A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church: Year W is a multi-use tool for congregational worship or study, personal devotion or study, and scholarly reflection and interpretation.
Of one thing I feel quite certain: Gafney’s paradigm-shifting scholarship will influence biblical preaching and teaching for generations to come.
Gafney dedicated her new lectionary "For those who have searched for themselves in the scriptures and did not find themselves in the masculine pronouns."
As one who often cannot find herself in the masculine pronouns of today's liturgical offerings, I am profoundly grateful for this beautiful, scholarly rendition of texts I have loved since childhood even if I didn't always see myself in them.
As I — and many women and men like me — mature in contemporary consciousness, too many lectionary selections no longer adequately convey God's dynamic, eternally relevant Word. Instead they risk becoming a painful countersign to the Holy One in whose image all of us are made. . .
Of one thing I feel quite certain: Gafney's paradigm-shifting scholarship will influence biblical preaching and teaching for generations to come.
What would it look like if women built a lectionary focusing on women’s stories?
What does it look like to tell the good news through the stories of women who are often on the margins of scripture and often set up to represent bad news? How would a lectionary centering women’s stories, chosen with womanist and feminist commitments in mind, frame the presentation of the scriptures for proclamation and teaching?
The scriptures are androcentric, male-focused, as is the lectionary that is dependent upon them. As a result, many congregants know only the biblical men's stories told in the Sunday lectionary read in their churches. A more expansive, more inclusive lectionary will remedy that by introducing readers and hearers of scripture to “women's stories” in the scriptures.
A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, when completed, will be a three-year lectionary accompanied by a stand-alone single year lectionary, Year W, that covers all four gospels.
