Daughters OF THUNDER
A Book Review
DAUGHTERS OF THUNDER
“Should we all turn and listen to her?”
Black Women Preachers and Their Sermons 1850–1979 by Bettye Collier Thomas
A BOOK REVIEW
As we bridge the wee tiny gap between Black History and Women’s History Month, we have a wonderful opportunity to listen closely to the voices that have always been there for us but for whatever reason, their names were lost momentarily or forgotten or were never known.
As a great lover of the first-person narrative, any chance I get to make note of a story told in her own voice would be hard if not impossible for me to pass it up. Bettye Collier-Thomas takes us on a lovely and I might add soulful journey of chronicling the sermons of black women.
By her own admission, she like other writers often did not end up anywhere near where she started. It was not her intention to look for evidence of women in the pulpit; but find them she did. They spoke longingly to her and as she called on her own ancestors, many women entered the room to be recognized.
Ordained or not, it would be difficult to imagine the role of the black church without its women.
In each chapter, she moves aside the veil and allows each woman to speak for herself as she is led. While Dr. Collier-Thomas gives place and historical context, she’s does her best to let us see these women for who they are in their own time.
“ F. E. Redwine… from Sermon “WHAT WOMAN IS” Runnel’s Chapel in Flint, Texas on May 2, 1948
Annotated from DAUGHTERS OF THUNDER
Chapter 14 by Bettye Collier-Thomas
“Women in the Church. I very much fear the pastor would resign and the church doors would be closed, if there were no women in it. Women’s work, her prayers, her collection of influence in shaping the lives of children while they’re young — Woman has been granted recognition in the Evangelistic work of the church and her profound interest as it was in Paul’s time of preaching, has added much interest in the numerical and spiritual as well as financial strength of the church.”
Theologically, socially, and culturally her work provides a way to see the development of the history of the ideas of their time. With great respect and I might add reverence, she presents the newly found material with no intent to foreshadow or apologize for their words. Many of these women: our mothers, aunties, sisters, teachers, and healers have shepherded us to where we may find ourselves today.
The book is organized in two parts to address the chronological timeline of the 19th and 20th centuries. Publishing the first edition in 1998, she ends the volume with sharing a collection of sermons from the then Reverend Pauli Murray. She prepares and ushers in the next phase where many familiar theologians and historians especially of church history begin their contemporary commentary having benefitted from their sisters efforts at ordination and structuring their lives in the church.
If DuBois erects the color line as a vantage point, Daughters of Thunder takes on the Bible and the institutional development of the church from the perspective of the women speaking from the pulpit. Whether the audience for their message is male, or female; through an interdisciplinary lens, we have a way to view the importance of how Black women function consistently in the Black community across many domains.
We also have a new way to see how their personal view of the God of their understanding. Unfiltered and unadorned, they preach and teach and exhort to their audience. When we have the record or transcript of their own voices, what a gift of scholarship as well as a testimony of our collective memory.
“My purpose in Daughters of Thunder is to explore the history of African American preaching women and the issues and struggles thy confronted in their efforts to function as ministers and to become ordained. The book also presents for the first time the sermons of pioneering black woman preachers.” Bettye Collier-Thomas
If the dividing line begins at the ordination of black women in the church which doesn’t even occur until 1895 well into the 19th century; the author reminds us that it is more telling that their stories, letters, and spiritual autobiographies are evident but not published and in ways not easily accessible or understood without further analysis and scholarship.
Oral histories, the recollections and written documentation of sermons presented at church sponsored events such as reunions, revivals, retreats, Sunday schools, evening programs; prayer meetings, Women’s Day gatherings prove essential in both collecting and understanding the importance of these sermons in shaping the concerns of black community life. We can also learn a great deal about the audience, the congregants, the context about who may have received the message as well as characteristics of the messengers invited to speak.
You will learn the names of women you have never heard of; but you will also see the women in the church and their theological development differently. Many women when asked to look found papers in personal and church belongings that fueled their scholarship and further inquiry.
What I particularly like about this book as an anthology is that any portion of each chapter could stand nobly alone. You could pick it up, read a single sermon or a collection of sermons and run with it. The full volume strikes me as a key primary source document that supports the evolution of the intellectual history of women, the church and their relationship within institutions; be it the family, the community or the pleasure that comes with a shifting relationship with oneself and the Divine.
These women while wanting to be an integral part of these institutions and shouldering many foundational responsibilities were also crushed and dehumanized by their participation and assigned roles. They sought to exist and develop spiritually in ways we are still uncovering. Leaving the church, they found God. Isolation, suffering, and literacy forged what we may see as the foundational roots of a womanist- liberation theology as a function of a creative, vibrant social justice ministry centered in a feminist model of transformational change.
The true power of this anthology is an invitation first and foremost to listen to women.
We so often critique the messenger as a strategy to instantly disable the credibility of the voice thereby minimizing the value of the message.
As the educational opportunities for literacy and scholarship expand for black church women; they can and do “leave” the church if only to form a more meaningful relationship with the Divine. When women are able (read here both literacy skills and permission granted) to read the Bible and other sacred texts, and literature for themselves and then they are blocked from what they feel “called” to do, they seek to establish legitimacy in other venues. They find their way to the pulpit and their intended audience.
Rejection by the forces which deny, undermine, and punish their very presence notwithstanding their full participation as women in the church frees them to establish new roles for pastoral care, church administration and their own spiritual agency and development. Barriers to interfaith and nondenominational are softened if not now permanently removed. Philanthropy and financial renumeration allow for entry to newly defined pulpits.
The academe, the seminary, divinity schools, literary and journalistic ventures; be they sectarian or denominational endeavors have all created new spaces for women. These avenues replace and expand black church sponsorship for social justice, moral wrestling, piety, as well as functioning strongly as harbingers of greater spiritual awareness. Roles strictly ascribed to gender conformity, sexuality, age, family, and place are seen as more fluid, less prominent and at times less restrictive. Wives, Mothers, First Ladies, Evangelists have voices by virtue of their own status.
The reinterpretation of the gospels in acknowledging the names when of women has emboldened women tremendously. To be a disciple of the Christ represents freedom and a new understanding of why a woman may be silenced as part of the church family. Be it jealousy or envy, women are no longer waiting or wanting permission to speak.
The gospels of Mary acknowledging Mary Magdalene as the companion of Jesus marks a turning point in the value Jesus places with women and the stirring of their calling. It begs the question “Should We all Turn and Listen to her? as Jesus did.
Perhaps what may distinguish black women as preachers, scholars, activists, healers, and mystics speaks clearly to the extent to which the sound of their own voices reflects an inclusive nature of their whole self. Witnessing women in Power not mediated by anyone of any gender, or the law, or the church or the denomination is allowing women to not delay glory to an afterlife or to obedience to external authority that demands denial of who you are.
What happens when the women are noticeably absent, hidden and removed from the body of Christ. Faithfulness is redefined. Faithful to your husband, master, church or to the patriarchy may no longer be required. What about faithfulness to your evolving self? Scouring the Bible for names, evidence and clues that women were there hiding in the shadows or examples of sin is no longer the gold standard by which we see women or ourselves.
What inspires you to seek the words of wisdom and comfort from other women. Daughters of Thunder draws you in to hear the women who stepped boldly into the pulpit to speak and bear witness to the grace, comfort, and consolation they encountered in their own lives. From the lineage of our earliest known ancestors who have left us such treasures. Who inspired you? Was she a woman? I encourage you to research, write and publish the work of these women. Indeed, it is not too late, we can encourage those still living to create and document the stories that reflect “the power, authority, charisma and confidence often evoked in their personas and sermons.” Bettye Collier-Thomas has been successful on all accounts.
NOTES and Bibliographic References
Power of testimony African American first-person narrative
https://archive.org/details/womenswaysofknow00belerich
https://lgbtqreligiousarchives.org/profiles/emilie-m-townes
Gospels of Mary https://academic.oup.com/book/34836
Tuckett, Christopher (ed.), The Gospel of Mary (Oxford, 2007; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Jan. 2008), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199212132.001.0001, accessed 24 Feb. 2023.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Gospels_of_Mary/9mV0MccBWykC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PT6&printsec=frontcover See Chapter 8 with Esther A. De Boer
