The Ways Women Preach

Conversation with Nora Tubbs Tisdale on Women Preachers

Nora Tubbs Tisdale served as the Clement-Muehl Professor of Homiletics at Yale Divinity School from 2006-2018.  In the video below, Jerusha Neal, Duke Divinity homiletics professor, talks with Tisdale about her research on women preachers as well as her teaching experiences with women learning how to preach. Tisdale also shares stories from her book How Women Transform Preaching (Abingdon, 2021), which revises her 2019 Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching for those in pastoral leadership.

Discussion 

In Tisdale’s research, she contacted a number of “foremothers” in the teaching of preaching.  Three of those foremothers are included in the Duke University Chapel Recordings Digital Collection.  

  1. How do Carol Norén, Christine Smith, and Jana Childers create connections with the Duke Chapel congregation?  How do they establish their authority in the pulpit? 
     
  2. Describe how Carol Norén and Christine Smith negotiate their relationship to church tradition in their sermons. What do you think each believes to be a preacher’s job description?  
     
  3. How does Jana Childers use imagery and repetition to link the biblical text to the context?  What insights does her sermon have for those who wish to encourage women in their vocational calls?
     
  4. Norén, Smith, and Childers preach at Duke Chapel between the years of 1994 to 1998. Dr. Cynthia Lynette Hale, the founding pastor of Ray of Hope Christian Church (Atlanta, GA) and an African American woman, also has a Duke Chapel sermon recorded during these years.  How would you describe Hale’s sermonic focus and form?  What do you think Hale believes about her job description?  What aspects of a preacher’s calling comes into view from Hale’s vantage point as an African American woman?
     
  5. Tisdale argues that despite the category’s breadth, it is still valuable to speak of women’s transformative impact on preaching.  What is being transformed in and through these sermons?  How might this transformation continue in your local context?