In the early pages of Love, ­Auntie, Shantell Hinton Hill describes a ­transformative meeting with a pastor about a decade ago. When she was 30 and sensing a call to full-time ministry, her pastor explained all the reasons why she could not be hearing God rightly. 

Even though she’d rebuilt the church’s youth ministry program, wanted to serve God by serving others and had begun “to discern the voice of God saying there was more for me,” still her pastor told her the Bible demanded she remain quiet in the church. He traced “every single text in the New Testament having to do with women remaining silent” and insisted that Hinton Hill should not pursue seminary education or church leadership roles.

She chose not to listen. 

The conversation was life-changing, but probably not in the way the pastor hoped. Instead, his belief about women’s subservience compelled her to deconstruct the toxic theologies that damaged her and others. 

After that conversation with her pastor, Hinton Hill “went looking for a soft and healing place to land — a sacred belonging that would not cause more injury to my fractured faith and would help repair my faith as gently as possible.”

Hinton Hill’s faith journey has borne good fruit — including Love, Auntie, which is innovative and inspiring. In a series of profound epistles, Hinton Hill uses her own experiences, told as parables, to explore what she calls ­sacred belonging: “a wholehearted belief that says: I deserve to have a faith that makes room. A faith that makes room for me — all of me. For you — all of you. For those on the margins. For the oppressed. For the expansiveness of who God is and who God will be. For a just-filled world that is already at hand yet is still to come.” 

Hinton Hill’s idea of sacred belonging is informed by womanist theology, a vein of thought situated in the embodied experience of Black women. In a helpful glossary, Hinton Hill quotes the scholar Emilie Townes, who says “womanist theology takes old (traditional) religious language and symbols and gives them new (more diverse and complex) meaning.” 

Embracing womanism — and the affirmation of her self as God’s beloved that this theology provides — was bedrock to Hinton Hill’s reconstruction of a faith that is expansive and inclusive.

The book is premised on “auntie” wisdom that has long been part of Black culture — the auntie as a symbol of elder women with significant standing in a community, related to younger folks not necessarily by blood but through the acceptance they extend to others. Aunties “show us what it feels like to experience sacred belonging,” she says. Like Jesus, “aunties walk with, love on and even heal parts of you. Especially the parts of you that others don’t see.” 

Taking on the voice of an ­auntie, Hinton Hill writes 16 epistles to groups of people who are not always seen. People who have been misunderstood, maligned or marginalized. People who have hurt others in their families and communities, knowingly or unintentionally. People of different generations who face conflict because of how they were raised or how they raised others. 

Each letter feels written to a specific audience but also to us all. Even a chapter addressed “To My Loud Cologne-Wearers (People Who Are Recovering Misogynists)” compelled me to nod in agreement, though I’m not a cologne wearer or a misogynist, recovering or otherwise. Hinton Hill’s voice reflects the sense of sacred belonging about which she writes. The letters resonate because we all have a longing to know our worth, to be acceptable just as we are. Hinton Hill taps into that longing, creating space for self- acceptance and the wisdom that we are a “good creation, beloved by God.” 

Hinton Hill ends each letter with the loving embrace of prayer. The grace-oriented prayers are written as a celebration of all that is right and good in who people are — and a persistent reminder of our fearful, wonderful, unique creation. Although Love, Auntie extends to readers a complex theological approach that may be unfamiliar to some, it is also disarmingly personal. In a “Porch Talk” section that ends each part of the book, Hinton Hill invites readers to a symbolic porch for tea and conversation. Readers will want to create a similar space for others so that together we will also be transformed — not in the way Hinton Hill was when her pastor said she should not speak but in the way Hinton Hill is, ministering to readers and helping them discover that God loves every part of who they are. It’s exactly what a loving auntie would do.