Mitzi J. Smith

In reading this text from Acts then, womanist approaches to biblical reflection invite us to look for connections to the lived experiences of Black women, women given low social status, exploited and excluded not only by men, but even by women of dominating racial or socioeconomic groups.

What do we find when we center the enslaved women in this passage, and in the words of Mitzi Smith, amplify their whisper? For enslaved women in the first century, their status as enslaved workers would have thoroughly impacted their experiences as women.

So too, questions of, of ethnicity and culture, which differed from today, shaped social experiences through the formation of particular hierarchies and systems of belonging and exclusion.

In the story of Pentecost, Peter includes these realities in the sermon when he could have omitted them when quoting the Prophet Joel.