BookTALK
BookTalks is a collaborative effort of Barbour Library and the Center for Writing and Learning Support featuring in-person and webinar conversations with PTS faculty and community members. BookTalks are envisioned to be creative resources that engage all who participate in theological and spiritual reflection and knowledge.
Dr. Giver-Johnston was joined in conversation by the Rev. Dr. Leanna K. Fuller, Joan Marshall Associate Professor of Pastoral Care at PTS.
For more information visit the Libguide of curated resources for this event.
Oxford University Press Celebrates Women’s History Month
This Women’s History Month, OUP is celebrating women who tell our stories. This new collection showcases thought-provoking book chapters from across the Arts and Humanities.
Claiming the Call to Preach has been featured in the campaign with my chapter about Jarena Lee available for free until the end of May.
I hope this sparks your interest and leads you to read the whole book about many more amazing women who made history!
A Story of Resistance
In Claiming the Call, I tell a story of the neglected history of women preaching pioneers.
By recovering their stories, women today who continue to face opposition and denial of their call to preach can find effective rhetorical tactics from the past to claim their call in the present.
Despite the progress made by and for women in nineteenth-century American society, convention was seemingly fixed in the religious landscape, namely in opposition to women in the pulpit. Women had to narrate their call in a variety of rhetorical forms: itinerant preachers’ personal spiritual autobiographies (Jarena Lee), public platform speeches (Francis Willard), prophetic Biblical interpretations (Louisa Woolsey), and pfulpit sermons (Florence Randolph).
This work can speak to any group that has been denied the opportunity to answer their call.
Order your copy now!
Find Claiming the Call to Preach at your local booksellers or any of these fine bookstores.
Oxford University Press
Barnes and Noble
Amazon
The Perkins Center for Preaching Excellence Must Reads
I reflected on my personal call story as well as the women in Claiming the Call to Preach.
Thank you to my wonderful colleagues!
The Women Who Started It All
In Their Own Words
“For as unseemly as it may appear now-a-days for a woman to preach,
it should be remembered that nothing is impossible with God.”
— Jarena Lee, The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee, 1836
“The mission of the ideal woman ...
IT IS TO MAKE THE WHOLE WORLD HOMELIKE...
A true woman carries home with her everywhere.
Its atmosphere surrounds her; its mirror is her face; its music attunes her gentle voice ...
But home’s not merely four square walls.”
— Frances Willard, How to Win: A Book for Girls, 1886
“But God, with who, there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, in His wonderful plan of salvation has called and chosen men and women according to His divine will as laborers together with Him for the salvation of the world.”
— Florence Spearing Randolph, “Antipathy to Women Preachers”, 1930
“It is an established fact that the women of the apostolic age did preach,
and the Scriptures sustain her as a preacher, no matter what women-gaggers may say …
To all who have studied the Bible, and have no pet theory to support, this truth is as clear as a sunbeam.”
— Louisa M. Woosley, Shall Women Preach? Or The
Question Answered, 1891
