While some corners of the church see emptier pews, Yarborough’s brilliant text reminds us that proclamation is always possible, and God still moves. Through attention to the lives of black women who did not have formal pulpits but nonetheless preached, Yarborough provides us with a vital reminder of what is possible in a world that tries to deny some their voice. Even more, this book offers us concrete ways to discover and proclaim an exigent word in these harrowing times, wherever we find ourselves. We need this book more than ever.
~Brian Bantum, Neil F. And Ila A. Fisher Professor of Theology, Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary
Yarborough offers us a vital text for the future(s) of homiletic discourse and practice. Proclamation Beyond the Pulpit challenges our assumptions about where and how people engage in religious meaning-making, even as it interrogates the very impulses behind these practices. These pages lay the groundwork for examining our moral resources, contexts, epistemologies, pragmatics, and embodied integrity—while unapologetically exploring the fugitive histories of Black women’s sacred rhetoric. Taken seriously, this work disrupts the tidy categories within homiletic discourse that have never truly reflected the lived realities of religion on the ground. We’ve been gifted an urgent and long-overdue contribution to the resources that center religion, society, and the reimagining of collective accountability.
~Lisa L. Thompson, Associate Professor and Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair in Black Homiletics and Liturgics, Vanderbilt University
By helping us imagine the possibilities of preaching beyond the pulpit place, Yarborough helps us imagine the activity of the Holy Spirit in new ways. Of course, stories of African American women's knowledges are the vessels for what is new and necessary. This is a moment in the United States when we need the new, both ancient and untried. This timely text is for anyone - preacher, laity, artist, teacher, activist, prophet, healer, seer, or sage - who is about the business of creativity and justice.
~Nancy Lynne Westfield, Director, Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
There is so much at stake in Chelsea Yarborough's description of Black women preachers. Centering the voices of Sojourner Truth, Nannie Helen Burroughs, and Fannie Lou Hamer to define preaching's purpose and method brings proclamation's life and death exigency into view. Often, books on preaching method are leveraged for gatekeeping. Yarborough leverages her astute methodological insights to throw wide preaching's gate to God's expansive Word. This book believes in preaching's power to change the world - pulpit or no.
~Jerusha Matsen Neal, Associate Professor of Homiletics, Duke Divinity School
In Proclamation Beyond the Pulpit, Chelsea Brooke Yarborough offers an essential contribution to the understudied practice of preaching outside traditional ecclesial environments. This well-researched, interdisciplinary book highlights the sacred rhetoric of three pioneering Black women: Sojourner Truth, Nannie Helen Burroughs, and Fannie Lou Hamer. Yarborough’s work expands the potential figures that deserve inclusion in the history of preaching while also offering new methodologies and practices for the work of proclamation amid the urgent challenges of our time. I suspect that this illuminating text will have a lasting impact on the field of homiletics.
~E. Trey Clark, Assistant Professor of Preaching and Spiritual Formation, Fuller Theological Seminary
