Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity

by Beverly Mayne Kienzle; Pamela J. Walker

• ISBN13: 9780520209213
• ISBN10: 0520209214
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2023-09-01
• Publisher: University of California Press

Summary

For nearly two millennia, despite repeated prohibitions, Christian women have preached. Some have preached in official settings; others have found alternative routes for expression. Prophecy, teaching, writing, and song have all filled a broad definition of preaching. This anthology, with essays by an international group of scholars from several disciplines, investigates the diverse voices of Christian women who claimed the authority to preach and prophesy. The contributors examine the centuries of arguments, grounded in Pauline injunctions, against women's public speech and the different ways women from the early years of the church through the twentieth century have nonetheless exercised religious leadership in their communities. Some of them based their authority solely on divine inspiration; others were authorized by independent-minded communities; a few were even recognized by the church hierarchy. With its lively accounts of women preachers and prophets in the Christian tradition, this exceptionally well-documented collection will interest scholars and general readers alike.

Table of Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS	xi	(2)
PREFACE: AUTHORITY AND DEFINITION	xiii
Introduction: The Issue of Blood--Reinstating Women into the Tradition	1	(20)
Elaine J. Lawless
PART ONE: EARLY CHRISTIANITY	21	(78)
1. Prophetic Power and Women's Authority: The Case of the Gospel of Mary (Magdalene)	21	(21)
Karen L. King
2. The Early Christian Orans: An Artistic Representation of Women's Liturgical Prayer and Prophecy	42	(15)
Karen Jo Torjesen
3. Maria Magdalena: Apostolorum Apostola	57	(42)
Katherine Ludwig Jansen
PART TWO: THE MIDDLE AGES	99	(100)
4. The Prostitute-Preacher: Patterns of Polemic against Medieval Waldensian Women Preachers	99	(15)
Beverly Mayne Kienzle
5. The Voice of the Good Women: An Essay on the Pastoral and Sacerdotal Role of Women in the Cathar Church	114	(20)
Anne Brenon
6. The Right of Women to Give Religious Instruction in the Thirteenth Century	134	(12)
Nicole Beriou
7. Prophecy and Song: Teaching and Preaching by Medieval Women	146	(13)
Carolyn Muessig
8. Proclaiming Sanctity through Proscribed Acts: The Case of Rose of Viterbo	159	(14)
Darleen Pryds
9. Women's Sermons at the End of the Middle Ages: Texts from the Blessed and Images of the Saints	173	(26)
Roberto Rusconi
PART THREE: SIXTEENTH THROUGH EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES	199	(68)
10. Feminine Exemplars for Reform: Women's Voices in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments	199	(13)
Edith Wilks Dolnikowski
11. Preaching or Teaching?: Defining the Ursuline Mission in Seventeenth-Century France	212	(15)
Linda Lierheimer
12. A Voice for Themselves: Women as Participants in Congregational Discourse in the Eighteenth-Century Moravian Movement	227	(21)
Peter Vogt
13. In a Female Voice: Preaching and Politics in Eighteenth-Century British Quakerism	248	(19)
Phyllis Mack
PART FOUR: NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES	267	(68)
14. Spirituality and/as Ideology in Black Women's Literature: The Preaching of Maria W. Stewart and Baby Suggs, Holy	267	(21)
Judylyn S. Ryan
15. A Chaste and Fervid Eloquence: Catherine Booth and the Ministry of Women in the Salvation Army	288	(15)
Pamela J. Walker
16. Prophetess of the Spirits: Mother Leaf Anderson and the Black Spiritual Churches of New Orleans	303	(15)
Yvonne Chireau
17. Transforming the Pulpit: Preaching and Prophecy in the British Women's Suffrage Movement	318	(17)
Jacqueline R. deVries
Afterword: Voices of the Spirit--Exercising Power, Embracing Responsibility	335	(10)
Karen L. King
CONTRIBUTORS	345	(4)
INDEX	349