'Women with the Good News': The Rhetorical Heritage of Pentecostal Holiness Women Preachers

By: Kristen Welch

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The first book to share interviews with women preachers of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church (IPHC), Dr. Welch explores rhetoric, gender, and religion in the biographies, autobiographies, and histories that detail what it means to be a Pentecostal woman preacher in Oklahoma. Archival materials provide a picture of Pentecostalism years before Oklahoma became a state in 1907, and a transcribed interview with the former Presiding Bishop of the IPHC, James Leggett, gives a contemporary view of what it means to be Pentecostal in the 21st century. A Christian scholar who grew up in the IPHC, Dr. Welch draws upon the field of rhetoric to use Jim Corder's theory of generative ethos to illuminate the way identity is constructed on individual, collective, and spiritual levels. She shows the role place plays in the development of faith and character in her chapter "We are of this Place: Oklahoma and Ethos." She concludes the book with an honest look at the administrative levels of the IPHC and ends with a note of hope for the future.