Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity

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.

Beverly Mayne Kienzle is Professor of the Practice in Latin and Romance Languages at Harvard Divinity School, and Pamela J. Walker is Assistant Professor of History at Carleton University.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
PREFACE: AUTHORITY AND DEFINITION 
Introduction: The Issue of Blood-Reinstating Women into the Tradition
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
PREFACE: AUTHORITY AND DEFINITION 
Introduction: The Issue of Blood-Reinstating Women into the Tradition
Elaine J Lawkss

PART ONE: EARLY CHRISTIANITY
1. Prophetic Power and Women's Authority: The Case of the Gospel of Mary (Magdalene)
    Karen L. King 
2. The Early Christian Orans: An Artistic Representation of Women's 
    Liturgical Prayer and Prophecy
    Karen Jo Torjesen 
3. Maria Magdalena: Apostolorum Apostola
    Katherine Ludwig]ansen 
   
PART TWO: THE MIDDLE AGES
4. The Prostitute-Preacher: Patterns of Polemic against Medieval 
   Waldensian Women Preachers
   Beverly Mayne Kienzk 
5. The Voice of the Good Women: An Essay on the Pastoral and 
    Sacerdotal Role of Women in the Cathar Church
    Anne Brenon 
6. The Right of Women to Give Religious Instruction in the Thirteenth Century
     Nicole Beriou 
7. Prophecy and Song: Teaching and Preaching by Medieval Women
    Carolyn Muessig 
8. Proclaiming Sanctity through Proscribed Acts: The Case of Rose of Viterbo
    Darwen Pryds 
g. Women's Sermons at the End of the Middle Ages: Texts from the Blessed and 
    Images of the Saints
    Roberto Rusconi 
   
PART THREE: SIXTEENTH THROUGH EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
10. Feminine Exemplars for Reform: Women's Voices in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments
      Edith Wilks Dolnikowski 
11. Preaching or Teaching?: Defining the Ursuline Mission in Seventeenth-Century France
      Linda Lierheimer 
12. A Voice for Themselves:
     Women as Participants in Congregational Discourse in the Eighteenth-Century 
     Moravian Movement
     Peter Vogt 
13. In a Female Voice: Preaching and Politics in Eighteenth-Century British Quakerism
      Phyllis Mack 
    
PART FOUR: NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES
14. Spirituality and/as Ideology in Black Women's Literature:
     The Preaching of Maria W. Stewart and Baby Suggs, Holy
     Judylyn S. Ryan 
15. A Chaste and Fervid Eloquence: Catherine Booth and the Ministry of 
     Women in the Salvation Army
     Pamela]. Walker 
16. Prophetess of the Spirits: Mother Leaf Anderson and the Black Spiritual 
     Churches of New Orleans
     Yvonne Chireau 
17. Transforming the Pulpit: Preaching and Prophecy in the British Women's 
     Suffrage Movement
     Jacqueline R deVries 
    
Afterword: Voices of the Spirit-
Exercising Power, Embracing Responsibility
Karen L. King 

CONTRIBUTORS 
INDEX