Interrogating the Text – Woman Preach Methods for Communal and Contextual Exegesis By Rev. Earle J. Fisher, Ph.D.
I’ve journeyed with WomanPreach! for over 10 years. I’ve spent a lot of that time appreciating and advocating for its ability to bring people into what Dr. Valerie Bridgeman calls, “full prophetic voice.” It’s a beauty to behold and a pleasure to participate in. I am especially thankful for our gender-inclusive disposition and always look forward to our periodic event “Sophie’s Table” – a conversational training for women, men, and gender-nonconforming family.
One of my favorite aspects of the Sophie’s Table sessions is the “Interrogating the Text” segments (and not just because I often help facilitate them). This is where we gather in consideration of the scripture and theme that has brought us together and begin to reflect upon the scenarios each preacher will be charged to speak into as part of the practicum. Without fail, and I mean that intentionally – like, EVERY TIME – the scenarios are wonderfully crafted and connected to the selected scriptures and themes that capture a current event and complicated reality that we must contextually exegete as a community. We sit with the scriptures and ask fresh, nuanced, and aggravating questions seeking relevant, righteous, and enduring truths by which a preacher or speaker would be prepared to share publicly.
Beyond that, we work with preachers to shape sermonic reflections (in a plethora of community settings – both congregational and non-congregational) and encourage them to do at least three things:
- Be faithful to the task – These scenarios don’t always request or require a conventional sermonic presentation. The task might be to preach or make remarks at a public rally or respond to a crisis in a town hall or community meeting. And we do not believe it is the role of the preacher to impose a particular form on a given situation.
- Be faithful to the time – We believe the structure and strategy of the spoken word makes a difference. We won’t allow the “spirit” to be weaponized as an excuse for violating the time that has been allotted for the task. We believe God knows how to use the preacher in the amount of time they have been assigned to say what they have been deployed by the divine to say.
- Be faithful to the text – We believe the sacred text(s) are a primary (but not exclusive) place by which we derive our inspiration to speak into the contextual moment. We refuse to use sacred texts as a pre-text for harmful, hate-filled, or dehumanizing claims about what God is saying in and about the moment/scenario. Thus, our interrogation of the text and the local context ought to lead us into a more loving and liberating fulfilment of the task.
These are some of the ways we’ve empowered those who have a compassion and curiosity relative to producing prophetic speech for the public square. There are others who do it well, yet no one does it quite like WomanPreach!
Dr. Earle Fisher is the Senior Pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Memphis, TN. He is an adjunct professor in religion and humanities at several local colleges and universities and is the author of the forthcoming book, Albert Cleage Jr., and the Black Prophetic Tradition: A Reintroduction of The Black Messiah (Lexington Books).