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This article compares an interspecies moment in Howard Thurman’s classic text, Jesus and the Disinherited, and Gwendolyn Brook’s novella, Maud Martha, to consider how Black liberation theology might reimagine the animal-human binarism it has assumed from the Western Philosophical tradition. I contend that an animal-human binarism attenuates the liberationist ethos of black theology, particularly when the animal is centered. To explore this, I first parse out the theological anthropology of Black liberation theology to demonstrate how it has historically occupied a complicated relationship to Western depictions of the human. Then, I argue on the grounds of its own theological convictions, that black theology is obligated to move beyond this ambivalence. As an example, I assess Howard Thurman’s classic essay to discover what insights might be revealed if we reconsider his reading of the mouse’s squeal, considering a comparison to a similar encounter between a human and a pest in Gwendolyn Brook’s novella, Maud Martha. This comparison reveals that Thurman may very well be limited in his capacity to recognize something in the mouse’s defiance. On the other hand, Brooks’ ecowomanist lens may better affirm the defiant mouse. Maud Martha identifies with the mouse so much that she, in contrast to Thurman, spares its life. This moment resulted in her undergoing an unexpected spiritual experience. This experience, according to my reading, is an example of what I am describing as “catching a glimpse” of a liberating deity’s interiority or, what I am considering as a new relation with divine immanence. In other words, in sparing the animal, in seeing the animal as of equal significance, she consequently felt a connection with God. This moment of liberation and divine connection is the ultimate aim of Black liberation theology. An aim we can try to reach by including the animal into our liberationist objective.

Religion, Animals, and Black Theology: The Spiritual Praxis of Sparing