This is a compelling history of nineteenth-century Black and white American Protestant women’s efforts to establish, maintain and defend their rights to preach. Largely a study of rhetoric, Claiming the call to preach contributes to a longstanding dialogue within American religious history by answering an essential question in the field: Why have denominations and male religious leaders across the colour line made women travel to such herculean lengths to access formal religious authority, even though the history of Christianity in America bursts with precedents of preaching women? For Giver-Johnston, the answer is not only that women’s experiences have been sidelined within the historical record. The larger structural issue, she contends, is that women’s strategies for claiming authority have rarely been recorded. More than a work of historical recovery, Claiming the call to preach is a collection of the tactics of women preachers of the past and a roadmap for women of the present, who ‘still struggle with the ability to answer their call to preach’ (p. 41).

Giver-Johnston gathers these strategies from the case studies of four women, some better known than others: the African Methodist Episcopal itinerant minister Jarena Lee; the white temperance activist Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard; the white Presbyterian preacher Louisa Mariah Woolsey; and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion pastor Florence Spearing Randolph. While Giver-Johnston paints each woman’s story distinctively and aptly situates each in her social-historical context, the stories of this cohort share significant commonalities. For example, nineteenth-century preaching women often referenced supernatural experiences, such as divine voices and visions, that informed them of their callings. This strategy served to locate the source of their calls in God and outside of male and even human authority. These women also shared the use of several ‘rhetorical acts’, including ‘speaking the truth to the powers’ by critiquing oppressive power structures (pp. 102–3). A great success of Giver-Johnston’s monograph is its commitment to not only conveying how certain women effectively claimed the call to preach but also underlining moments when their pursuits were uneven or unsuccessful. Giver-Johnston refuses to spin this history into a progress narrative, and her approach highlights the contingency, instability and vulnerability of women’s preaching authority across the nineteenth century in the face of patriarchy and misogyny.

Claiming the call to preach adds significantly to the religious history of women in the United States and invites future research into subject areas that reach beyond the scope of the text. For instance, given Giver-Johnston’s work on women’s discursive tactics in print and speech, scholars might, in the vein of studies by Anthea Butler and Wallace Best, consider methods for dissecting nineteenth-century women’s bodily or gestural attempts to access preaching authority. Even as it broadens research pathways, Claiming the call to preach equally addresses ecclesial and public audiences, calling American Protestants to take seriously the ‘rhetorical witness of these four female preaching pioneers’ and to ‘re-invent’ themselves accordingly (p. 259).