Daughters of thunder

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1:13We give reverence, honor, and praise to God the Father, to God the Son, and to God the Holy Spirit. To the officers and members of the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church, brothers and sisters, Good morning. This music, these voices, are familiar to me from many Sundays of my childhood. But there's a difference in a place where I always heard men speaking. These are the voices of women. I had a resolution within myself that the Word of God had to go forward, and it didn't matter the platform. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. He who has an ear, let him hear. I will preach on the railroad tracks if that's where God sends me.

2:07I'm Alvin Hall, and this is Daughters of Thunder. So it did not matter to me whether they opened their pulpit, because the pulpit of the righteous belonged to God, and the pulpit was in the heart. In this week's episode of Heart and Soul, I'm going to introduce you to a world of small towns, historic churches, and the women who are slowly transforming a religious tradition. A tradition that is at the heart of black culture in the American South. It's good to be in the house of the Lord one more time, isn't it? It's good to be in the house of the Lord one more time. Donna Hawkins is pastor of the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in Paducah, Kentucky.

3:00Paducah is a very American town, a very southern town. What part of Paducah is this? This is the south side of Paducah. And this used to be the primarily African American part of the city? Yes, sir. This part of the city, everybody knew everybody else. Neighbors were neighbors, were neighbors. people that you could count on. It feels rural, even within the city limits. In the summer heat, the streets are almost deserted, and it feels like you've slipped, without noticing, into another time. I'd love to see your church. Oh, come in. Can I have a tour? Yes, sir. Please come in. Come in. Most businesses in this area have closed or moved to another part of town, But the churches are still here on almost every other corner.

3:55I was 10 years old, 10 years old, the first time I ever walked into this building and saw it and saw the light fixtures. Oh, my goodness, I've never seen anything so beautiful in my life. And they had a tithe box that was in the shape of a cross. And on top of the cross was a flaming light. It was a light bulb, but a flaming light. And that was so inviting. it made you want to put something in that box. Across the South, black churches were historically founded by small local communities or families. They remain repositories of identity and history, each with its own way of worshiping God. These churches were not only founded for the salvation of people's souls, they also offered a release from the pressures needed to survive a restricted, then segregated, existence.

4:52The leaders of these churches were always men. In my experience with family churches, there's a matriarch, there's a patriarch, there are families that birth that church, there's the story, there's the history, how we have lived in this community, who we are, but also the extended generations of persons that are still related to the original founders of why this church in this place and why we're here now. This is United Methodist Pastor, Reverend Dr. Jackie King. She has spent much of her career as an itinerant, ministering to small churches across the South, sometimes several at a time. They would adopt you, births, deaths, life, finding a parent.

5:47You know, I was at one church and the family called me over and they said, we're going to search for the missing parent that I've never known. One of the churches, there had been a cemetery that had been long overgrown, and it had some bad memories, but how do we get a healing? I mean, many of the things, they don't show up in your seminary education as a course, but it's life. When I was a child, traveling ministers, always men, went from church to church where they held worship services. They were called circuit riders. The Missionary Baptist Church still, a lot of them do not embrace female ministers.

6:34They just don't. So I didn't wait around for somebody to call and ask me to preach. I'd find my own. Now, in a culture that values its traditions and mistrusts change, New forms of touring ministry have allowed women like Donna to establish themselves as preachers and pastors long before they could serve a permanent congregation. I preached at senior citizens' homes, nursing homes. I found churches in Tennessee, in Illinois. For as many people who rejected me, there were twice as many people who accepted me because they know that we are here to save the lost. My cousin's husband said, where does Donna find all these little bitty churches?

7:20Wherever. If anybody needs a word, I don't care how far I have to travel, I'll travel. I'll travel. Because I'm on assignment. It's not for me, not for my comfort. I'm on an assignment. Thank you. If you're able to stand, will you please? And if you feel comfortable touching someone's hand, will you do that? It takes me exactly an hour and 18 minutes to get here. Pastor Loretta Horton Addison met me in her church office, immaculately dressed from head to toe in golden yellow. This 90 miles you've been driving every Sunday for 13 years. This December will be 13 years. And you have a full-time career.

8:09Yeah, yeah. I'll pray for balance. It's Mama, Mimi, Honey, Pastor, and then I had the nerve two years ago to get ordained as a bishop. The male preachers of my childhood were suited in the well-pressed armor of righteousness, whatever the truth of their lives. As traveling pastors, women need to provide themselves with a different kind of protection. I have a first assistant from my home church who travels with me everywhere. I never go to any ministry places by myself. I always try to stay covered just in case. And most of the time I'm in the car praying, I'm talking, or either praying and talking to a member who's going through a situation.

8:56There are many in these communities who still see women through a certain lens as essentially weak or immoral, not to be trusted with their neighbor's souls. They always need to be covered. Do you know that prayer is the most powerful weapon that the Christian has? Oh, it's not a gun. It's not a knife. But it's prayer. When you go down on your knees and pray, Lord, you see how they treat me. Lord, come to my aid. Don't you know he'll come to see about you? And he'll come to see about you in a hurry. When I was in first grade at Southside Elementary School right down the street, I decided then that I wanted to teach and I wanted to make a difference in the lives of others.

9:44So for 34 and a half years, I taught. And then I was called to pastor here. I was preaching, but didn't pastor. I didn't start pastoring until after I had retired. So the Lord, he just orchestrated my life. my life. Don't you know that prayer changes things? Prayer changes situations. Prayer changes people. Well, how you know, Pastor? Because prayer changed me. Ha! I was a hot mess, but I thank God that my mom and my daddy prayed for me. I thank God that my pastor prayed for me. I thank God that I'm not the same person that I used to be. I, from a child, I didn't, but I always knew something was different.

10:29I always knew I never fitted in. My father always said, you have the gift of gathering to get people to follow you. He said, so you watch what you do. And just from nowhere, I knew the call was there. But as a female, that can't be it.

10:49There were two prominent women preachers here in Paducah who were not accepted by most churches, by male pastors, and frankly by a lot of females. And I saw the struggles. I saw how they were treated. But they continued on anyway. They would come to a service and not be recognized. They would have to sit in the back, never invited to the pulpit. It's a historical. You know, my uncle was the pastor. My grandfather was the pastor. My great-grandfather was the pastor. It also comes from who has the authority to lead and how they can lead. It's all about me. Look at me. Look what I can do. I've got power over you.

11:42I can determine whether you get to stand in a pulpit. I can determine whether you can speak. But it's not about them. I didn't understand. Lord, they don't like me. They're talking about me. They go, hmm. So what? They talked about the prophets before I even was thought of. Tradition. We have been locked into it so much that the Bible says the traditions of man have made the word of God almost null and void. We get caught up in so many traditions that we don't even think about what the Bible says.

12:22Is the U.S. conceding the green energy race to China? When the Trump administration said it was pulling out of the Paris Agreement for a second time, it seemed like a wholesale withdrawal from the climate change question. All the while, China's becoming a global powerhouse of green technology. What could happen in the long run if the U.S. continues to cede the floor to China on clean energy? Listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

13:09How close the world came to nuclear war. And what they had to do to pull it back from the brink. The bomb, Kennedy and Khrushchev. All episodes available now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

13:57You're listening to Daughters of Thunder from the BBC World Service. This is the Reverend James Lee Hudson, pastor of Harrison Street Missionary Baptist Church in Paducah. See, when I came here, if I'm honest with you, I said, there are no women preachers in this church. I'm not. And the men were like, yeah, yeah, we've got a real pastor. But I wrestled with that because my mind kept going back to my grandmother. My mind kept going back to the women preachers that I had seen before. and they understood the word. They taught the word. And I remember my grandmother, the leadership that she would provide at the church because that church did not have a pastor at that time.

14:40She was pretty much the minister. So I wrestled with that. And I said, am I doing what God wants me to do or I'm doing what's been passed down to do? Is this an expectation to not let women preach in my church? I wrestled with that from the time I came to this church.

15:01I'm happy all by myself. My pastor's father, his mother was called to preach. But of course that was totally unheard of and totally unacceptable. But she would go down to the railroad tracks and preach to the rocks. And preach to the rocks. And preach to the rocks. We met Reverend Vanessa Skillion in Paducah. She had driven 216 miles from Louisville, Kentucky, to preach a special Saturday sermon at Macedonia. He actually started a women's support group, and he named us the Daughters of Thunder. And we were women that were called into the ministry and was just totally confused, didn't know why we were being rejected.

16:01And so he gathered us together, and so we would preach to one another.

16:15No women preached. It was one lady there, God rest her soul. Miss Susie Mallory was a preacher, and everybody almost like a stony lady. Criticized everybody. Come that old holy woman, that old crazy woman talking about the Bible. And she'd work a regular job and come home. But meantime, she'd be on those street corners praying and preaching and going to the prison when some of the male pastors went. She'd be at the prisons praying and praying over those prisoners. But they called her crazy. I got a chance after I got called. I seen her years later, and I thanked her. And she said, daughter, thank you for even telling me.

16:54She said, but I did it for the glory of God. He's never left you. He never will. He's always there for you. He always will be. Call on him. Trust in him. Wait on him. Trust in him. Let him work it out for you. He will. The minister who was here right before I came, he was not accepting of women pastors. Oh, we had a good personal relationship, but as far as in the church, I wasn't allowed to sit in the pulpit while he was here. He's no shorter than his word. When you are faithful to him, he'll be faithful to you. Do you know that at his funeral, the pulpit was full of male pastors? and I'm sitting here because they know who I am, just sitting there in the audience and the man who was in charge came and invited this male pastor to the pulpit, that male pastor to the pulpit and I'm still sitting here and that's fine but do you know that during the service his wife asked that I would have remarks?

18:06So I was able to get up and I did not go to the pulpit. I stood on the floor because I respected them, but other male pastors didn't have an opportunity to speak. I had an opportunity to speak. It still moves you. Oh, oh, the Lord is so amazing. Who would have thought that I would be the one given an opportunity to speak at the service of a man who really didn't accept women in the ministry? Where did your grace come from in that moment? What inside you helped you not see the irony of this as something of a triumph? It was the Lord. It was all Him. The Lord carried me to the front of the church.

18:58The Lord put the words in my mouth. Because at that moment, I was only there to comfort the family, not for any other reason. But in that moment, the Lord used me in His service. And all I could say was, thank you, Lord. When I left the rural South and went out into the wider world, I struggled to reconcile the things male pastors told me as a young man with life in a world beyond what they knew and believed. But you can't grow up in this tradition and not be deeply touched by, at the very least, the earnestness of the music. of the prayers, the importance of forgiveness and grace, and the belief that you can survive and be inspired again and again and again.

20:00As I've spent time with these women, I've begun to ask myself if they have something to say that I need to hear. the hurricane season of 2005 occurred I get a call while we're evacuated to come in and preach for the linemen and if you've driven on I-10 you don't know how dark I-10 is until there are no lights on I-10 I mean it was black black and then you get the cutoff to go to Port Arthur and you know all the poles are down and I mean you realize that you are praying for people not only to restore the order, but restore light and restore power. And so I preach, you know, just a devotion for these linemen.

20:52And so a young lineman came up and he says, we heard that you were coming and I wasn't going to come because I've never heard a woman preach. He said, but I figured if you had came through the dark and traveled wherever you had came from, I needed to spend my time. What God has for me, it is for me. What God has for me, it is for me. Time brings about a change. Time brings about a change. I know so many ministers who were just totally against females. But then their wife started to preach. Their daughter received a call. And then they started thinking, well, you know, maybe. But if God could use them, he can use anybody.

21:44I know without a doubt that he will bring me out. But God has for me. It is for me. I grew up in a church where you saw men pastors, strong, dominant, in control, never make a mistake, never sin. They've got it all together, never have a struggle. And that's what I believe. You didn't see the touching, the caring. For me, I felt I had a certain image to uphold. And yet I'm the kind of person with my children, with my wife, I am a caring person. I am transparent. So since I've been in ministry and brought women on, I'm able to release that. My congregation see me cry more than anybody now. They see the tears and believe it or not, they can empathize with me.

22:41Come and go to that land. Come and go to that land where I'm bound. Is there something different that a woman brings to the calling? Oh my, oh my. Now, are you really going to ask me this? A woman's heart where a man might just, well, let them. It's the compassion. We can't afford to turn our back on anybody. We preach a lot of love, where in growing up you heard of a lot of fire and brimstone. Now, it is a hell in heaven, okay? And I don't want to be so loving that I love you into hell, okay? But I think we bring in the compassion and the openness. You can touch me. We're right here on the ground with you.

23:39You know, in 2020, that was my most difficult year ever in ministry. March, COVID came. My mentor here died of cancer. My great aunt died. Then the man that was closest to me in church here at the church at Harrison Street, he died in April. My oldest sister died in May. My youngest brother was killed tragically in June. One of the young men at my church that I mentored died in July. One of the young ladies from the college where my kids went to school who lived here, who was a member of this church, got killed tragically in August. And then on top of all of that, the superintendent did what was called blackface.

24:25And I was on a school board. There was so much tension, so much tension. And I was overwhelmed. And I struggle with things. I struggle with God. You know, I know all the scriptures about salvation. I know all the scriptures to quote. I can quote them. But when I was in that situation, I'm looking at my pastor from home and I looked at all the funnels that he did. Very stoic. And I'm wanting to break down. And I felt like having women preachers, believe it or not, it was a way that I could. And feel okay.

25:07So I recall, I'm going to share this, when I went to Jackson, Mississippi. Reverend Dr. Paula Smith is the senior pastor of the Gordon Memorial United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. I got off the plane, I'm taking the car, driving down, passing through all of these cotton fields. Cotton fields wasn't new to me, I'd seen cotton fields before. But it was something about this time. It called me. I found myself pulling over, crossing over the little ditch, but it felt like I was crossing into another dimension. And as soon as I got there, I mean, I'm on my knees. And then, I mean, tears just started to fall.

25:53And as the tears fall, you know, in the hot summer, the tears hit the dirt, the little dust things. And then putting my hands in the dirt, and it's like I felt my ancestors. But I also felt at that time, who will speak for my children now? I said, what if I'm not good enough? but even more important, what if I am? So what is it that I'm hiding? The memory of the past and its anxieties continue to echo in the lives of these southern communities. To be a black religious leader here means carrying an extra, often unspoken, burden. Now unto him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.

26:44To the only wise God, our Savior, be glory, majesty, dominion, and power, both now and forever.

26:54We're living in some different times. We've never experienced the things that we're experiencing now. We've never experienced those. And the congregation is hungry. What do we do? What do we do? Well, we do what we've always done. We stand firm. We pray. We trust God, and we're going to make it just like we always have. When I grew up, I remember being stunned by how often we were told to fear hell, to fear burning for all eternity. The Lord's program is so much bigger than all of us, but he still keeps moving barriers out of the way. When Donna Hawkins preaches, she's transported, consumed by her faith.

27:43But she isn't screaming at your sinful soul. She is talking to you as a human being. The church with women in charge is no longer about fire and brimstone. Yes, God is still referred to as a He, but He is a God of love. There's a humanity here I didn't expect and a faith that puts the person first. Everybody here doesn't accept, but they pray for me and I pray for them.

28:24Meeting these women gives me hope for the future of rural black communities, where tradition and history are being tempered by a renewed sense of power, of hope, and most of all, of love. I have a way of growing on people. Yeah, I have a way of growing on people. Hear him say, well done. You've been listening to Daughters of Thunder from Heart and Soul with me, Alvin Hall. The producer was Michael Omni. It was a Just Radio production for the BBC World Service. Speak for me.

29:17Is the US conceding the green energy race to China? When the Trump administration said it was pulling out of the Paris Agreement for a second time, it seemed like a wholesale withdrawal from the climate change question. All the while, China's becoming a global powerhouse of green technology. What could happen in the long run if the US continues to cede the floor to China on clean energy? Listen to The Global Story on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.