Issue 24 Towards HealingBlog | The Late Greats in retrospect
The Late Greats in retrospect
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 12.09.20
I owe a debt of thanks to Jo Swinney, the first editor of Preach, for first suggesting that I write a column on the great preachers of earlier generations, and to her successor, Louisa Lockwood, for encouraging me to continue with it.
Their suggestions about whom to cover and how to present the pieces have been tremendously helpful, and their generosity with the word limits and deadlines greatly appreciated (I fear that the ‘late’ in the title of the series came more to describe the arrival of the copy than the brief to explore those who have gone before us). Even though we have only been able to dip into the history of preaching over the last six years, there has been a variety of subjects – some I suspect already well-known to the readers, some new names, and some whose claim to greatness might be challenged. I cannot pretend that my selection has been anything but subjective. It would be possible to continue this column for another six or another sixty years and still to find those whose preaching ministry has much to teach us in the mid-twenty first century. But the time has come, for me at least, to bid the column a fond farewell.
WOMEN’S VOICES
Should someone be writing something similar, sixty years hence, s/he would be free of one of the limitations that will have been apparent here: the range of female voices to explore will be much greater as this century nears its end. Of the 23 preachers I’ve explored, only six have been women, and three of them (Catherine Booth, Hulda Rees and Phoebe Palmer) from the same era and the same circle of influence. It is impossible to gauge how much the church, the world over, has deprived itself over the centuries by its prohibition on women’s preaching
