Didache Volume 23 Number 1

INTRODUCTION

Dean G. Blevins, Editor

Welcome to Volume 23:1 (May 2023) and the beginning of the twenty-third year of publishing Didache: Faithful Teaching. Our current publication picks up with a theme from the last edition, the experience of women in ministry then moves to remember one powerful woman theologian Mildren Bangs Wynkoop. The journal continues to more historical treatises of denominational polity and the care of the vulnerable from the most unlikely source, to the role of technology in education and even publishing. This edition will be the final offering before returning to the Global Theology Conference edition with both plenary and response papers in place before the conference’s scheduled meeting. So, with the Global Theology Conference, and supplemental articles from regional submissions, the journal will be on track to navigate to Volume 24.

The edition opens with the voice of women in ministry reported by two capable researchers using differing methodologies. In the last edition, readers “heard” from women through their personal essays. This time readers will hear the voices of women albeit from within a larger explanatory framework. Dr. Julie Cheney adopts an approach grounded in transformational learning theory and gender role congruence to chart the call of ministry within the lives of women. Dr. Cheney’s writing, part of her Ph.D. research, includes a more historical orientation to women in ministry, so it best serves to situate her later conclusions and our introduction to the discussion. Dr. Kathryn Lewis Mowry (Trevecca Nazarene University) follows with a similar study of women’s experience in ministry anchored in grounded theory, a methodology within qualitative research, to capture the “voices” and patterns within and among women’s experience. The two articles provide a sobering perspective worthy of everyone’s careful reading. As with the last edition, most of the women appear to come from USA/Canada. The choice proves intentional to attempt to correlate experiences, particularly when engaging male leadership, within a given geographic and cultural context. The hope, as in the last journal edition, would be to see similar reflections coming from other global regions.

READ MORE

Table of Contents