Book Review: Secret Lives of Church Ladies

Written By: Astrid Ramsay

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is so much more than what its title suggests. I was expecting a wry, light-hearted comedy, a celebration of black women that poked fun at all the immaculate middle-aged women who hug us after the service and ask us probing questions about what we have or haven’t decided to do with our lives. But this book is so much more vulnerable than that. It can be funny (and often is--don’t let me scare you off), but that’s not its priority; more often, it chooses to expose us to very real bitterness and hurt, and almost everyone involved is ready to give and receive in equal measure. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies isn’t about religion; it’s about what we’ve chosen to make of it. And it was written for anyone who’s ever wanted to hide themselves from the judgments behind those waiting, lipsticked smiles. 

In America, blackness and Christianity have always been intertwined. Torn from their languages, homes, and families, slaves were unified by very little outside of their suffering; religion brought faith and a means of resistance, and it became a cornerstone of black culture. That black people used their masters’ carefully doctored scripture to reclaim their own power and humanity is admirable. But in a society, as stratified as America, becoming human means taking on human weakness. By seizing power for themselves, the black community was bound to produce their own version of the systems that oppressed them in the first place. Ideally, Christians would be called to protect the most vulnerable. Philyaw shows us that in practice, an outdated morality centered around punishment and shame keeps poor teenage girls isolated from any support system that would protect them from predatory men; in fact, it tells us that girls who want validation from sex and male attention aren’t deserving of support at all. Ideally, the sensual, all-encompassing love found in the Song of Solomon would be extended to everyone, and all forms of love would be celebrated. Instead, queerness is dismissed as sin and lustfulness, and women who insist on the legitimacy of their love are forced out of the places they call home. 

Philyaw’s clever choice to tell only one (really, half) of her stories from a church lady’s point of view allows us to see the impact of the hypocrisy, hierarchy, and shame that underlie so much of our religious practice. Most of her narrators are the women and girls who live alongside them, people on the margins who attend church out of guilt, are forced or shamed into going by mothers and (great-) grandmothers, have left the church never to return or were excommunicated. Where else can these church ladies expose their ugliness, their frailty, their shame? Where else can they go when they want to exercise their power? Who else is vulnerable enough to give them the luxury of sharing their truest, most private selves? They know as well as our heroines do that for women, goodness, respectability, and gentility will always be tied to the kind of neat, tidy desirability that’s as close to whiteness as possible. But unlike our narrators, they haven’t quite stopped believing in the idea that they, too, will be able to achieve that someday, no matter how much it hurts them to try.

All in all, Philyaw presents a very fractured and unsettling portrayal of the black community. But her book still gives us the hope for a very real (if not untroubled) kind of happiness. How do we get there? By moving away from respectability, learning to love and appreciate ourselves, and becoming freer in your body. By learning to recognize others’ pain and becoming secure enough in ourselves to withstand the hurt that vulnerability can bring. By understanding that true love comes from vulnerability, from mutually and consensually surrendering our power. And by creating new homes for ourselves if the communities around us aren’t willing to change on our behalf.

In short: believe in God, by all means. But recognize that if He exists, He likely won’t take the forms that humankind has given Him.  And live (love, laugh, cry, survive) accordingly.