Tending Tomorrow: Rev. Dr. HyeRan Kim-Cragg & Ruth Kause
Summary:
In this episode of the Tending Tomorrow lecture series, Rev. Dr. HyeRan Kim-Cragg explores the past, present, and future of feminist and womanist preaching within the Canadian context. Drawing from history, she outlines three key insights for future homiletics: the power of testimony, the need to move beyond solo preaching, and the importance of inclusive and expansive language about God. Kim-Cragg advocates for a preaching practice that is communal, rooted in real-world testimony, and attentive to ecological and interreligious perspectives. Respondent Ruth Kause affirms and deepens this vision with reflections on the global south's influence on Christianity in Canada, the necessity of contextualized communal preaching, and historical examples of courageous women preachers like Anne Hutchinson. Together, they offer a compelling vision of preaching that is embodied, justice-oriented, and responsive to the changing church and world.
Quotables:
“self-disclosure, integral to testimony, incurs vulnerability, but it should not be regarded as weakness. Quite the opposite. Giving testimony can increase self-esteem, a sense of dignity, vocational identity and pastoral integrity, and I would say this is particularly crucial to cultivate those who have been historically marginalized and whose roles has been dismissed and undermined” - Rev. Dr. HyeRan Kim-Cragg
“To proclaim the gospel, equipped with the expansive language of God and with an ecological lens, also means tapping into indigenous wisdom and the wisdom from other religious and cultural traditions, where their worldviews and knowledge are non-dualist, non-binary, but interdependent, and honoring very deeply about the interconnection of the entire creation. ” - Rev. Dr. HyeRan Kim-Cragg
“I would suggest that if we were talking about the future of preaching in Canada, perhaps we also need to take into account the presence of more global south Christians who are starting to call Canada home.” - Ruth Kause
About Rev. Dr. HyeRan Kim-Cragg
The Rev. Dr. HyeRan Kim-Cragg is the 14th Principal of Emmanuel College and holds the inaugural Timothy Eaton Memorial Church Professorship in Preaching there. Currently she is on the Executive Committee of the Academy of Homiletics, and serves Editorial Boards of the journal Homiletic and International Journal of Societas Homiletica. Kim-Cragg is a prolific writer. Her most recent publications include Moments in Time: Sermons from The Untied Church of Canada 1910-2020 (2024), Practical Theology Amid Environmental Crises (2022), and Postcolonial Preaching (2021). As an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea (PROK), and as a ministry partner with the Untied Church of Canada, she has taken several leadership roles educating intercultural ministry, antiracism and feminist issues for more than 20 years. A proud Korean committed to engaging ecological issues, she loves to walk, bike, and watch K-dramas!
About Ruth Kause
Since 3rd grade, in Kupang, Indonesia, Ruth Kause has known she was going to be a pastor. After a sojourn in the US for her master's, Ruth is currently a second-year PhD student in Homiletics at Emmanuel College. Her research interests are in the areas of Homiletics, Trauma, Feminist, Postcolonial and Decolonial theories. (One day, she would also like to be a food critic.
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Transcript
[Introduction]
Welcome. Welcome to the Ministry Forum Podcast coming to you from the Center for Lifelong Learning at Knox College, where we connect, encourage and resource ministry leaders all across Canada, as they seek to thrive in their passion to share the gospel. I am your host, The Reverend John Borthwick, Director of the Centre and curator of all that is ministryforum.ca. I absolutely love that I get to do what I get to do, and most of all that, I get to share it all with all of you. So thanks for taking the time out of your day to give us a listen. Whether you're a seasoned ministry leader or just beginning your journey, this podcast is made with you in mind.
[John Borthwick]
Welcome to the Ministry Forum Podcast, and today, we are sharing part two in a four-part lecture series called Tending Tomorrow: Canadian Women Homileticians Reflect on the Future of Preaching in Canada. If you haven't listened to part one, we'd encourage you to go back and do so. We found that the speaker order actually ended up deepening the experience of the lectureship as each seemed to build upon the next. Today's lecturer is the Reverend Dr HyeRan Kim-Cragg. She's from Emmanuel College. She's the 14th principal of that college, and holds an inaugural Timothy Eaton Memorial Church professorship in preaching. Currently, she is on the executive committee of the academic Academy of homiletics and serves editorial boards of the journal homiletic and the International Journal of Societas homiletics. Kim-Cragg is a prolific writer. Her most recent publications include Moments in Time: Sermons from the United Church of Canada 1912 to 2020, published in 2024; Practical Theology Amid Environmental Crises, published in 2022; and Post-colonial Preaching, published in 2021 as an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea, P, R, O, K, and as a ministry partner with the United Church of Canada, she has taken on several leadership roles educating intercultural ministry, anti-racism and feminist issues for more than 20 years. A proud Korean committed to engaging ecological issues, she loves to walk and bike and watch K-dramas. Let's listen to HyeRan.
[HyeRan Kim-Cragg]
So my deep honor and privilege to be among esteemed colleagues among us, and also real joy to have my PhD student, Ruth, respond to the presentation. I'd like to thank Dr Travis for birthing this idea, and Reverend Borthwick for his excellent administrative work. And Principal Ernest van Eck, who supported this conference. As a principal, I know how much the care and the labour of love goes into creating an event like this. So thank you.
Let me begin my presentation by sharing an initial thought on the very theme of this conference, Tending Tomorrow: Canadian Women Politicians Reflect on the Future of Preaching in Canada. It is a future oriented. It is about the future of preaching. The theme is also about Canada. And I don't think when organizers put Canadian they had a place of origin in mind. Certainly we have presenters and responders who are not born in Canada. So I think Canadian or being in Canada must refer to a context, or context of preaching. In addition to the future and the context focus, the theme highlights the role of female scholars of preaching, which will anchor my presentation. And even though this is a future oriented presentation, I would like to begin by reviewing the history of feminist preaching. We cannot end tomorrow without knowing the past. Furthermore, as a post-colonial thinker, I contest the linear notion of history. History is never teleological. The past is never over. Instead, past lingers, even repeats. The. This is certainly the case when we think of colonialism, in some ways, what is happening today in the world, the polarization, the spread of toxic rhetoric and the implementation of violent policies against certain groups of people and creation is nothing new. That is part of our history. Today, we are alarmed by the rise of gender-based violence and a state sanctioned attempt to control women's bodies, especially their reproductive rights, and to oppress sexual minorities. This is a return to the past. Thus, I argue the roles of female homileticians and feminist preaching are as important in homiletics today and the future as they have been.
After reviewing the history of women's leadership in preaching, I will offer three insights that might help us preach into tomorrow, the future of preaching in Turtle Island. These three insights have to do with testimony, solo preaching and the language of God. Once I address this, I will leave with you two areas for future contemplation and exploration. And just to let you know that my presentation is rely on two articles I have published and appear in Rowan & Littlefield Handbook of Women's Studies in Religion in year 2021 and Feminist Theologies: A Companion in year 2024.
Since 1960s there has been a profound shift in homiletical leadership with regards to women's roles. The 60s was a significant decade when barriers preventing women from being ordained in mainline Protestant churches started to fall away and were eventually significantly minimized. The period since the 1960s, Canadian systematic theologian Douglas J. Hall considered as a period of creative chaos. As part of that creativity and chaos, women's voice from the pulpit began to be heard in larger numbers of the churches throughout. It is not a coincidence that second wave feminist movements occurred along with these changes.
The feminist movement has never been exclusive or reserved to women. Feminism considers the oppression of women in relation to other forms of oppression, like racism, classism, heterosexism, militarism and colonialism, to name a few. The importance of viewing feminist theory and praxis has become very important and to the fore since the term intersectionality was introduced in 1989 by black human rights lawyer Kimberlé Crenshaw. Around that time the term intersectionality surfaced, there was a push to make Afro American women preachers visible. For example, in 1988 Those Preaching Women is a journal series was published. This publication was spread headed by Ella Pearson Mitchell, who also co-authored two preaching books with her husband Henry Mitchell. In Those Preaching Women, the whole essay was using the first time the womanist was originally coined by Alice Walker in her seminal essay, “Coming Apart” in 1979 but it gained the wider recognition after her book In Search of Our Mother's Garden was published in 1983 where the term womanist was defined as an approach of a black feminist, or the feminist of color, and it was a term, the signal to affirm the experiences of Afro American women. Part of this experience is a threshold oppression of racism, sexism and classism. It is important to note that the womanist approach did not privilege or subordinate any extra aspect of this triple oppression. Rather, it understood them to operate in interlocking ways.
The womanist work was a kind of protest and a real challenge, both against white feminists who neglected race and class issues, and black male and other racialized liberationist scholars and activists who failed to consider gender and women's lived experiences. Womanist alongside feminist homiletics take therefore multi-dimensional oppression into account in those when preachers interpret our Bible, the ancient text, they must engage current realities, including sexist language and oppressive practices, in order to offer liberative emancipatory practices. The goal of womanist feminist homiletics is to expand Black and other racialized women's preaching practice to include the goal of emancipatory wholeness. So since 1990s post-colonial feminist studies have called for attention to this intersectionality and multi layered oppressions in relation to colonialism.
Since 1980s feminist, post-colonial and womanist homileticians, have made a considerable contribution to the field of homiletics, but women's presence in the pulpit goes back more than 400 years on this Turtle Island and Marbury Hutchinson. I hope we remember her. She was the first woman known to preach in New England, in USA, and it appears in the public record in 1644. Hutchinson was not a preacher who conformed to a prevalent ideas of femininity, such as meekness or deference. Rather, she was a strong preacher who challenged the corrupt male clerical authority of that time. Since then, women preachers have been constant presence in North American pulpits they fire up the women's temperance movement, the women's voting rights movement and the child labour laws movement and civil rights movement. So most of them were itinerant preachers, which meant they preached not necessarily and only in the churches, but in convents or other informal places of worship. Scholarship has shown that their sermons were more relational and intimate than those of their male counterparts, who tended to occupy the formal pulpit.
Despite these persistent and outstanding models of female homiletical leadership over the centuries, women preachers have not gained full equality to men in church, even today, this history is more than a helpful background to what I want to talk about. I feel that I must assert this with urgency. Attempts to rewrite history or roll back achievements in gender equality are gaining force. For example, the first Southern Baptist woman, Addie Davis, was ordained in 1964, but the Southern Baptist Convention stopped ordaining women in year 2000, and the number of women in evangelical puppets have decreased in recent years.
History is instructive. It makes us vigilant. History teaches us where we came from while at the same time, it signals that if we may fall back to the wrongs of the past. To tend tomorrow well, we must learn from the past. Well, with that in mind, let me share three lessons from the history of feminist and womanist homiletics.
First is testimony. In her study of preaching tradition as a form of testimony, Anna Carter Florence noticed that the lack of female role models in the history of preaching. When one researches the standard history of preaching, meaning mainstream, dominant history, women's voices as preachers are almost nowhere to be found. Florence, however, was able to adjust the lens of history and discover that, in fact, women preachers were everywhere. This change of lens was the decision to explore the genre of testimony as a form of preaching. Testimony is a practice of telling one's own story, of encountering with the love of God either in a formal worship setting, or elsewhere, and is a formal preaching. What is interesting to note is that testimony as a practice and a formal preaching has been much more open to women and women preachers have effectively used it than men. Thus asking why this as well preaching has been more prominent in women's preaching than not, Florence asked this. Does testimony challenge our assumptions about preaching in ways that are too destructive too dangerous to explore? I don't think so. Indeed, preaching as testimony drives from the biblical tradition in the way the Gospel story, especially the resurrection of Jesus account, was told. The apostle Paul in the early church, leaders shared the good news of Jesus Christ in the form of pastoral testimony. They testified to what they have seen and heard, even if that was something frightening and terrifying, incredible and amazing.
Florence calls testimony preaching in a new key. Not only is testimony the primary way many of our ancestors in faith preached, but it is also the most courageous, vulnerable, risk taking form of preaching, especially when we consider the testimony of martyrs. Etymologically speaking, the word martyr is connected to the concept of witness as it drives from the Greek word maturia, which meant to witness something. The Latin word testis means witness, and is the ruler of the English word testimony. So combine all this origin of the words, preaching means to be able to tell the truth and bear witness.
Preaching as a form of witness means sharing of what one has seen with the eyes of faith. Preaching is the dangerous, if not deadly business, especially when telling the truth runs counter to powerful forces bent on oppression. That's why Eunjoo Mary Kim suggests that preaching as testimony is not an easy task, but a Spirit led movement. It doesn't merely rely on philosophical speculation or scientific knowledge, but depends on the Spirit, the grace of God, through her experience of encountering the living God and with this conviction she cannot help but preach. Again, this profound biblical meaning of preaching as testimony and witness in relational and prophetic ways affirms the importance of women's preachers testimony tradition as a source of homiletical content and method. It proposes that enhancing the idea of preaching as testimony is one way to highlight pioneering female preachers in the past and the emerging women preachers today and promote their preaching insights into the future.
Testimony understood as telling one story in light of gospel, has been a way for women to authorize their own preaching practice and ministry for centuries this was particularly critical when the official ecclesial authority failed to acknowledge women as preachers. Despite this barrier, women preachers throughout the centuries were not afraid to stand and speak the truth, proclaim the gospel as that related to their lives.
Thus self-disclosure, integral to testimony, incurs vulnerability, but it should not be regarded as weakness. Quite the opposite. Giving testimony can increase self-esteem, a sense of dignity, vocational identity and pastoral integrity, and I would say this is particularly crucial to cultivate those who have been historically marginalized and whose roles has been dismissed and undermined.
Testimony as a rhetorical device may create a counter narrative to misogyny and forces to degrade women's body and their sexuality, while downplaying women's call to preach and their leadership. Recovery of testimony is also important and needed for reforming and renewing preaching today, when we look at the need to address trauma and lament our two very esteeming esteemed presenters, Dr Travis and Dr Sancken have focused on these topics in recent publications. I hope that you read those books.
Second, beyond solo preaching, I want to draw your attention to, for the sake of attending tomorrow for our preaching in Canada, and that we need to kind of move beyond solo preaching. Preaching in a traditional sense, is often understood as a preaching standing alone, you know, elevated pulpit speaking to a large crowd right of hundreds, if not 1000s. But I'm not sure how many congregations in the Presbyterian Church, in the United Church of Canada, and wherever you are, part of denominational communities, such is actually the norm today. As far as I know, most congregations are under 100, and therefore the space speaks. Right? So the way that we preach must adjust to that change.
Our female ancestors and elders and male elders and ancestors of preachers also traveled right different places where people are at. Their preaching was grounded in the community, and the preaching was therefore relational and informal. You might say gospel was in motion, rather than stuck in the elevated pulpit. The word made flesh was among people and was spread out into the communities where people are suffering, seeking hope, yearning for God's goodness and divine care and justice. Attention to the importance preaching as a communal practice from a feminist perspective, was proposed by Susan Ross in the late 1990s. She proposed an understanding of preaching as an activity that is conversational, informed by a methodology that is nonhierarchical, heuristic and communal, lifting up the agency of people instead of solely relying on the preacher in the preaching event, was not an idea that was new in the 20th century. However, it can be found at least one century earlier, in 1888. Frances Willard argued that proper interpretation of the gospel, which means preaching, required a broader reading of Scripture through the participation of diverse people together. The communal practice of reading scripture leads to preaching practice that is collective. Donovan Turner and Mary Lin Hudson, who wrote the feminist preaching book, argue that preaching voice is symphonic in character. Shauna Hannan, who is a Lutheran and homiletician, drawing from the theology of the priesthood of all believers, claims that preaching is not a job of lone voice, but belongs to the people. In this regard, preaching voice is heterogeneous and plural, rather than homogeneous and singular. Preaching voices contain messages of dissent and of even scandal. In fact, the good preaching voice must, at the very least start by listening attentively to the voices of others. You must try to familiarize itself with unfamiliar and even uncomfortable voices in the community. In this sense, future of preaching should aim to create multiple, mutually resonant, dissonant voices even included, so that that allows each voice amplify and dancing with each other.
Finally, and thirdly, let me offer the insight that theological language matters for the future of preaching. The debate on the inclusive language of God in worship and preaching is another fruit born out of feminist theory and feminist theology in the 1970s and 80s, a fruit that produced impressive knowledge and work in the 80s and 90s in North America. Kim, however, argues that the inclusive language of God is not a 20th century North American English phenomenon. He traces back on the language of God to the medieval era where women preachers challenged the patriarchal church and society through the creative use of the theological language that images of God that at that time was very scandalous.
Examples of such are found in the subversive rhetoric of Hildegard of Bingen, in her preaching on Trinity. Instead of thinking of God as Father, Hildegard focuses on charity, as in - love and mercy as a characters of God, when she writes, “through this fountain of life came the embrace of God's maternal love, which has nourished us onto life and is our help in perils”. Lifting up Hildegard and other women mystic preachers, including the Julian of Norwich - contend that these feminists, ancestors of preaching, remind us theological language is to be taken seriously in preaching, because language can create a new reality.
Systematic theologian Elizabeth A Johnson makes a similar point. And here I quote, “If God is she as well as he, a new possibility can be envisioned of a way of living together that honors difference, but allows women and men to share life in equal measure.”
Language of God, language about God that moves beyond gender bias, is the work of the metaphorical imagination and cannot be constrained by strictly literal or literalist interpretation of the Bible. Insisting on using masculine pronouns for God just because Bible says so is not a good reason. In fact, because that's not accurate, because the bible also portrays God as feminine or beyond. The bottom line is, God cannot be adequately addressed in our limited human language. Yet it is important to recognize that language is reflective of our reality and shapes our reality. Therefore, preachers are compelled to name an image, imagine God in wonderfully mysterious way with humility. This is why it is important to address the language of God in preaching, and our language of God must evolve to give voice to what it is in the process of becoming. With that in mind, it is critical that language be inclusive and expansive, that all preachers commit to using. Language about God that opens kind of new possibilities, new opportunities in ways that are holistic.
So on next, so areas for further exploration. So let me underscore the importance of expensive language about God that moves beyond the exclusive male centered and I want to add human centered language. So I opt for expensive language of God because it is more biblical and more ecological. I urge us to overcome anthropocentric homiletics. Tackling the climate crisis is one of the most urgent social problems we must address as preachers. The future of preaching, in fact, depends on how we address the climate crisis and global warming. To preach with an ecological lens means to show and tell how God is at work in creation. A homiletical theology ought to be creation centered, where non-human beings are understood as siblings in our proclamation. Indigenous people have taught us that entire creation is kin, and the humans are very small part of the creation and at the mercy of our Earth kin. To proclaim the gospel, equipped with the expansive language of God and with an ecological lens, also means tapping into indigenous wisdom and the wisdom from other religious and cultural traditions, where their worldviews and knowledge are non-dualist, non-binary, but interdependent, and honoring very deeply about the interconnection of the entire creation.
I was intrigued to note and delighted actually to the title of this conference is tending tomorrow. The verb tend can be used in the context of our garden. It also points to a kind of physical labour of love, preaching as a kind of tending tomorrow is neither just thinking or writing about tomorrow, but it is a kind of labour, an embodied activity. It grounds us relationality and empowers us to work together. Preaching as tending evokes an image of work that is sweaty, messy and even dirty as dirt and earthy. And it is life nurturing work, and it assumes patience and trust. As preachers must rely on God and our congregations together. God's Holy Spirit is at work, but we have to be patient. Like farmers, patiently waiting for the rain to come and the sun to shine, after they put their best efforts to tend the land.
Finally, let me finish by sharing a conversation that I recently had with a Buddhist colleague of Emmanuel College, Henry Shiu. I was talking to him about the parable of the mustard seed of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, and he was so intrigued and pleased to share with me that in Buddhism, the same analogy is used, as Buddha always to talk about faith by using the mustard seed. What a delightful surprise to find that we have something in common. So what happens if we enlarge our reading strategies to include an interreligious approach placing Christian sacred texts, alongside with other religious and cultural texts. This may indeed provide a very fertile homiletical soil needed to cultivate, tend a powerful and relevant gospel message for today and tomorrow. One that faithfully addresses climate crisis. One that works to bring peace to religious conflicts. And one that build right relations with the indigenous people. Thank you.
[John Borthwick]
And Dr Kim-Cragg's respondent is Ruth Kause. Since third grade in Coupang, Indonesia, Ruth Kause has known that she was going to be a pastor after a sojourn in the US for her Master's. Ruth is currently a second year PhD student in homiletics at Emmanuel College. Her research interests are in the areas of homiletics, trauma, feminist post-colonial and decolonial theories. One day, she would also like to be a food critic. Let's listen to Ruth.
[Ruth Kause]
Good morning everyone. It is an honor and privilege to be with you all today and to give response to Dr Kim-Cragg's lecture. Thank you so much, Dr Kim-Cragg for your insightful lecture, and thank you to the ministry forum team, especially Mr. Borthwick and each and every one of you who have made this conference happen in her lecture, Dr Kim-Cragg provided a glance at the history of feminist and womanist homiletics. Follow it with three lessons as we can glean from the past for the betterment of our future, and close with two insight for us to ponder.
As an aspiring post-colonial homiletician myself, I too don't believe that time is linear, therefore in my response, I will be addressing Dr Kim-Cragg's points in reverse order, starting with inter religious preaching and ending with history. Further, while I will offer much agreement with Dr Kim-Cragg, I will also offer a series of both ands to complicate and enrich the discussion. Finally, I will end my response by following Dr Kim-Cragg's call to history and reflecting on Anne Hutchinson's costly witness to grace as an inspiration and example for the future preaching in Canada. I heartily agree with Dr Kim-Cragg that the future of preaching in Canada will inevitably take place in a deeply inter religious context, with more people from across the world interacting with Christianity here in North America, we have the opportunity to incorporate an inter religious approach to preaching. Dr Kim-Cragg's example of the similar use of monster seed as illustration for faith in Buddhism and Christianity shows potential of such an approach. Certainly in Canada, the indigenous communities traditions also has so much to offer to this discussion. Now, as we engage in this intereligious endeavor, I would only urge caution that we take a special care not to instrumentalize other traditions for our benefit and not flatten out our genuine differences across traditions. Now, as we continue to think about the future of preaching in Canada, I'm reminded of words of homeletician, Cleophus LaRue emphasizing that Christianity is turning brown and moving south. What he means by this is that Christianity that once was instrumentalized by the colonizers to justify their subjugation and domination over Asia, Africa, Latin America, Australia and Pacific Islands, has now been turned on its head, and the colonized have claim it to make it their own. The colonized right back, if you will. Ironically, although Christianity in the West is often treated as disposable, that once it ramps out the values or capital, it can be discarded, that is not necessarily the case with how the global south treat Christian faith. Further in his book Crossover Preaching, homiletician Jared Alcantara points to data regarding increased immigration from global south into global north, and how it impact church demographics. Therefore, I would suggest that if we were talking about the future of preaching in Canada, perhaps we also need to take into account the presence of more global south Christians who are starting to call Canada home.
Considering who our congregation will be in the future of preaching in Canada, our demographically shifting churches may encourage us to reframe the question around solo preaching and communal preaching. Our orientation can be expanded to think about preaching that would make our new neighbors feel at home. In many cases, the preaching our global south neighbors feel at home with is in traditional style, perhaps somewhat closer to solo preaching. Now, I do not mean to say that we should not preach communal sermons, but rather it's a both-and, making room for both approaches to preaching in our increasingly diverse congregations. Perhaps, this will also help us to think about what communal preaching is actually looks like in practice. Now, in her extended discussion on preaching in Trinidad and Tobago, homiletician Catherine Williams argues that communal preaching for Trinbagonians occurs, quote, “When throughout the sermon, the preacher calls out randomly to someone in the congregation when a listener jumps on her feet or gleefully claps or waves her hands in response to something said by the preacher or by her pew neighbor, and so on so forth. Now it sounded to an outsider like bedlam in the service. These and other indicators of polymorphic preachings are normal, and some would say essential in grassroot preaching.” As we can see here, communal preaching can exist even when the preacher is the clear leader of the service and is not merely engaging in conversation with the congregation. The communal aspect of the sermon could also appear during the preparation of the sermon. Now the bottom line is the communal preaching may look differently in different contexts, and if we are to aspiring to welcoming everyone into our church, then perhaps it's also essential for us to try to perceive things from their perspectives.
Now whatever the future holds for preaching in Canada, it will definitely involve preachers bearing witness. And I concur with Dr Kim-Cragg's notion of witnessing as inevitably risky activity as Dr Kim-Cragg has elaborated why this is a risk activity, I couldn't help but to think of mother Mary as the first witness to the Incarnation, and later, alongside other women as also among the first witnesses to Jesus's resurrection. The cost of witnessing to Mary was incredibly high. She almost got divorced by Joseph, which, if not done in secret, could have jeopardized her life, not only that, but when Jesus was born, Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus had to go into exile, to Egypt, to the power hungry, murderous Herod chasing after babe Jesus. And we know certainly she experienced the ultimate pain of a mother when she had to witness her innocent son crucified by the Romans.
I'm not a mother, at least not yet, but I remember when I was little and I had a fever, my mom will always help me so close and pray that she could observe the fever from me, that way I don't have to feel any pain. I just can't imagine how heartbroken Mary was when witnessing her son going through the most humiliating and painstaking punishment at the hands of the corrupt leaders. All of these were her cost of witnessing. Put differently, witnessing is precarious, but it's more than necessary, and as preachers, we are called to be witnesses.
Now to conclude with one of my favorite examples of the costliness of witnessing, one of the prominent women preacher that Dr Kim-Cragg has mentioned was Anne Marbury Hutchinson. She was a woman in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony who, unlike the expectation for women then, was a notable leader. Her connection to the New World was already well established thanks to her teacher, John Cotton, who was also an impressive Puritan preacher in New England at that time. Now, under his guidance, Anne continued to grow in her knowledge of Scripture. At the time, John Winthrop, a Puritan lawyer, was the governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and he was convinced that the only way to turn Boston into righteous city upon the hill was through hard work. For if they work hard, he believed that they will be blessed, but if they didn't, then God will curse them. He believed that only by establishing this covenant of works could the Mass Bay Colony be prosperous. John Cotton, on the other hand, preached much more clearly about grace, that nothing we can do can elicit God's grace. Then these really resonated with Anne. And while John Cotton did not go after Winthrop, Anne criticized Winthrop in her after church, Bible study teaching. Now as a charismatic leader and speaker and continue to spread her influence in teaching scripture, not only to men, not only to women, but also to few men. Now in her preaching and teaching, she used John Cotton's teaching to accuse Puritan preachers of preaching a false gospel. A gospel works. Therefore she couldn't and wouldn't stop going after the powerful magistrates and pastors, and as one would expect, these would threaten to destabilize their authority. Consequently, in their true authoritarian style, Winthrop and the Puritans put her on trial with an accusation of heresy. During the trial, they tried to convict her, but she talked circles around them for days, and therefore they couldn't convict her. Thanks to her confidence in her knowledge and experience of God and her eloquent speech, it was proving difficult for her opponents to pin her down. Eventually, they asked where she has gotten all these ideas from, and that's when he said that God has spoken to her, and that's what got her convicted. She then, together with her family, was excommunicated from the colony, and they found themselves a place of refuge in the tolerant colony of Rhode Island. As Dr Kim Craig has alluded to testimony as one of women's preachers notable values, Hutchinson embodied testimony in her preaching and teaching, and unfortunately, she had to pay a costly price for that, and she has lost her freedom. Part of the reason she was a threat was because she was a woman, and her preaching and teaching were unsettling to the powerful. She broke the boundaries of what women should and should not do confronted false teaching influenced many people and lived a life that testified to the challenges of being a woman, but then she rose up like an eagle despite everything being thrown at her. Basically, Anne Hutchinson was a badass. May we all be brave like Anne. Thank you so much.
[John Borthwick]
Thanks for listening to part two of four of the Klempa Lectureship Series. It was recorded in the chapel of Knox College, Toronto, and next time, we'll hear from the Reverend, Dr Sarah Hahn, we hope you'll join us. Thanks for joining us today on the Ministry Forum Podcast. We hope today's episode resonated with you and sparked your curiosity. Remember, you're not alone in your ministry journey. We're at the other end of some form of technology, and our team is committed to working hard to support your ministry every step of the way. If you enjoyed today's episode, tell your friends, your family, your colleagues tell someone, please don't keep us a secret, and of course, please subscribe, rate and leave a review in the places you listen to podcasts. Your feedback helps us reach more ministry leaders just like you. And honestly, it reminds us that we're not alone either. And don't forget to follow us on social media at Ministry Forum, on all of our channels. You can visit our website at ministryforum.ca, for more resources keeping up with upcoming events and ways to connect with our growing community. Until next time, may God's strength and courage be yours in all that you do, may you be fearless, not reckless, and may you be well in body, mind and spirit, and may you be at peace.