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Talking as only a woman can
Angela Tilby enjoys the arresting prose and the sensitivity of a very good preacher
Preaching Like a Woman
SPCK £12.99 (978-0-281-05918-8) Church Times Bookshop £11.70 WOMEN PREACHERS have probably been around since New Testament times: Paul’s insistence that women keep silence in church suggests at least the possibility that there were women in the Primitive Church who felt they were called to proclaim and expound the word of God. In fact, the anxiety that continued to surface about women preaching through the patristic and medieval periods suggests that the question never quite went away. Since the Reformation, women preachers have come and gone and re-emerged in a long process of experiment, repression, and re-covery, which is still going on. But now most of the mainstream Reformation Churches expect women to preach regularly: it is no longer a shock to the system. Susan Durber believes that women have something distinctive to contribute as preachers. In an earlier volume of women’s sermons which she co-edited with Heather Walton, she challenged the silence that has surrounded the subject, and produced a collection that both expressed, and called for, change in the Church. This volume is a collec-tion of her own sermons, many of them preached at St Columba’s, Oxford, where she was minister until recently. Susan Durber is a very good preacher. She writes for the ear; she uses language like a poet; she can be sharp, funny, challenging, and unexpected. Above all, she is rooted in scripture, and in the belief that preaching that engages faithfully and consistently with scripture can change lives. Her preaching is very closely tied to a strong ministerial vocation: it is the counterpart of skilful and sensitive leadership and pastoral care. The title of this volume echoes an earlier book by Nicola Slee, Praying Like a Woman. Such titles inevitably invite the question what is really distinctive about women’s contrib-ution to praying or preaching. On the surface, it is hard to see. If I were trying to place Susan Durber in a British context of preaching, I would see her following in the foot-steps of preachers such as Leslie Weatherhead, Austen Williams, and even Colin Morris, and the great and indefatigable Congregationalist Elsie Chamberlain. There is the blend of personal faith and social concern; of being at peace with the historic faith while challenging the institutions that express that faith; of a relaxed style of communication which does not prevent a direct appeal to the heart of her hearers. She does alert us, though, to issues of justice that are of particular concern to women. She is not afraid to name distortions in relations between the genders, which are too often glided over, even in scripture itself. If there is one thing I missed from this collection, it is the voice of authority — an unpopular concept today, perhaps. But, amid the arresting prose and the sensitive exposition of Susan Durber’s work, I found myself longing for an engagement with the God who is not like us, the God who thunders, the God whose mystery can be spoken only through the scriptural dogmas of the Church. I would hate to find that sovereignty and free-dom, the two key divine attributes in Reformation thinking, could be preached about only by men. The Revd Dr Tilby is Vicar of St Benet’s, Cambridge. To order this book, email the details to Church Times Bookshop (please mention "Church Times Bookshop price") |
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