Preach Magazine Issue 3 - Preaching and the Holy Spirit | Page 31

SERIAL

31

‘God has given to woman a graceful form and attitude, winning manners,
persuasive speech, and, above all, a finely-toned emotional nature, all of
which appear to us eminent natural qualifications for public speaking. We
admit that want of mental culture, the trammels of custom, the force of
prejudice, and one-sided interpretations of Scripture, have hitherto almost
excluded her from this sphere.’1

C

atherine Booth’s argument
about women’s preaching, honed
in the 1850s, sounds dated to
modern ears but at the time was
countercultural. This was a period in
which those evangelical denominations
that had actively promoted the
ministry of women as preachers in
the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries were consciously limiting the
practice.2 Booth responded directly to
that situation with the thesis that God
ca