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123 pages

English

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In this postmodern age, women preachers are finding their "voice" a distinctive way of proclamation. This book looks at the metaphor of voice, how women are moving to voice from silence, and how individuals can make themselves heard by those who don't want to hear.

Sujets

Gender studies

Christianity

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Publié par	Chalice Press
Date de parution	30 avril 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781603500517
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Finding Women’s Voice in Preaching
Mary Donovan Turner Mary Lin Hudson

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
© 2014 Mary Lin Hudson and Mary Donovan Turner
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. For permission to reuse content, please contact Mary Lin Hudson at mhudson@memphisseminary.edu and Mary Donovan Turner at mdturner@psr.edu .
Biblical quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.
ISBN: 9781603500449
Published by Lucas Park Books
www.lucasparkbooks.com
Originally published by Chalice Press.
Printed in the United States of America
Dedicated to Our parents
Mary Alice England Hudson and John L. Hudson
Mary Folk Donovan and Lewis Grant Donovan
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Prelude
Introduction
Chapter 1. Voice as Emerging Metaphor
Human Voice as Metaphor
Voice as Distinctive Self
Voice as Authentic Self
Voice as Authoritative Expression
Voice as Resistant Self
The Relational Self
Claiming the Importance of Voice
Chapter 2. Created in the Sound of God: Voice in the Old Testament
Speaking of Creation—Voice as Agency
Speaking of Lament and Thanksgiving
Speaking of Deliverance
Speaking a Prophetic Word
Echoes
Chapter 3. The Power to Speak: Voice in the New Testament
Speaking of New Beginnings
Speaking of the New Ordered Realm of God
Speaking of the Unfolding Ministry of Jesus
Speaking of Pentecost
Speaking of Stephen’s Sermon
Speaking of Resistance
Echoes
Chapter 4. Commitment to Conversation: An Emerging Theology of Voice
Our Protestant Heritage
A New Look
Chapter 5. Context and Voice: Stories from History
The Story of Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the Mother of James, and the Other Women at the Resurrection
The Story of Hildegard of Bingen
The Story of Louisa Mariah Layman Woosley
The Story of Beverly Wildung Harrison
Echoes
Chapter 6. To Be Saved from Silence
The Church Colludes
The Singing Something
Voice: Redemptive and Prophetic
Echoes
Chapter 7. Coming to Voice
The Imagining
The Listening
The Naming
Echoes
Chapter 8. Imagining, Listening, Naming: Three Sermons
I Dream a World
Staying Power
The Jonah Complex
Coda
Appendix A: Profiles of Participants in Conversations on Voice
Appendix B: Questions for Consideration by Conversation Groups
Bibliography
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
Coming to voice has been, and will continue to be, a lifelong experience. Many people along the way, both family and friends, have been an important part of that journey with us. We are grateful for their support and challenge.
Our institutions, the Pacific School of Religion and Memphis Theological Seminary, granted us sabbatical leaves for finishing the manuscript. Our colleagues at each of these institutions have given encouragement and counsel through the various stages of conversation about “voice.” Archie Smith, Jr., and Mitzi Minor have offered endless support through conversation and reading various versions of the manuscript. Thanks go to the members of the “writing group” at PSR—Joe Driskill, Jeffrey Kuan, and Sharon Thornton—who know full well the joy and agony of putting word on page, and to Area VII colleagues at the Graduate Theological Union, particularly those in homiletics—Jana Childers, Linda Clader, and Tom Rogers—who have offered continuing reassurance. Diane Oliver, Donald McKim, and Evelyn McDonald have also supported our work. A special thanks to David and Betty Buttrick for time away at the cabin. For all of these, we are grateful.
The research for this study would not have been as complete without the aid of Alexis Solomon, research assistants at PSR, and the resourceful library staff at Memphis Theological Seminary. In addition, Audrey Englert and the clerical staff at PSR have offered assistance in the physical challenge of pumping words into computer and onto printed page. The valuable offerings of Cheryl Cornish, Cynthia Okayama Dopke, Olivia Latu, Sharon Lewis Karamoko, Margaret McKee, Rosalyn Nichols, Alexis Solomon, Almella Starks-Umoja, and Cheryl Ward have added fresh voices to our work. Jon L. Berquist has been a helpful and supportive editor.
We are particularly grateful for permission from Beverly Wildung Harrison to share her story in this volume. Her comments gave clarity and strength to that section.
To our families, who tolerated our nearly singular focus on this manuscript as it came to conclusion, we recognize the sacrifices you have made so that we could complete this work. Lamar, Erin, Chris, Suzanne, Mary Alice and Sue Beth have patiently encouraged and consoled at the most crucial times.
Someone once advised us that if we wanted to remain friends, we should never write a book together. It is true that writing is stressful. The journey together, however, has been mostly surprising, enriching, and full of grace. We are grateful, even now, to claim each other as friend.
Prelude
Leaning over cups of coffee in a busy metropolitan airport, we contemplated a puzzling event that had taken place during a recent preaching class. A student stood before her peers dressed in appropriate vestments. Her manuscript, prepared with care, was centered neatly on the pulpit. The sermon was finely crafted, full of vivid images and forceful theological implications for the church. She had something important to say. Yet, when she opened her mouth, little more than a faint whisper was heard. The preacher had no voice. As preaching professors, we analyzed the student’s experience and the classes in homiletics that we both had taught. We realized that most students prepare for preaching by focusing on the development of skills for interpreting texts and crafting sermons to the neglect of a much deeper concern: the relationship of the student’s own voice to the proclamation of the gospel. This conversation gave birth to our interest in the meaning of “voice.”
As we continued to contemplate the relationship between voice and preaching, our second, wider conversation began to occur with other faculty members, ministers, and friends. Walking through the faculty secretary’s office on a Monday afternoon, Mary Donovan Turner sat down at a table with a colleague, who asked about her current writing project. She simply said, “I’m working on voice.” His eyes lit up with enthusiasm, and the conversation exploded with quick and forceful exchanges about voice and ethics, voice and suffering, voice and name. In a matter of minutes, a vast array of meanings and significance attached to voice were discovered. The Hispanic colleague revealed that he was trying to recapture his once-fluent facility with the Spanish language. Early in his childhood he had learned not to speak Spanish in a public place; it was not as valued as English. By learning Spanish once again, he was recapturing an important part of his voice. This conversation and many others throughout the following months substantiated what we had instinctively known: the concept of voice deserved greater attention.
As our awareness of the concept increased, we began to find “voice” everywhere. The metaphor of voice was discovered to be alive and well in every academic discipline. It had become a metaphor of choice for many theologians, ethicists, literary critics, biblical scholars, pastoral care providers, and the like. All were talking about “finding voice” and “claiming voice.” Moreover, when a person previously denied or discounted in a field of study made contributions, they were dubbed “voices from the margin.” Recognition of the “voices of the silenced” began to emerge. We also discovered, in a new way, that the metaphor had become a part of the homiletic community’s shared vocabulary.
Since the 1970s the metaphor of voice has inundated both public and private discourse. The emergence of its use coincided with the cultural changes that followed the civil rights and women’s liberation movements in North American history. “Voice” as a metaphor corresponds to basic principles in feminist, womanist, and liberationist thought that recognize the issues of power and oppression in relationships. Its polyvalent dimensions have allowed all of those who had been considered “other” to adopt it as a means of symbolizing and depicting their value in our pluralistic, postmodern world.
This recognition and awareness of the widespread use of “voice” launched us, Mary and Mary Lin, on a great adventure. We have discovered the important understandings of “voice” within the great stories of redemption and liberation recorded in the Old and New Testaments. We have scoured writings of the leaders of the Reformation, as well as the works of current homileticians for their understandings of “voice” in relation to preaching. We have unearthed examples of women who found “voice” in the face of great opposition and resistance. In addition, we have looked carefully at the contemporary woman’s experience. Our research has reinforced our belief that recognizing and understanding “voice” is not just important, but mandatory, as those previously denied access to the pulpit come to take their places there.
What we write is, in a sense, autobiographical. As women, we know about silence and voice in their manifold dimensions. We know what it is like to “lose voice” in the movement from childhood to adolescence. We know what it is like to “desperately seek our voices” as women called to ministry; to “talk back” as “radical feminists” in conservative environments has been an experience of resistance and pain for each