Preaching and Writing Bible Scripts A Response to Anna Carter Florence’s "'A Holy Joy of a Peculiar Kind:' Jarena Lee’s Call to Preach the Gospel—and Open Our Minds"

This paper responds to and extends the portrayal of Jarena Lee (1783-185?) as an interpreter of biblical scripts, advanced by Anna Carter Florence’s essay. She reexamines the significance of Lee’s autobiography as the first woman licensed to preach in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, casting her as a Black contemplative preacher. Noting Lee’s hermeneutical tendency to resource the Bible for its narrative scripts, Florence Carter states that Lee was a preacher who “found her script in the scripture.” With gratitude to Carter Florence’s proposal, this response reviews her perspective and explores extending Lee’s contemplative preaching approach from biblical script preacher to include Lee as a writer.