Storied Witness: The Theology of Black Women Preachers in 19th-Century America

by Kate Hanch

The voices of Black women have historically been silenced, especially in theological and religious contexts. Prophets rarely have platforms; faithfulness to oneself, one's community, and one's God does not often lead to prestige. Nineteenth-century Black women preachers Zilpha Elaw, Julia Foote, and Sojourner Truth are not usually presented in systematic theology classes or texts and not often cited in sermons for their biblical interpretations, nor are they taught in church history courses. They should be. These women present a liberating view of God and love for self and neighbor despite circumstances that would destroy them or relegate them and their ideas to the margins. As Elaw, Foote, and Truth preached, traveled, and ministered, they constructed a theology that affirmed their belovedness as Black women and enabled them to be both pastoral and prophetic. They modeled a way to do theology that wasfaithful to the biblical witness and Christian history, was pastorally attentive to their respective communities and themselves, and identified and challenged the evils of their day. They interpreted Scripture to show that God favored them and loved them, and their bodies, even when the world said otherwise. They recognized that in order to be pastoral, they must be prophetic, calling out structures of domination that would seek to harm. And as they preached a word of comfort to the oppressed, oppressors heard--and still hear--the judgment in their voices. Kate Hanch conducts a careful reading of these 19th-century Black women preachers' narratives and their texts, both written and spoken, to make explicit their theology. At once a work of religious history, biography, and constructive theology, Storied Witness calls attention to the essential lived witness of Zilpha Elaw, Julia Foote, and Sojourner Truth. By paying attention to their stories, we discover and honor both their theology and their role as theologians. Thanks to their witness, we are challenged by a theology that testifies to a liberating Christianity in defiance of the dominant culture around them and us.

196 pages, Paperback

Published October 18, 2022

Reviews

[Hannah Jones-Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great in depth dive on 3 black women preachers. Would recommend for anyone studying preaching, women's preaching, black women in the church, black women in Methodism, etc.

[Lauren Larkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kate Hanch’s text, Storied Witness, provides crucial information about women, three black women preachers, who would otherwise go undetected and radically underquoted by mainstream theology. Hanch centers the voices of Zilpha Elaw, Julia Foote, and Sojourner Truth and demonstrates that these three humble and powerful women must be included in regular discourse about God and God’s work in the world. For mainstream theology, Hanch’s book is a challenge: can we broaden the scope of whom we turn to gather our theological education and research? I believe Hanch’s answer is not only a vibrant and bold “Yes!” but also “We must!” If theology—rather, good theology, or “better theology,” referring to Hanna Reichel’s work in “After Method”—is going to resist the temptation to obsolescence and survive this rampant era of welcome deconstruction, then theologians and other servants of “words about God” *must* find new pathways to talk about God’s divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world for the wellbeing of God’s beloved.
The book is structured so that Elaw, Foote, and Truth all get their own spotlight. In addition to this clear structure, Hanch draws out from each essential biblical truths about God and about Christian praxis. Reading about Zipha Elaw, the reader also learns the old truth often forgotten that the Spirit of God is no respecter or persons but calls and rejuvenates the inner power to proclaim God’s good news of Christ’s life and work in liberating the captives. Yet, the reader isn’t a mere spectator here: clearly, if you are reading along as Hanch is deftly waling you through Elaw’s life and preaching, then you, too, are being addressed by God through Elaw and thus being summoned into the light of Christ to see and hear the cries of those still captive. The same goes for the chapters on Julia Foote and Sojourner Truth: the reader is unable to claim ignorance once she’s done reading these chapters, she has been solicited into becoming aware of her “bodied” “power” (Foote) and her need to be a witness to God and God’s work in Christ and God’s work in her by the power of the Holy Spirit (Truth). Essentially, Hanch puts her reader—especially her white reader—on the hook chapter after chapter.

The last chapter, “Black Women Preachers as Exemplars of a Prophetic Pastoral Theology,” weaves together the lives of these three prophetic and pastoral preachers and drives home without hesitation how robust and living theology streams forth from the lips of Elaw, Foote, and Truth. In essence, what Hanch has done in this last chapter was giving her reader a “cheat sheet,” if you will, on how to do theology better with voices that are not mainlined—as in, not cis-het-white men. She lays out the ways that the previous structure of the book is limiting because one can’t pigeonhole these women into a single theme because they are each doing theology, they are each speaking about a very big God who did a big thing in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Hanch builds many theology ideas around and out of the work of Elaw, Foote, and Truth; thus, Hanch, exhorts her reader to the same. Here, Hanch directs her reader to really see—in case they missed it in the pages before—how the reader’s theology can grow by engaging the work of these women, using them as her guide, and affirming the presence of the divine Spirit in their words and works without recourse to making sure they align to the voices of cis-het-white men from ages past and limited/specific encounter with God.

The one thing I was left wondering was about Hanch’s use of “bodied” and “powered.” Very creative uses of these words because I want to say “embodied” and “empowered,” as in, being given the power and the bodiedness. But maybe that’s Hanch’s point. The power and the bodiedness of these three women wasn’t to be *given* to them as if earned or merited by being good or doing well according to an earthly authority. Rather, these women took the place and occupied the space because they had their *own* power and their *own* beautiful bodies and used both because the source of that power and bodiedness is God in and of God’s self; that was all the permission Elaw, Foote, and truth needed. To my reader, it begs the question, doesn’t it?

[Joshua Turpin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author makes a few choices and it is clear she means well, but they come across as racist. For example, she a calls Elaw a fool, both then and now, in the sense that she acted outside normal behavior “with no discretion as to what is ‘proper,’ and rendered to the margins of society” (pg 17), but doesn’t think about the fact that she is saying that a Black woman’s preaching is foolish. Her citation for this meaning is the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary, but that meaning is no longer available on the website.
This problem is related to the author’s broader project, in which she places each of these women into theological categories she created. The only time this doesn’t feel like the author is forcing the subject into a box is with Julia Foote. Ironically, this category is one she takes from M. Shawn Copeland’s Enfleshing Freedom, but she doesn’t even use Copeland’s language. She makes up her own category that she says is exactly Copeland’s intention, calling it “bodying the word.” If it’s the same, then use Copeland’s language.

She also calls Sojourner Truth by her former name up until Truth changes it. Although deadnaming is specifically in reference to trans people, I think many would agree that when anyone, but especially a minoritized person, asks you to call them a new name, you don’t deadname them. The audacity to do this to someone as important and revered as Sojourner Truth is mind boggling. But again, the author almost certainly doesn’t mean anything by it, but fails to consider the meaning of her choices.