Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity

Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Pamela J. Walker

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780520209220
• eBook ISBN: 9780520919273
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ancient Religion

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.


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

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
• PREFACE: AUTHORITY AND DEFINITION
• INTRODUCTION The Issue of Blood Reinstating Women into the Tradition
• ONE Prophetic Power and Women’s Authority The Case of the Gospel of Mary (Magdalene)
• TWO The Early Christian Orans An Artistic Representation of Women’s Liturgical Prayer and Prophecy
• THREE Maria Magdalena: Apostolorum Apostola
• FOUR The Prostitute-Preacher Patterns of Polemic against Medieval Waldensian Women Preachers
• FIVE The Voice of the Good Women An Essay on the Pastoral and Sacerdotal Role of Women in the Cathar Church
• SIX The Right of Women to Give Religious Instruction in the Thirteenth Century
• SEVEN Prophecy and Song Teaching and Preaching by Medieval Women
• EIGHT Proclaiming Sanctity through Proscribed Acts The Case of Rose of Viterbo
• NINE Women’s Sermons at the End of the Middle Ages Texts from the Blessed and Images of the Saints
• TEN Feminine Exemplars for Reform Women’s Voices in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments
• ELEVEN Preaching or Teaching? Defining the Ursuline Mission in Seventeenth-Century France
• TWELVE A Voice for Themselves Women as Participants in Congregational Discourse in the Eighteenth-Century Moravian Movement
• THIRTEEN In a Female Voice Preaching and Politics in Eighteenth-Century British Quakerism
• FOURTEEN Spirituality and/as Ideology in Black Women’s Literature The Preaching of Maria W. Stewart and Baby Suggs, Holy
• FIFTEEN A Chaste and Fervid Eloquence Catherine Booth and the Ministry of Women in the Salvation Army
• SIXTEEN Prophetess of the Spirits Mother Leaf Anderson and the Black Spiritual Churches of New Orleans
• SEVENTEEN Transforming the Pulpit Preaching and Prophecy in the British Women’s Suffrage Movement
• AFTERWORD Voices of the Spirit Exercising Power, Embracing Responsibility
• CONTRIBUTORS
• INDEX