-
A Historical Review: Black Women Who Won the Battle to Preach
Any review of women’s religious history is incomplete “without an adequate grasp of the groundbreaking work” of Black preaching women.[1] Historian Bettye Collier-Thomas in her book Daughters of Thunder: Black Women Preachers and Their Sermons, 1950–1979, explains that during the nineteenth century and the twentieth century, “in most black religious traditions, women won the battle to preach.”[2]
-
Refuting the Lie: Woman is Defective in Her Nature
I've lost count of how many times I've wanted to climb the highest summit and roar like a lion. For too long, I believed the lie, that by God's design women are less valuable than men.
-
Historic Siblings Who Partnered in Ministry
During my flight to Italy for a seminary summer course, I looked again at a photocopy of an ancient mosaic of four women. In my pre-course research on the history of women in ministry, I happened upon this photograph of a ninth-century mosaic adorning a wall of an ancient basilica (church). While in Rome, I hoped to find the Basilica of Santa Prassede and to learn these women’s stories, two of whom were siblings who partnered in ministry. A God-Wink One steamy afternoon while the rest of our group toured the Colosseum in Rome, my professor Sandra Glahn joined me to search for the Basilica of Santa Prassede. Though Rome’s…
