppressive as well as non repressive. A form that, to

her, is ideal. She explains on On The Issue (OTI) online (1997): “In day-to-day
life, I worship the Earth as God representing everything and Nature as its
spirit … when someone you trust shows you a picture of a blond, blue-eyed
Jesus Christ and tells you he's the son of God, you get an instant image of his
father: an older version of him.” Her disappointed to the hypocrisy-driven
prescribed God is shown as she continues, “… when you're taught that God
loves you, but only if you're good and so forth and you know you're that way
only some of the time, there's a tendency to deny your shadow side. Hence the
hypocrisy I noted early on in our church. The church I attended as a child still
stands.” Experience of discrimination and hypocrisy in the church who is very
dear to her spirituality and childhood brings Walker to quest beyond finding a
just God for her, but to humanity in general. Dissatisfied with the human-like
God, her turning point to understand the divine from a naturalist perspective
enables her to perceive God in a broader and more genuine sense.

God and the Paradox of Divinity in The Color Purple

Spirituality in African American history has always been a journey of
searching, or a strive as Du Bois (Das Gupta, 2007, p. 144) put it, “The history
of the American Negro is the history of this strive – this attain to self-
consciousness manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.”
Written in an intimate epistolary form, Walker introduces the story by taking
reader to live the abusive teen life of a 14-year-old Celie who lives a day-to-day
life of sexual exploitation, physical violence and indoctrination of male
domination in a patriarchal household. Helpless, confused and scared, Celie
writes a series a journal of letters to God expressing her despair and hope to
God. Analyzing the manner in writing journal; in a letterform and using
vernacular English, Celie keeps her relation to her God honest and personal.
Celie grows a belief that God is an absolute patriarch. Her conception of
God reflects her vision to men’s patriarchy and absoluteness. Celie describes
God as "... big and old and tall and grey-bearded and white" (Walker, 1998, p.
36). In her other description “… God coming down by chariot, swinging down
real low and carrying ole Sofia home. I see 'em all as clear as day. Angels all

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in white, white hair and white eyes, look like albinos. God all white too,
looking like some stoutwhite man work at the bank” (Walker, 1998, p. 95). In
some of Celie’s letters, Pa is referred to as the capitalized "He" which normally
used in reference to the God. Celie says, "Man corrupt everything . . . soon as
you think he everywhere, you think he God" (Walker, 1998, p. 68). This
conception is very likely to transpire when a young girl is growing up with a
male figure who gives none other than distress. Broadly speaking, black family
holds a very strong patriarchal structure where men leads and takes decisions.
Having her Pa setting up rules on her over the time, Celie’s perception builds
up into an acceptance that black men are like gods, they govern women’s lives
and moreover decide their life and destiny.
As the story develops, Celie’s perception of God becomes much more
problematic. The once God-fearing girl has grown a stern faith that just like
human, God is also complex deity holding multifold characteristics, including
the merciless:

“What God do for me?” I ast.

She says, “Celie!” Like she shock. “He gave you life, good health, and a
good woman that love you to death”.
“Yeah”, I say, “and he give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a
lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won't ever see again”.
“Anyhow”, I say, “he God I been praying and writing to is a man. And
act just tike all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful and lowdown”
(Walker, 1998, p. 199).

Up to this point, I infer that Celie’s environment builds her early

concept of God as absolute, patriarchal and human like. Celie’s early concept
of God was similar to Alice Walker’s who once also thinks that God is human
like – posess the feature of human being; with big feet and beard as Ibrahim
reported (2002, p.6): “I've been trying to rid myself of the whole notion of God
as a white haired, British man with big feet and beard. As a subjugated people,
that image has almost been imprinted on our minds. It's there because of the
whole concept of God as a person.” Consequently, God own all human
characteristics: prejudiced, dominant, self centered and even immoral. If so,
does such God deserve a soul’s love? Alice Walker insisted that God’s love
must be unconditional for His love to be fair to humanity. In summary she

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said: “A God specifically created to comfort, lead, advise, strengthen, and

enlarge the tribal borders of someone else. We have been beggars at the table
of a religion that sanctioned our destruction. All people deserve to worship a
God who also worships them … and it is fatal to love God who doesn’t love
you” (Walker, 1997). According to Walker, when one is taught a doctrine that
God will love him but only if he is good, obedient, and trusting, this presents
nothing but God’s face whose love is conditional and there is a tendency of
reprobation.
A conceptual turning point takes place when Shug Avery started to get
involved in Celie’s innate concept of God. Portrayed as an original, a liberated
kind of black woman in this novel, Shrug is engaged in a series of thoughtful
conversations with Celie. Contrasting her concept of God to Celie’s, Shug
believes that although Christianity may condemn her lifestyle and liberal
worldview; God himself will not because He is kind and He is everything.
Furthermore, Shug rejects Celie's patriarchal God as she presents her rather
naturalist spirituality in perceiving God when she said: “"My first step from the
old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other People. But one day
when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it
came to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. God
love all them feelings” (Walker, 1998, p.167). According to her interpretation,
Celie’s attempts to see God as a constitute patriarchy will only sustain men
domination and suppression over women. Shug Avery strongly asserts that,
‘He [man] try to make you think He everywhere. Soon as you think He
everywhere you think he God. But He ain't. Whenever you try to pray and man
plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost’ (Walker, 1998, p. 136).
Surely, Shug Avery’s lifestyle and liberal worldview developed her
unconventional attitude of opposition towards patriarchal system — hence,
her opposition to Celie’s conception of God as an absolute patriarch.
Perceiving God as a male figure not only distance Shrug to God, it accelerates
male dominancy to a higher level. Shug’s God is therefore, like the nature for
anyone can feel ‘It’ because ‘It’ is everywhere just like the air, wind, trees, and
birds.

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“Here's the thing”, say Shug. “The thing I believe. God is inside you and
inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only
them that search for it inside find it”.
“It?” I ast.
“Yeah, It. God ain't a he or a she, but a It.”
“But what do it look like?” I ast.
“Don't look like nothing”, she say. “It ain't a picture show. It ain't
something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself.
I believe God is everything”, say Shug. “Everything that is or ever was
or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that,
you've found It” (Walker, 1998, p. 202-3).

Shug expands her naturalist view as she explains: “… first step from the
old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. … that feeling of being part of
everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed.
And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it
was.” (Walker, 1998, p. 203). This strong naturalist conception of God-man
relation is approved by Alice Walker (2007) saying that, “… all people deserve
to worship a God who also worships them. A God that made them, and likes
them. That is why Nature, Mother Earth, is such a good choice. Never will
Nature require that you cut off some part of your body to please her.” Shug’s
naturalist conception of God turns to be a pivotal point in Celie’s life. Her
whole-hearted subscription to Shug's naturalist vision of the world and God
affects a tremendous degree of autonomy and self-assertiveness in her. Finally,
in last part of her letter, Celie addresses her letter to “Dear God. Dear stars,
dear trees, dear skys, dear peoples, Dear Everything. Dear God." (Walker,
1998, p. 292). This salutation signifies her newly born conceptualization of
God. Her acceptance to a more naturalist God is critical in Celie's life as it
transforms her understanding of Black theology and society in general.
Resting her fullest submission to the naturalist God allows Celie to believes
that ‘He’ is no longer patriarchal nor dominant because just like the love of
nature, God’s love is and should be liberating.

III. CONCLUSION
In The Color Purple, theological transformation in the main characters’
conception of God – from manlike to a more naturalist form - is closely

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intertwined with Alice Walker’s naturalist conception of God. Alice Walker’s

spiritual journey was portrayed in Celie’s early concept of God who is manlike;
white man with beard and big feet. Shug Avery’s conception of God (later
followed by Celie) is a representation of Walker’s later conception of God; that
God does not take human characteristics. Rather, He is of natural being who
surrounds us just like the nature. In order to understand God better, one
needs to be united with the universe and becomes a part of it. In addition,
Alice Walker’s past experience of hypocrisy and disappointment in her
community church has led her tendency towards religious naturalism. Apart
from the discussion on what an ideal concept of God is, I am finally convinced
to highlight Celie’s effort who decided to believe that instead of being defined
by others, truth is to be self-discovered.

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Erickson, Gregory. (2000) The Absence of God in Modernist Literature. New

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McKever Floyd, Preston. (2007, Fall). ‘Tell Nobody but God: the Theme of
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Miller, Hillis. (2000). The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth-Century

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