A Church of Her Own
What Happens When a Woman Takes the Pulpit
By Sarah Sentilles
(Mariner Books, Paperback, 9780156033329, 352pp.)
Publication Date: April 2009
Other Editions of This Title: Hardcover
Categories: Christian Life - General, Christianity - Episcopalian, Leadership
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Women have been among the most dynamic and successful ministers in all Protestant denominations; but in divinity school, Sarah Sentilles discovered that some of the best and brightest were having trouble and even leaving the church altogether. What was happening? To find out, she entered the lives of female ministers — women of various ages, races, and denominations — and emerged with the first real portrait of what it’s like to lead as a woman of faith today.
Filled with humor, heartbreak, and triumph, the women’s stories take us from calls to the pulpit through ordinations and service. Despite many churches’ resistance — conscious or not — to re-imagining what it means to be a minister, many of these women are achieving remarkable transformations in their congregations. In their inspiring determination to perform the creative, life-giving work to which they are called, these women illuminate a way that the church can revitalize itself. What’s at stake is nothing less than the future of the church itself.
SARAH SENTILLES earned her master of divinity degree from Harvard and is the author of Taught by America: A Story of Struggle and Hope in Compton. She lives in Camarillo, California.
Praise for A CHURCH OF HER OWN "Sensitively written, provocatively insightful and filled with autobiographical integrity, Sarah Sentilles' brilliance in this book calls all religious institutions to a new consciousness about gender issues." --John Shelby Spong, author of JESUS FOR THE NON-RELIGIOUS
"What does it mean to be a woman with a religious vocation? Sentilles offers a restless collage of realities, romping, ruminating, fulminating, grateful, joyous, unsatisfied -- but for readers deeply satisfying because her frank talk gives permission for the honesty that trembles and makes all things possible. A must read for any woman – anyone -- who cares about women in the church today." --Karen L. King, author of THE GOSPEL OF MARY MAGDALA
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