BookTALK - Claiming the Call to Preach: Four Female Pioneers of Preaching in 19th-Century America 

In this BookTalk, Donna Giver-Johnston, director of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary's Doctor of Ministry Program, discusses her book "Claiming the Call to Preach: Four Female Pioneers of Preaching in Nineteenth-Century America" with PTS professor Leanna Fuller.
"Claiming the Call to Preach" (Oxford University Press, 2021) traces the history of call through the 19th century, at a time when the question of women’s call to preach, although seemingly fixed by ecclesial authority and cultural convention, was being raised by courageous women in different settings, through different genres, and to different effect. This book recovers the neglected narrative of women’s call to preach through the historical accounts and rhetorical witness of four groundbreaking women preachers: Jarena Lee, Frances Willard, Louisa Woosley, and Florence Spearing Randolph. Scholarship has been written on women who have preached in history, but not on how they managed to claim their call to preach despite the restrictions of gender inequality. In response, these women received endorsement of their claims to pulpit places, engaged in sacred persuasive speech, and preached as ministers of the sacred office. Through feminist hermeneutics, this book examines call narratives which used rhetorical strategies to articulate effective arguments for women’s call to the preaching ministry of the church.