My whole world changed when I encountered the Black Madonna.
Though I was a professor at Duke University and presented a stoically-confident persona to the world, internally I struggled with deep insecurities about my worth, the validity of my embodied experience as a Black person and a woman, my body, my ability, and more.
In 2016, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements, I went searching for a spiritual icon that could relate to my experience as a Black person and a woman, and affirm that my body, life and story do in fact matter.
It didn't take long for me to encounter the Black Madonna — an interfaith, ancient, uncommon, dark-skinned version of the Virgin Mary who has been venerated across religions, eras, and geographic locations. Within seconds of viewing photos of Black Madonnas, my gut shifted from terror to hope.
Before I even read a word about the Black Madonna, my soul immediately recognized that these photos and drawings of ancient Black Madonnas declared a truth about my own sacredness and gave birth to a new understanding of the divine.
In late 2018, I embarked on a 400-mile walking pilgrimage across central France to visit 18 Black Madonnas in tiny mountain villages. Each encounter with each Black Madonna healed a part of me -- from embracing my imperfection to loving my body to standing in my truth.I detailed my transformational journey in my book God Is a Black Woman (HarperCollins).
Now I’m a troubadour of the Black Madonna and I guide people away from white patriarchal conditioning and into deeper communion with the Great Mother.
Christena Cleveland, Ph.D. is a social psychologist, public theologian, mystic-activist, and author of several books, including The Black Madonna: Icon of Resistance and Nourisher of Souls and God Is a Black Woman. She is the founder of the Black Madonna Freedom School, which nurtures courageous and compassionate people who are uprooting white patriarchal religious conditioning in themselves and their communities, while skillfully planting intersectional divine feminine wisdom.
A weaver of Black liberation and the divine feminine, Christena is a sought-after speaker and facilitator who integrates psychology, theology, storytelling, and somatics as she guides people of all races and genders into freedom, wholeness, and embodied justice. Her work has been featured in a number of major media outlets including the History Channel, PBS, Essence Magazine, the Washington Post, NPR, and BBC Radio.
In 2022, she published God is a Black Woman (HarperCollins), which details her 400-mile walking pilgrimage across central France in search of ancient Black Madonna statues, and examines the relationship among race, gender, and cultural perceptions of the Divine. Her most recent book, The Black Madonna: Icon of Resistance and Nourisher of Souls (Hay House/PenguinRandomHouse) is a bold reclamation of the divine feminine and offers a new vision of Black Madonna as a unifying figure of refuge, resistance, and renewal.
Dr. Cleveland holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California Santa Barbara, a B.A. from Dartmouth College where she double majored in Sociology and Psychological and Brain Sciences, as well as an honorary doctorate from the Virginia Theological Seminary. An award-winning researcher and author, Christena is a Ford Foundation Fellow who has held faculty positions at several institutions of higher education — most recently at Duke University’s Divinity School, where she was the first African-American and first female director of the Duke Center for Reconciliation. Though Dr. Cleveland loves scholarly inquiry, she is also an avid student of embodied and ancestral wisdom. She has undergone extensive somatic training, and is currently deepening her mind-body-spirit integration in a three-year intensive cohort in matriarchal studies and spirituality.
A bona fide tea snob, lover of Black art, and Ólafur Arnalds superfan, Christena makes her home in Minneapolis, Minnesota.