Wrestling With The Patriarchs

A book about preaching and about women, this volume builds confidence for women in the pulpit. By exploring issues of psychology and communication, and by writing in an intimate and anecdotal style, McGee teaches women how to find their voice and their personal integrity as professional servants of God. McGee speaks not as an ideologue but from a moderate feminist position.

Patriarchs and Prophets recite biblical stories from the creation of life to the rule of King David. The book, written and understandably, answers many important questions, like why good people have problems, why hardworking people don't breakthrough, and why some children are born sick? Why does Almighty God not stop this all? In this book, one can find answers to these and many other questions.

The preacher’s body is a tool for proclamation, a vehicle by which a sermon comes to life. Female preachers, engaged in a task not long their own, know well the added attention directed to their physicality. They can experience ordinary decisions about attire, accessories, hairstyles, and movement as complex, and occasionally precarious, choices around how to bring flesh to their sermons. They can also experience the extraordinary power of their bodies, when materiality weighs in on the message. McCullough explores the every-Sunday bodily decisions of contemporary female preachers, with an eye to uncovering the meanings about body, preaching, and God alive underneath. Ultimately, she argues for a renewed understanding of embodiment, in which one’s living body, inescapably intertwined with her preaching, becomes the avenue for greater knowledge about how to preach and deeper insight into the faith professed.

This book treats upon the themes of Bible history—themes not in themselves new, but so presented here as to give them a new significance. Beginning with the rebellion in heaven, the author shows why sin was permitted, why Satan was not destroyed, and why man was tested; gives a thrilling description of man's temptation and fall, and rehearses the plan of salvation. The life of each of the Patriarchs from Adam to King David is carefully scanned, and from each a lesson is drawn. The deliverance of Israel from Egypt, the incidents of their forty years' wanderings, the building of the Sanctuary, the entrance into Canaan, the subjection of the land, and the continued history of the Israelite nation down to the close of David's reign are all related in an interesting, narrative style that charms the reader and opens up to him new beauties in the Scriptural record.