Engendering Church explores the power, processes, and circumstances that brought about the new gender relations in the African Methodist Church--one of the largest African American denominations in the U.S. Dodson tells the heroic stories of women like Sara Hatcher who rose from behind the scenes to confront the hierarchy of male clergy. Dodson's historical account of the church and its many changes show that unless women hold church positions, they are overlooked as proactive agents of organizational power. She also links the church to broader social change. When women began to function in...

Dodson examines the history of traditional religious practices in the Oriente region of contemporary Cuba.

Amanda Berry Smith was a trail-blazing black woman evangelist of the nineteenth century. She became a member of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal congregeation in Philadelphia in 1865, a time when women were denied positions of authority in the denomination. By the time of her death in 1915 the church had conceded to women the positions of congregational stewardess, conference evangelist, and denominational deaconess. Her autobiography, first published in 1893, not only captures the spirit of the woman who became a celebrity of Christian evangelism around the world; it also tells us much...

"Birthed in Ghana during a roundtable style dialogue between scholars from around the world, this third TRRR [Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race] volume focuses on the religions and spirituality of African descendants."--Chapter 1.