Renita J. Weems (born 1954) is an American Protestant biblical scholar, theologian, author and clergywoman. She is the first black woman to earn a Ph.D. in Old Testament studies in this country. She was influenced by the move in the last half of the 20th century which argues that context matters and shapes our scholarship and understanding of truth. She is best known for her significant contribution to womanist theology, feminist studies in religion and black religious thought. She is recognized as one of the first scholars to bring black women's ways of reading and interpreting the Bible into mainstream academic discourse. In 1989 she received a Ph.D. in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible studies from Princeton Theological Seminary making her the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in the field. Her work in womanist biblical interpretation is frequently cited in feminist theology and womanist theology.
Education and Influences
Weems was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and attended public schools there. She earned her undergraduate degree in Economics from Wellesley College. She was one of the many female econ majors (FEMS) trained and mentored by the great feminist economics professor there at Wellesley, Dr. Carolyn Shaw Bell, who enrolled in prestigious MBA programs and worked in executive jobs on Wall Street in unprecedented numbers beginning in the 1970s. Upon graduation from Wellesley Weems worked for a short time for Coopers & Lybrand Public Accounting Firm and later as a broker for Merrill Lynch.
After a brief stint on Wall Street, Weems sought a career in writing. Her earliest published writings appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Essence and Ms magazines, and in black feminist journals like Sage and Conditions V. The 1970s was by all accounts a defining year in black women's literary production from the literary writings of up and coming writers like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and Gayle Jones to the monthly columns and personal lifestyle writing appearing in magazines like Essence to the serious black feminist literary writings by Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, and Michelle Wallace. Weems was greatly influenced by this era of black women's literature and was living in New York at the time which she boasts gave her a front row seat to the lively and generative conversations taking place withn feminist literary circles at the time about women's equality and black women's survival.
Weems has been deeply impacted by and involved in the black church throughout her life. She considers it her life's mission to find ways to strike a balance between her political views and her spiritual values, her feminist/womanist consciousness with religious faith, her thirst for justice with her hunger for spiritual fulfillment. She enrolled in seminary in 1980. She earned her Master's in 1983 and later her Ph.D. in 1989 from Princeton Theological Seminary. She was the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Old Testament Studies. Her expectation was that after completing her M.Div. degree she would like the men in her class be hired in some area of full time parish ministry But when church doors remained closed to her because she was a woman she had to come up with a Plan B. Becoming a scholar and professor was not something she'd considered. But Old Testament professor and an influential figure in the BIblical Theology movement, Bernhard W. Anderson and Katherine M. O'Connor who served as his teaching assistant at the time convinced her she had a future in Old Testament studies. She decided to pursue a doctorate degree in biblical studies. Weems' doctoral dissertation title was "Sexual Violence as an Image for Divine Retribution in Prophetic Writings." Old Testament professors Patrick D. Miller and Katherine Sakenfeld were her dissertation advisors.
Career
Weems is the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible.h
Weems taught on the faculty the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN (1987-2003). She served as the 2003-2005 William and Camille Cosby Professor of Humanities at Spelman College in Atlanta, Ga. She was vice president, Academic Dean, and Professor of Biblical Studies at American Baptist College in Tennessee, ending her time in 2017. She has taught part time and has served as a senior visiting professor at several divinity schools and seminaries across the country since 2017.
Weems was ordained an elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1984.