Day 1148: Monday, May 8. 2023

Learn more about the Fearless, Faithful Women in Our Catholic Tradition!

Women Witnesses for Racial Justice

Tuesday, May 9th at 7:00 pm EDT

The Rise of Black Catholic Women (like Venerable Henriette Delille) in 19th Century New Orleans

Professor Emily Clark will discuss the lives of Black Catholic women such as Venerable Henriette Delille in the context of late 18th century and early 19th century life in New Orleans, offering background on the many unique features of life in New Orleans.

The region’s development under French and Spanish rule brought the enslavement and transport of African people, Code Noir, color labels such as quadroon, the creolization of culture and religion, and how free women of color such as Henriette Delille, Juliette Gaudin, and Josephine Charles were able to found the second successful religious community of Black Catholic women, the Sisters of the Holy Family, in the United States.

Biography

Emily Clark is the Clement Chambers Benenson Professor in American Colonial History at Tulane University. She specializes in early American and Atlantic world history, with a focus on the French Atlantic. Her research interests include slavery, race, gender, religion and historical memory.

Research Interests

Early America and the Atlantic World, particularly the Francophone Atlantic, including Africa. I am especially interested in the ways that the history of places like Louisiana and the French Antilles can illuminate the development of racial, ethnic, and national identities in the wider Atlantic world and in other parts of colonial and early national America. Recent books include New Orleans, Louisiana, and Saint-Louis, Senegal: Mirror Cities in the Atlantic World, 1659–2000s, edited with Ibrahima Thioub and Cécile Vidal (2019) and The Strange History of the American Quadroon, which historicizes the figures of the quadroon and the “tragic mulatta,” their links with Haiti and New Orleans, and the role they have played in shaping national American memory and identity. Her teaching interests include Atlantic world history, early North America, America and the Caribbean in the Revolutionary Age, Louisiana and New Orleans, religion, gender, and the history of race and race relations. Also, archival skills and paleography and the development of web-based student projects. I especially enjoy introducing students at all levels to rich colonial and early national manuscript records housed in New Orleans archives and am a collaborator on ViaNolaVie https://www.vianolavie.org/ and New Orleans Historical https://neworleanshistorical.org/

Register with this link:

https://futurechurch.org/event/?=258

Tuesday, May 23rd at 7:00pm EDT

Women in the Lectionary

Focusing on passages about women in the Bible and feminine imagery of God, Quaker minister Ashley Wilcox will offer an overview of “The Women’s Lectionary” as she reimagines the liturgical calendar of preaching for one year.

According to Pastor Wilcox, women are daughters, wives, and mothers. They are also strong leaders, evil queens, and wicked stepmothers. They are disciples, troublemakers, and prophetesses. Ashley Wilcox explores how the feminine descriptions of God in the Bible are similarly varied―how does it change our understanding if God is feminine wisdom, has wings, or is an angry mother bear?

Discover the good news of the lectionary with Professor Wilcox, perfect for every female clergyperson or anyone seeking to incorporate more insights from a female perspective into their preaching. From well-known figures like Miriam and Mary to lesser-known women like Huldah and Sapphira to feminine metaphors, this comprehensive resource features more than one hundred commentary essays with an Old Testament and New Testament passage for each Sunday of the year and special holy days in the calendar.

Biography

Ashley M. Wilcox is a Quaker minister and the bestselling author of The Women’s Lectionary: Preaching the Women of the Bible throughout the Year (Westminster John Knox Press). She currently serves as the interim pastor of New Garden Friends Meeting.

Ashley is passionate about helping preachers find their voice. She taught preaching to students at Candler School of Theology for five years and now has her own preaching coaching practice, Preaching with Confidence. Ashley also teaches Bible courses for Woodbrooke (a Quaker center in Birmingham, England) and Guilford College.

Ashley is a graduate of Candler School of Theology and Willamette University College of Law. She preaches and speaks across the U.S. and internationally. Her writing has been featured in Geez, Working Preacher, Friends Journal, Fidelia, and Quaker anthologies.

Born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, she now lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. You can learn more about Ashley on her website, www.ashleymwilcox.com.

Register with this link:

https://futurechurch.org/event/?=259

Tuesday, June 13th at 7pm EDT

The Women Who Led and Ministered in Acts

Professor Teresa Calpino of Loyolo University offers a fascinating look at The Acts of the Aspostles as she searches for the stories of the women who are named. Luke names a number of women in Acts who have been ignored too often in our faith history.

For instance, Tabitha (Acts 9:36–42) and Lydia (Acts 16:11–15) are mentioned only in praising the apostle associated with their story. As a result, stereotypical categorization has swept these important characters from their rightful place into relative obscurity. In fact, an examination of their stories set against the expectations of women in Greco-Roman antiquity reveals their unconventional situations. In particular, the representations of the “ideal woman” in the Greco-Roman world are at variance with the portraits of Tabitha and Lydia. Both women are portrayed as independent, support themselves financially, and are regarded as benefactresses in their own right. Of course, benefactions from women were commonplace among elite women of the dominant class, but neither Tabitha nor Lydia belong to such select families.

Biography

Dr. Calpino received her BS from Northwestern University in Communications. She received an MA in Biblical Languages and Literature in 2005 and her PhD in New Testament and Early Christianity in 2012 both from Loyola University Chicago. Her interests include Acts of the Apostles, Women and Gender, The Greco-Roman Social Context of early Christian literature, The Church Fathers, and Letter, Inscriptions and Artifacts of the early Christian world.

Dr. Calpino’s book Women, Work and Leadership in Acts was published in 2014 by Mohr-Siebeck. (WUNT II, 361; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014) She has also published articles in Biblical Review and Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi. Her book chapter, “Mary Magdalene in Modern Scholarship,” will be published in late 2014 in the scholarly anthology Maria Magdalena. She has also presented numerous papers at conferences on both the local and national level. She is a member of The Society of Biblical Literature, The Chicago Society of Biblical Research and The Catholic Biblical Association. She is currently the chair of the “Teaching the Bible” section for the Midwest Society of Biblical Literature.

Register with this link

https://futurechurch.org/event/?=260

Celebrate the Feast of Mary Magdalene! Part One on July 18th

Tuesday, July 18th at 7pm EDT

Mary Magdalene in the Movies

On Tuesday, July 18th join Professor Joan Taylor as she discusses modern movie versions of Mary Magdalene.

Mary Magdalene has been a figure of religious and artistic inspiration for Christians for over 2000 years. In the Bible, she is a disciple of Jesus and a key witness at his crucifixion and resurrection. In the Western Church her role and character changed and she became known as a penitent prostitute. In medieval art, she is often portrayed naked, covered only with her long hair. In more modern versions, she has been portrayed as the romantic partner and wife of Jesus.

What is the truth?

Biography:

Professor Taylor is Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King's College in London.

After a BA degree at Auckland University, New Zealand, Joan completed post-graduate studies at the University of Otago and then went to the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (Kenyon Institute) as Annual Scholar in 1986. She undertook a PhD at New College, Edinburgh University, and was appointed in 1992 to a position of lecturer (subsequently senior lecturer) at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, in the departments of both Religious Studies and History. In 1995 she won an Irene Levi-Sala Award in Israel’s archaeology, for the book version of her PhD thesis, Christians and the Holy Places (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993, rev. 2003).

In 1996-7 she was Visiting Lecturer and Research Associate in Women’s Studies in Religion at Harvard Divinity School, a position she held in association with a Fulbright Award. She has also been Honorary Research Fellow in the Departments of History and Jewish Studies at University College London. She has taught at King’s College London since 2009.

Research Interests

Joan’s approach is multi-disciplinary; she works in literature, language, history and archaeology. She has written numerous books and articles in her fields of interest.

• The New Testament and other early Christian texts within their wider social, historical and cultural contexts, with a special interest in archaeological evidence.

• The historical figures of Jesus of Nazareth, John the Baptist, Judas Iscariot, Paul, Pontius Pilate, Mary Magdalene, and other New Testament persons, both in terms of the ancient evidence and how they have been constructed over time, including in modern literature and film.

• Second Temple Judaism, particularly the Jewish legal schools (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, ‘Zealots’) and popular religious movements.

• The Dead Sea Scrolls and the archaeology of Qumran.

• Alexandrian Judaism, Philo of Alexandria, and the ‘Therapeutae’

• Women and gender within early Judaism and Christianity, especially regarding women in leadership roles.

• Jewish-Christianity and early Christian constructions of history and orthodoxy.

• Comparative Graeco-Roman religion and philosophy: literary, epigraphical and archaeological evidence.

• The archaeology and history of Christian holy places and travel to Palestine over the centuries, with special interest in the sites of

•

Register for the July 18th Event with Professor Joan Taylor with this link

https://futurechurch.org/event/?=263