What would it look like if women built a lectionary focusing on women’s stories?
What does it look like to tell the good news through the stories of women who are often on the margins of scripture and often set up to represent bad news? How would a lectionary centering women’s stories, chosen with womanist and feminist commitments in mind, frame the presentation of the scriptures for proclamation and teaching?
The scriptures are androcentric, male-focused, as is the lectionary that is dependent upon them. As a result, many congregants know only the biblical men's stories told in the Sunday lectionary read in their churches. A more expansive, more inclusive lectionary will remedy that by introducing readers and hearers of scripture to “women's stories” in the scriptures.
A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, when completed, will be a three-year lectionary accompanied by a stand-alone single year lectionary, Year W, that covers all four gospels.
Read an excerpt.
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“Gafney's paradigm-shifting scholarship will influence biblical preaching and teaching for generations to come."
—National Catholic Reporter
". . . some of the best of recent biblical scholarship . . . "
—Anglican Theological Review
". . . this resource will raise biblical literacy and illuminate figures and plotlines long left in the shadows."
—The Christian Century
“In a predominantly patriarchal world that still diminishes the lives, gifts, contributions, and voices of women, Professor Wil Gafney offers a distinct, bold, women’s lectionary for the whole church and academy.”
—The Rev. Dr. Luke A. Powery, Dean, Duke University Chapel, and Associate Professor of Homiletics, Duke Divinity School
“As someone who has learned so much from the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, I commend it to every congregation and classroom. It is a prime example of revolutionary scholarship.”
—Brian D. McLaren, author of Faith After Doubt
“Wil Gafney has offered the church a treasure in this Women’s Lectionary, and we would do well to make use of it quickly and thoroughly.”
—Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, author
“I did not know how much my soul needed A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church until I began reading it, but now I suspect that I will never prepare another sermon or devotional without consulting it. Every pastor, indeed every Christian, needs this among their collection.”
—Chanequa Walker-Barnes, PhD, author of I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation
"Preaching with Gafney’s lectionary aids may provide a new sort of companionable presence to the pulpit and the pews alike: hearing, listening and reflecting on the God/human relationship with sensitivity to issues often overlooked or considered too difficult to discuss."
—Rev. Jerrod Hugenot, The Christian Citizen
