Female Preacher Research Articles

“Itai Amen Satani Abhoikane”

On a typical Sunday afternoon, while roaming around the streets of TikTok, a social media application, my eyes landed on a video in which a female preacher was dancing vigorously on the pulpit. The comment section was abuzz with both words of admiration and notes of displeasure. It was clear in that moment that her theological pedagogy was unsettling for most. Yet, I found it intriguing. It is also on TikTok that I encountered the tagline, “itai amen satani abhoekane” [say amen and make satan bored]. I was sold on her disruptive use of language, the singing of secular music in church, and dancing with abandon on the pulpit. Her name is Chaplain Christabel Phiri, a woman who in my view is reshaping theological discourse in Zimbabwe. Beyond that, she redefines what it means to be Christian and troubles the dichotomy that exists around Christianity and feminisms. Drawing on Chaplain Christine Phiri as my case study, I reveal, in this paper, the possibilities of feminist praxis within the church space. I offer an analysis of five of her sermons, referred to here as theological performances, as well as other performance elements such as costume, gestures, conduct, and props, including language.

Utopia, Religion and Dissent in Robert Williams Buchanan’s The Rev. Annabel Lee: A Tale of to-Morrow

The article analyzes the novel The Rev. Annabel Lee: a Tale of to-Morrow (1898) by Robert Williams Buchanan, focusing on the conflict between a secular utopian society of the future, built on the principles of Comtean Positivism, Owenite Socialism and Social Darwinism, and a Christian revivalist movement led by a female preacher. While exploring the connections between gender, social engineering and faith, the article also interrogates ambiguities implicit in two conflicting worldviews which are dependent, respectively, on science and a revealed religion.

Race, Gender, and Christian Mysticism: The Life of Zilpha Elaw

Drawing on the spiritual autobiography of the nineteenth-century Black female preacher Zilpha Elaw, this article argues that it should be included in the canon of Christian mystical texts because it sheds light on questions about race and gender relevant to current conflicts in both church and society. Elaw’s story demonstrates that while the grace of divine union promotes social transformation, it may not immediately free one from structures of sin. Mystical spirituality requires ongoing critical discernment.

Online Da’wah on Social Media: Personal Branding of a Female Celebrity Preacher on Instagram

Branding a public persona for a religious preacher in today's digital era is more accessible thanks to social media platforms such as Instagram. Personal branding is essential for boosting a preacher's credibility, which increases public trust. Therefore, this paper aims to reveal the implementation of personal branding for da'wa by a famous female celebrity preacher, Oki Setiana Dewi, who has been active in online da'wa for over a decade. Data for this paper were mainly obtained by documenting Oki Setiana Dewi's Instagram account (@okisetianadewi). The content analysis technique was applied to qualitatively and descriptively analyze the collected data. The findings of this research show that eight principles are actively used in da'wa personal branding: specialization, leadership, personality, difference, visibility, unity, firmness, and good name. Oki Setiana Dewi consistently displays various da'wa content in photos, videos, and written captions to build her image as a female preacher.

Celebrification and Branding New Female Religious Authority in Indonesia

Indonesian religious authority in the Post-Soeharto era has dramatically shifted from organization to individual. Previously, the two largest organizations Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, dominated religious authority. However, recently, the religious activities of the Indonesian Muslims have been influenced by celebrities who experienced a religious transformation (hijrah). These celebrities, who become more obedient and pious in daily life, are called ‘Hijrah actors’ as the same concept as ‘born-again Muslims.’ They have emerged as motivators, inspirators, and preachers who advise being more obedient to Indonesian Muslims. As a result, Indonesian Muslims have many choices to decide the religious authority to follow. This condition has caused the new actors of religious authority to use different strategies to gain the trust and support of Indonesian Muslims. This article is a case study that focuses on Peggy Melati Sukma. She was a former Indonesian celebrity who became a female preacher and da’wa actor (propagation of Islamic teaching). This article examines how Peggy built her religious authority. Data and information are gathered from social media, participating in Peggy’s da’wa activities, and analyzing her several autobiographies. This article finds that Peggy builds her female religious authority in Indonesia through five strategies: storytelling, promoting the Islamic lifestyle, sponsoring Islamic charity, use social media, and organizing religious community. 
 Keywords: branding, celebrity, female preacher, religious authority

From the Amphitheatre to Twitter: Cultivating Secondary Orality in Dialogue with Female Preachers

Ever since the theory of orality and literacy was introduced, it has provided scholars with a deeper understanding of the intertwined nature of culture and communication, as well as an appreciated tool for analysis. This is true also for the field of World Christianity. As the era of digital media emerged, the theory was developed as a tool to interpret digital culture as a ‘secondary orality’. This article critiques and cultivates this theory, by showing how the analytical tool of orality, literacy and secondary orality might be sharpened. This is done in dialogue with the practice of female preachers. Preaching thus serves as an example for a wider discussion on the development of the theory. The sharpening of the tool is done through letting the complexity of practices inform the theory. Through historical case studies of three strategically chosen female preachers, four questions are identified that would be important to consider when the theory and its developments are used in analysis: genre of communication, the categories of body and space, and how authority is construed. Finally, the cultivated theory is applied in the analysis of a female preacher in a digital culture and space.

Mapping Muslim Moral Provinces: Framing Feminized Piety of Pakistani Diaspora

Over the last two decades we have seen a proliferation in the number of self-proclaimed Islamic scholars preaching piety to Muslim women. An emerging few of these scholars gaining prominence happen to be women, feminizing what is predominantly a patriarchal domain of dawah (missionary work) and proselytization. Traditionally speaking, Muslim missionaries have never been restricted to a particular moral province, perhaps due to the fact that Islam was never intended as a hierarchical religion with a mosque–state divide. This makes mapping Muslim moral spaces in a hyper-globalized world—one in which shared identities and ideologies transcend territorial boundaries—all the more challenging. Using the firebrand female Muslim tele preacher, Dr. Farhat Hashmi, and her global proselytizing mission (Al-Huda International) as a springboard for discussion, this paper seeks to map out the ways in which modern Muslim women in the post-9/11 British Pakistani diaspora navigate these moral provinces. By juxtaposing the staunchly orthodox impositions of niqab-clad Dr. Hashmi, with the revolt from within Muslim spaces, from practicing, ‘middle-path’ Muslims, this paper critically engages with Saba Mahmood’s concept of the ‘politics of piety’ and its various critiques. In so doing, we reimagine Muslim spaces, as well as the moralization versus multivocality debate surrounding them, and the importance of positioning agency and complex lived realities of women occupying these spaces at the center of our analysis on Muslim moral provinces.

Church in the Wild: Evangelicals in Antebellum America by Brett Malcolm Grainger

Reviewed by: Church in the Wild: Evangelicals in Antebellum America by Brett Malcolm Grainger Richard E. Brantley (bio) Church in the Wild: Evangelicals in Antebellum America Brett Malcolm Grainger Harvard University Press, 2019. 280 pp. $46.50 hardcover. Brett Malcolm Grainger's full-scale, complete, thoroughly researched, delightfully written account of the Second Great Awakening boasts both scope and focus. His immersion in the "cheap prints and lithographs" and "published journals, poems, short stories" and "shape-note hymnals" of pre-Civil War American evangelicals—including some 1,500,000 Methodists and 1,100,000 Baptists—makes the scholarly fuss about 14,000 Unitarians seem like provincial overkill (3, 11). And his presiding idea—"a shared culture of nature" within the "everyday…mentality" of "clergy and laity, northerners and southerners, Calvinists and Arminians, men and women, black and white" (3, 11)—pulls together a miscellany. His complex and subtle yet clear and well-integrated perspective on a hitherto incompletely understood topic in American studies spotlights a demotic combination of natural philosophy with natural theology. As a bonus, his loving attention to details of quoted language carries over to his reverence for belles-lettres at the seminar table. "In general," Grainger writes, "antebellum revivalists…perceived in themselves and in the natural world an energetic presence they described as the Holy Spirit" (208). Hannah Bunting and William Walker used the liber naturalis not to escape "stifling orthodoxies" but to enhance "spiritual transformation" and build "relationship between the spiritual senses and the common senses" (62-65). The African American female preacher Zilpah Elaw "read the books of scripture and nature side by side" and showed "a typical Methodist canniness for fudging dicey theological questions" as she asked whether "contemplative vision" should engage the "physical world directly…or inwardly" (96-97). And in a fusion of European and African traditions, African American folksongs deployed natural imagery—"I know moon-rise, I know star-rise"—to express the ideal of "physical and spiritual liberation" (95). Nighttime brought "relative freedom for slaves" (95). If, through bloodletting, blistering, vomiting, and intestinal purging, Dr. Benjamin Rush sought to drive unwanted nature out, then evangelical medical reformers, for their part, invited the healing power of water in. And by means of chemical analysis they claimed scientific rationale, distinct from the "superstitions" at Lourdes (135). At the Methodist-physician Henry Foster's "Clifton Springs Water Cure" in upstate New York, water was "all business," all the time (153). There, as opposed to the more relaxed atmosphere at White Sulphur Springs, Virginia, patients were [End Page 152] wrapped for hours in wet sheets, and exhorted to stand under cataracts. The Congregational-physician Erastus Root "exemplified the evangelical natural philosopher" and in An Inaugural Dissertation on the Chemical and Medicinal Properties of the Mineral Springs in Guilford, Vermont (1817) argued against hypothetical systems in nature-cure practice and in evangelical theology alike (160). Grainger resourcefully traces evangelical aversion to speculation back to the inductive method of Bacon and of Milton in his Baconian mood (246). The ur-Methodist John Wesley's Enlightenment-tempered electrotherapy morphed into the Romantic-era evangelicals' "ethereal fire" of "mystical agency" (174-175). Just as the itinerant-Baptist medical reformer T. Gale "gushed" that "We hail thee, adorable ELECTRICITY! late arrived, or lately known, the friend of human life—with celestial blessings surcharged… to bid the dying live," so the Methodist bishop William McKendree "sang the body electric"—that is, he described the Holy Spirit as a "Selistial [sic] power" running "through ever [sic] power of [his] body" (177-78). And just as Bethany College student W. T. Moore declared that, in electricity, "the Material and Spiritual universes approach near to each other, if, indeed, it is not the point at which they meet," so, in Grainger's words, electricity "was the neck in the cosmic hourglass," "a switching station between matter and spirit that facilitated a constant flow of traffic between the natural and supernatural worlds, without challenging their basic dualistic relationship" (179-80). The theology of electricity formed the basis of friendship between Congregationalists Edward Hitchcock and Theophilus Packard. The Amherst College president and the mesmerist, respectively, joined electrotherapy with animal magnetism to pursue "a middle way...

Elizabeth Hooton and the Lived Politics of Toleration in Massachusetts Bay

Quaker prophetess Elizabeth Hooton traveled throughout England, the West Indies, Virginia, New Netherland, and New England in the mid-seventeenth century. Though best known as one of George Fox’s first converts and a leading female preacher, she engaged in savvy political activity as well as zealous prophecy. The lived politics of her encounters included not only whippings and banishments but also small-scale negotiations and unexpected alliances. Obtaining a license from Charles II to purchase land anywhere in his colonies, she leveraged royal authority to influence colonial politics. Most effectively, during the 1664–65 visit of the royal commissioners to Massachusetts Bay, she and other Friends provoked local magistrates to seditious speech. Hooton’s journeys highlight the profound tension between religious fervor and political stability in the midst of competing visions of the common good. They point to a history of toleration in early America that attends to fine-grained local religious, economic, legal, and social contexts, and they reveal strategic and significant Quaker interventions.

The Life and Literary Fictions of May Drummond, Quaker Female Preacher

Studying the life and literary legacy of May Drummond, a celebrated Quaker female preacher who was ignominiously expelled from the Society of Friends in 1766, enables scholars to focalize intersections of religious controversy and secular satire during the First Great Awakening. In her travelling ministry, Drummond advocated principles that seventeenth-century Quaker theorists derived from Ibn Tufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (“Alive, Son of Awake”), a twelfth-century Arabic fiction that depicts a protagonist who achieves enlightenment unfettered by the dogmas of religious institutions and authorities. Drummond’s ministry threatened the increasingly centralized organization of a transatlantic Society of Friends, while also inspiring writers to appropriate her persona in controversial satires. Alexander Pope invoked Drummond’s humble virtue in order to critique corruptions of church and state, and Samuel Johnson cited her ministry as exemplary of Quaker subversions. My article attributes Drummond’s notoriety to the convergence of two cultures of writing: an arena of popular print and an internal system of ministerial certification that Quaker elders used to curtail her influence.

SPECTACULAR EVANGELIST: Aimee Semple McPherson in the Fox Newsreel

Spectacular EvangelistAimee Semple McPherson in the Fox Newsreel Nathan Saunders (bio) [End Page 71] No religious personality appears with greater frequency in the Fox News and Fox Movietone News archive than Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. In footage taken between 1927 and 1931, Sister Aimee, as she was called, told jokes, modeled Palestinian fashions, showed off horseback riding skills, conducted the church choir, and threw oranges to crowds welcoming her home from a tour of the Holy Land. The Fox footage depicts a vivacious and confident female preacher who enjoyed the spotlight and knew how to play to the cameras. Thus McPherson was of the first generation of cinema-made celebrities and the first woman to use film as a national pulpit. As Neal Gabler has argued, people become celebrities when they live out “narratives that attract our attention and the attention of the media—narratives that have entertainment value.” These narratives are in fact “movies written in the medium of life.” The Fox archive provides some clues as to how McPherson became such a celebrity.1 Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy, born in 1890 in Salford, Ontario, converted to Pentecostalism at the age of seventeen and soon after married evangelist Robert Semple. Robert died of malaria in 1910 while he and Aimee were serving as missionaries in China. She returned to the United States and married Harold McPherson in 1912. Their marriage ended in 1918 when she embarked on a career as an itinerant evangelist against Harold’s wishes. Sister Aimee elevated her status as a regional and then national celebrity with the opening of Angelus Temple in Los Angeles on January 1, 1923. From that point until her death on September 27, 1944, Sister Aimee stood out, in the words of biographer Matthew Sutton, as “the first religious celebrity of the mass media era.”2 Sister Aimee employed a variety of media, including film and radio (via a station she owned), to make her life movie. The news media, however, offered the widest exposure, and did so while maintaining the appearance of objectivity. Edward Bernays, pioneer in the field of public relations, wrote three years after McPherson’s death that those who wish to influence public opinion “must create news” by engineering an event that “juts out of the pattern of routine.” News of these events must also “utilize existing avenues of approach” such as the newspaper or biweekly newsreel. Bernays’s comments, although not singling out McPherson, nevertheless applied to her example. He cautioned that those who use established news outlets to shape perceptions must take care to avoid “refinements of reason and shadings of emotion” and instead dramatize the information that they hope to convey. In other words, celebrities have a wider impact if they orchestrate the kinds of events that reporters want to cover as opposed to publishing accounts of their own activities in the form of advertisements, editorials, or lectures. This is in fact a fair description of McPherson’s campaign.3 Had she simply published her two autobiographies and sermons, McPherson [End Page 72] would have had a narrative but little attention. As Gabler points out, “a celebrity must be known or [she] is no celebrity.” Had she engineered newsworthy events but had no backstory, her actions would have been mere stunts or curiosity pieces. Thus I argue that McPherson became the first modern celebrity preacher because she innovated a two-pronged strategy of creating events that newsreel companies wanted to film and then using those mediated events to compose her life narrative. McPherson’s appearances are instructive in understanding how and why famous people became famous after the advent of moving image news media. Furthermore, her case study reveals the power of moving images in the formation of a celebrity’s narrative as well as the risks of assuming that such media images are somehow objective.4 As with most celebrities, despite her intentions, McPherson could not fully control her public image as it appeared in the news media in the same way that she could through her autobiographies or her radio station. Moreover, societal norms for the behavior and roles of women outside the home led her to create certain types of...

Mediated Piety in Contemporary Syria: Women, Islam, and television

Dr Rufayda al-Habash is a prominent female preacher (da‘iya) in Syria today and is a representative of the Islamic revivalist movement. The channel Iqraa and her personal website are the main visual venues through which her message and knowledge are disseminated. By analyzing her as an exemplar, this study examines how da‘iyas use media to augment their religious authority, engage with the discursive tradition of Islam, and address everyday issues of ordinary women. The paper argues that the use of media allows Dr al-Habash to become more visible and active in the religious field that is dominated by male preachers and theologians. Although she functions within religious, media, and interpretivist frameworks that have been designed, put in place, and regulated primarily by men, she creatively utilizes available resources to achieve multiple goals.

Groove Theory: A Vamp on the Epistemology of Funk

When asked to define funk, George Clinton once said, If it makes you shake your rump, it's funk.1 At most basic level, term signifies honesty and beauty of expression at depths of human emotion. As such, funk comprises secular counterpart of the spirit-what Albert Murray calls paroxysms of ecstasy-in black church worship. Writing about James Brown, musicologist Teresa L. Reed makes an observation that is applicable to funk music generally. She states that music captures soulful spontaneity of Sanctified church and animated exhortation of Sanctified preacher. [The music] also emulates and incites an emotional intensity parallel to Holy Spirit possession that is a trademark of Sanctified worship service.2 Teddy Pendergrass makes a similar point in his memoir Truly Blessed. Recall- ing his childhood experiences in what he described as a rock-'em, sock-'em, sanctified, feel-the-Spirit church, Pendergrass said, We talk today about innovations in rhythm made great jazz musicians and pioneers James Brown, but truth is, they had nothing on a congregation going full force in praise of Lord.3 The musicologist Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. echoes Pendergrass's statement in his recollection of his experiences as a member of Sanctified Band in Chicago. According to Ramsey, was watchword . . . God liked funky. Funky ministered to people.4 Of course, black churches have always functioned as training repositories for black musicians, but frenzy and kinetic expression associated with holiness churches played a disproportionate role in funk music. These churches emphasized Africanist worship styles, and funk music showcased many of aesthetic sensibilities and epistemological principles that were central to their worship styles. Hence, jazz/funk guitarist James Blood Ulmer entitled his 1980 composition Jazz Is Teacher (Funk Preacher). Similarly, on initial recording of Papa's Got A Brand New Bag, Godfather of Soul can be heard saying that he feels like preaching.5 And Lyn Collins, who sang with Brown, was nicknamed Mama Feelgood and female preacher. Her comments regarding conceptual approach to Think (About It), which was a funkified womanist manifesto, typify spirituality of funk music. Seconds before Collins's recording, Brown told her, [W]ait, Miss Collins. . . . [W]hen you're talkin' to women, I don't want you to just talk. I want you to do that gospel thang. You know, I want you to tell 'em, I want you to preach to 'em. . . .6Introduction: Kinesis, Cognition, and Constructions of FunkMost discussions of funk music emphasize ideological relationships with Black Power Movement and musical innovations that establish conceptual foundations for subsequent forms such as Afro beat and hip hop. But while such approaches are vital to understanding larger significance of funk genre, they often overshadow psychosomatic construct known as funk. In this essay, I argue that funk/spirit-or, more simply, funk-operates as a distinct form of black vernacular epistemology. Though often mischaracter- ized as a lack of rationality, quasi-electric sensation that Clinton calls pleasure principle should be understood as an alternative form of rationality. Poet-critic Nathaniel Mackey touches on this alterity in an interview with Paul Taylor. Responding to a question about importance of mystical traditions in his writings, Mackey states that by juxtaposing mystical to reason as you do you're giving it status and scope of an alternative reason, much same way in which Pascal, in that famous formulation of his, writes of heart having reasons that reason knows nothing about. So we're talking about a rec- ognition, even within Western tradition, of limits of reason, a recognition of other ways of knowing, multiple ways of knowing.7 Naturally, prevailing notions of epistemology, which are based on mind/body split promulgated conventional notions of Christian philosophy, forecloses possibility that sensuality is involved in production of knowledge, that thinking can be both sensual and abstract. …

Women at the Intersection of Turkish Politics, Religion, and Education: The Unexpected Path to Becoming a State- Sponsored Female Preacher

This article elucidates how increased religious educational opportunities for girls over the past few decades, sparked by Turkey’s transition from single-party rule to a multi-party political system, has fostered the development of state-sponsored female preachers (who are entrusted with giving mosque sermons and legal responsa) at the same time that contemporary Turkish politics and the vigorously contested place of Islam, Islamic education, and practicing Muslims in an assertively secular system has impinged upon and redirected their lives in surprising ways. Analyzed through the comparative lens of successive generations of female students, the continuous contestation over the appropriate place of religion – and particularly its instruction and social visibility – amid secular state apparatuses has both opened and contracted professional opportunities for Turkey’s state-sponsored female preachers.

George Eliot and the Authority of Preaching

Preaching was for many centuries the domain of men, and the exclusion of women was justified on the grounds of their different nature and lack of authority. Victorian philosophical debates about the nature of women found literary counterparts in Victorian fiction. Eliot's novel Adam Bede presents a female preacher whose authority is demonstrably independent of her biological sex, despite the attitudes of her audiences. Her sermon's echoes of Mark's Gospel show how the literary contexts of both biblical and Victorian fiction may suggest that the authority of preaching in the material world comes from encounter with Christ and is entirely independent of gender.