“Jeanette Stokes is my favorite kind of elder: full of perspective and pluck and hope dropped generously as bread crumbs. Her new book offers the stamina we need right now for the ever-evolving road ahead and the long, buttery arc of social change. We’re better with her at our side.”
-Erin Lane, author of Someone Other Than A Mother, Talking Taboo, and Lessons in Belonging From A Church-Going Commitment Phobe.
After she graduated from Duke Divinity school in the 1970s, Jeanette Stokes sat with two officials of Orange Presbytery who supervised candidates for ordination, and was startled when one looked at her and said, “The churches don’t want ministers who look like you.”
Jeanette recalls that her reaction was something along the lines of “that’s what I’m here to change.”
In the Prologue to her new memoir, Making the Road as We Go, Stokes writes:
This book is about what happened next.
It is about my subsequent efforts to change the landscape of religion in North America, to make more space in communities of faith for people of every size, gender, and color. It is about the ways my understanding of faith and my spiritual practices expanded and changed over time.
It is also about what came before.
It is about how I came to be a person who thought I could influence the white, male, Eurocentric faith that was offered to me by my ancestors.
On September 29, 2022, Jeanette and RCWMS, the organization she founded 45 years ago and continues to lead, launched her book. Please visit vimeo to listen to this illuminating conversation.
Purchase Making the Road As We Go: HERE.
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