"Finding Their Voices: Sermons By Women In The Churches Of Christ" Edited By D’Esta Love (Abilene Christian University Press, 2015) -- By: Dawn Gentry

Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 30:2 (Spring 2016)
Article: "Finding Their Voices: Sermons By Women In The Churches Of Christ" Edited By D’Esta Love (Abilene Christian University Press, 2015)
Author: Dawn Gentry


Finding Their Voices:
Sermons By Women In The Churches Of Christ

Edited By D’Esta Love (Abilene Christian University Press, 2015)

Dawn Gentry

Dawn Gentry holds an MA from Cincinnati Christian University and an MDiv from Emmanuel Christian Seminary. She is passionate about encouraging dialogue on a biblical theology of women. Dawn writes for CBE’s blog as well as her own, www.dawngentry.com.

D’Esta Love is no stranger to writing and editing; as co-editor of the Pepperdine University based ministry journal, Leaven, she has often encouraged the ministry of other women.1 She is also no stranger to “finding her voice.” In the introduction to Finding Their Voices, Love reflects on the number of years she waited for the opportunity to preach in her own heritage, in a Church of Christ (she was seventy years old). Because opportunities for women to preach in conservative churches remain infrequent, Love has collected these sermons as a way to “document that history as well as preserve their words” (25).

The preservation of that history is important for this particular fellowship of churches. Love recalls one historian, Kathy Pulley of Southwest Missouri State University, who spoke on the history of female preachers in the early Stone-Campbell movement (the movement of which the Churches of Christ are a significant part).2 While much is known about their lives, none of their sermons were preserved. Love’s compendium is not only a historic record of change in the Churches of Christ, it also preserves the words of the women themselves.

But this significance is not limited to one fellowship of churches. It is also notable because the voices of women are an alternate (and often undervalued) source of biblical interpretation. Another author, Anna Carter Florence, discusses the importance of women hearing and proclaiming “a different and liberating word . . . in the context of their own experience as women.”3 Love’s collection has merit and application for all who study God’s word and value a variety of voices. Those whose voices have ever been silenced will keenly appreciate Love’s volume. This was an extremely personal book for me; I was alternately sad and hopeful as I encountered evocative comments such as, “this son who would walk in his footsteps . . . was his daughter” (17), “an older woman . . . struggling with the silence imposed on her for decades” (19), “if you had told me 20 years ago I would be preaching I wouldn’t have believed you” (170), and “asking why I had been given a voice in a silent tradition” (199). The book is not an academic analysis of preaching, and I encou...

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