Ain't I a preacher? : black women's preaching rhetoric
“Any attempt to understand American religious history, the black Church, or American women’s history without an adequate grasp of the groundbreaking work of these black preaching women will be incomplete.” (Collier-Thomas 8) Building on the call-to-action by historian, Bettye Collier-Thomas in the above quote, my project examines sermonic rhetoric of three leading contemporary preacher-scholars – Teresa Fry Brown, Vashti McKenzie and Eboni Marshall Turman – to contribute to narratives of Black rhetorical scholarship that suggests that Black preaching has served as a catalyst in the cultivation of Black rhetoric; all while underrepresenting Black women preachers within this cultivation. My objective is to identify recurring components of Fry Brown, McKenzie and Marshall Turman’s preaching rhetoric in order (1) to name Black women preaching tenets and (2) build a Black woman’s preaching method. I accomplish this by using an interdisciplinary approach, synthesizing perspectives from Women, Black, Rhetorical, and Religious Studies. In doing this, I can better categorize, name and scaffold Black women’s preaching rhetoric. I outline how Black preaching has been taken up within the fields of Rhetoric and Homiletics overtime; illustrating its contributions and importance to the field. After establishing terms and relevance of Black preaching to both disciplines, I position my work to showcase the gap in literature that does not represent preaching methods constructed solely by Black women. While the method is descriptive of Black women’s preaching rhetoric it is prescriptive in providing a method for all preachers to utilize. I succeed in constructing a Black woman’s preaching method by conducting primary research, investigating methods of Black women’s preaching. I analyze six sermons; two sermons each of Fry Brown, McKenzie and Marshall Turman. My analysis shows that their preaching offered four fundamental tenets that include (1) addressing gender through abstaining from attributing male gender pronouns to God and humanity, utilizing gender neutral Bibles, incorporating LGBT2QQIAAP concerns within Black and womanist agendas for justice, and including women and children into sermonic narratives (2) providing complementary sources to the Bible that include Black literarians, activists, and personal lived narratives (3) inserting womanist interpretations by focusing on the liberation of women characters in the Bible while also aligning oppression in the Bible with that of Black women in the U.S. and (4) scaffolding the sermon to include prayers, contextualized obstacles, titles, and promotion of ethics. Ultimately, my research is important because it provides a better understanding for identity formation, gender relations and active resistance towards patriarchal normativizing.
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- In Collections
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Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Copyright Status
- In Copyright
- Material Type
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Theses
- Authors
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Marshall, Cona Sava Marie
- Thesis Advisors
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Powell, Malea
Baker-Bell, April
- Committee Members
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Butler, Tamara
Williamson, Terrion
Floyd-Thomas, Stacey
- Date Published
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2016
- Program of Study
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African American and African Studies - Doctor of Philosophy
- Degree Level
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Doctoral
- Language
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English
- Pages
- xii, 185 pages
- ISBN
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9781369091076
1369091079