Welcome to the Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South, where we weave feminism and spirituality into a vision of justice for the world.
We began in 1977 to support and connect women who understood their lives and work as ministry. Over the years, we have expanded to include a wide variety of programs and resources on feminism, faith, creativity, spirituality, and justice. Please join us.
When Jeanette Stokes graduated from Duke Divinity School in 1977, she knew she wanted to do something for her peers, the women who were finishing seminary and entering ordained ministry. At that time it was hard for women in ministry to find and connect with one another, especially in the South. Jeanette’s beloved mentor, the Rev. Helen Crotwell, suggested to her, “Why don’t you do something no one else is going to do?”
The Early Years
Later that year, Jeanette set up shop for the Resource Center for Women & Ministry in the South in the spare bedroom of her apartment in Greensboro, NC. She wrote down names of people interested in feminism and religion on three-by-five cards. For RCWMS’ first project, Jeanette mailed out a one-page flier to her list. The flier honored the 125th anniversary of the first ordination of a woman in the US, Antoinette Brown Blackwell. The overwhelmingly positive response led to the birth of South of the Garden, the RCWMS quarterly newsletter, which is still being published today. In the early years, RCWMS sponsored conferences with feminist speakers such as Rosemary Ruether, Phyllis Trible, Carter Heyward, Katie Cannon, Mary Hunt and others. RCWMS joined the North Carolina Council of Churches Committee for Equal Rights in sponsoring conferences on economic justice and violence against women and children.
A New Direction
In the 1990s, as the number of clergywomen had increased to the point that they were creating their own organizations, conferences, and workshops with their denominations, the Resource Center expanded its mission to include more general-interest feminist programming. RCWMS began to focus on smaller events and spiritual practices for those who view their life’s work as ministry.
In the last twenty-five years, the Resource Center has developed program areas on art, writing, creativity, and spirituality. The writing program includes workshops, retreats, an essay contest, and the publication of a number of books. RCWMS created a forty-by-forty-foot canvas labyrinth for people to use for walking meditation. With Anita McLeod’s help, the Resource Center created an elder women’s program and offered opportunities for intergenerational dialogue. In the last decade, the Resource Center has once again produced large public events, including an annual women’s preaching festival and a conference on LGBTQ spirituality. We have also offered three peer support cohorts for queer clergy in the South.
RCWMS continues to grapple with the fact it has been historically and predominantly an organization of white women. Once a sizable group of white people gets created, it’s hard to change the group’s composition. Not impossible, but challenging. At this point RCWMS is working to become more welcoming and inclusive of a wider variety of people—women of color, those with disabilities, nonbinary folks, people with different religious backgrounds. During the pandemic, we offered our platform to more women of color who teach workshops about art, creativity, health, self-care, and justice. We also offer workshops in which white women can grapple more deeply with their own histories and the ways they contribute to racism today. We continue to offer both in-person and virtual gatherings.
What makes RCWMS so special is that the organization is constantly looking around to see what is happening in the world and what is needed. The Resource Center draws on the gifts and ideas of participants, staff, and trustees. We hope you’ll join us and help shape the future.
Jeanette Stokes
The day Jeanette graduated from Duke Divinity School in 1977, she turned to some friends and said, “They’ll be sorry.” With only an inkling of what she would do next, she felt sure it would have something to do with women, faith, and social justice. A few months later, she and friends founded the Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South, where she serves as the Executive Director. Though she is not sure whether anyone was ever sorry they granted her an M.Div., Jeanette is sure that the last four decades of trying to change the landscape of religion in American has had at least some effect. Mostly her work has offered solace and support to others on the journey. A native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and a graduate of Smith College and Duke Divinity School, Jeanette is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). She is the author of three collections of essays, 25 Years in the Garden, 35 Years on the Path, and Just Keep Going; four memoirs, Hurricane Season: Living Through a Broken Heart, Flying Over Home, Following a Female Line, and Making the Road as We Go; and a book on writing, Just Keep Going: Advice on Writing and Life. She is happier if she spends some time each week walking, writing, painting, and messing around in the garden.
Pronouns: she/her/hers.
Chloé Griffin
Chloé is a PhD student in Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the expansiveness and diversity of African American spiritualities, faith traditions, and epistemes in the Southern United States. They also hold an MDiv from Wake Forest University School of Divinity with a concentration in Interfaith Leadership and Literacy and a BA in Philosophy (History minor) from UNC-Chapel Hill. At RCWMS, Chloé is passionate about supporting programs and the facilitators who lead them that foster inspiration for creativity, communal spaces of healing, and visions of ministry and justice that uplift people in our communities. In her free time, Chloé takes her rescue beagle Bacon on long walks so that he can get plenty of sniffs.
Pronouns: she/hers/they/them
Bacarri Byrd
Bacarri Byrd is a passionate and dedicated communication professional. With a Bachelor of Arts degree from Coker College and a Master of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, specializing in Communication studies at the intersections of culture, media, and rhetoric, Bacarri brings a strong academic background and a wealth of knowledge to her work.
Bacarri constantly seeks new ways to amplify diverse voices and perspectives in the arts, fostering an environment of inclusivity and cultural understanding. Her commitment to education and representation is evident in every project she undertakes. During her tenure as a Curatorial Assistant at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Bacarri played a vital role in the preservation and accurate interpretation of historical artifacts, ensuring their significance and stories were respectfully presented to visitors.
In her free time, Bacarri enjoys creating new recipes, spending time with her playful puppy Harlem, and diving into her collections of books and rare vinyl records.
Beth Weiss
Beth Morris Weiss has worked as a librarian, archivist, exhibits researcher, and museum educator. Raised in Springfield, Virginia, she relocated to Chapel Hill with her husband in 1999. She has worked managing data for the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice and works part time as a North Carolina Collection librarian at the Durham County Library. In addition to her professional interests in description, discoverability, and preserving photographs as historical and family documents, Beth enjoys creating photo collages and taking dance breaks.
Pronouns: she/her/hers.
Claire Hambrick
Claire Hambrick (she/her) is a photographer, writer, and media strategist from North Carolina. She graduated from UNC Charlotte with a BA in Communication Studies and minors in Film and Women & Gender Studies. While there, she created and ran an award-winning identity and culture magazine. Claire currently resides in Durham and spends her free time watching live music in the Triangle, taking photos, spending time in nature, and planning her next travel adventure. Find her work here.
Margie Peeler
Rachel Sauls
Rachel Sauls grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and has been connected to the Resource Center since joining the team as an Anita McLeod Intern in the spring of 2020. She earned her undergraduate degree from UNC-Chapel Hill, and her Master of Divinity from Yale University. In September 2025, she completed a pediatric chaplaincy residency at a children’s hospital in San Francisco. Rachel is now an oncology chaplain in Philadelphia, where she lives with her partner and cat. She is passionate about multigenerational communities, running, and the connective power of laughter.
Hilary Bailey Pollan
Anna Blair
Anna Blair is a Master of Public Policy candidate with an education concentration at UNC Chapel Hill. She has a BA in Public Policy and Human and Organizational Leadership Development. Anna views education as a form of liberation and empowerment, and she feels called to work for a more just education system for every child. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her cat, Oscar, doing puzzles, and watching Carolina basketball.
Liddy Grantland (1998-2026)
Liddy Grantland (she/her) was born and raised in Columbia, SC. She graduated from Duke University with a BA in African American Studies and English in 2020. She shared life as an assistant and team leader in the L’Arche, Greater Washington DC community from 2020-2024. An alum of the Anita McLeod internship program, her essay collection—Flesh and Bones: learning to love this body—was published by RCWMS in 2021. You can also find her work in South of the Garden, The Chronicle, Sojourners, the Washington Post, and her substack, Our Bodies: Ourselves. Liddy has preached the good news about bodies in congregations across North Carolina and Virginia. She is on track to receive a full-spectrum doula certification and is passionate about improving abortion access in the south through practical support networks. She will begin an MSW program in the fall of 2024. Liddy and her cat, Joni Mitchell, like to snuggle up with a book (or some fanfiction), putter around in a vegetable garden, cook for their friends, obsess over women singer-songwriters, and watch silly videos on the internet.
Liddy Grantland died on May 30, 2026, after a brave journey with cancer.
Cris Rivera
Angie Wright
Angie Wright, MDiv has always liked starting trouble—good trouble, as John Lewis called it. She was the founding pastor and served 16 years at Beloved Community Church in Birmingham. Angie was a founder of Alabama Arise, Good Work Employment Project in Durham, NC, and the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice. Angie also served as the Director of the Hurricane Katrina Resettlement Program of Alabama. She is the author of Loving My Enemies and Other Outlandish Pursuits, published by RCWMS in November 2025. Through it all, Angie took immeasurable joy raising her splendid sons, Frank and Luke. Now that she is retired, Angie spends her time writing, creating a native garden, serving as a Guardian Ad Litem, and traveling to Costa Rica to spend time with her son Frank and her six-year-old grandson, Kai.
Chelsea Yarborough
Rev. Dr. Chelsea Brooke Yarborough, PhD, is the Associate Director of Leadership Programming at the Association of Theological Schools. Yarborough is a preacher, an ordained minister in the Baptist tradition, a poet, leadership coach and an enneagram teacher.
MJ Sharp
MJ Sharp is a documentary photographer based in Durham, North Carolina. She was the RCWMS Artist-in-Residence from 2024-2025. She was a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Exeter, UK, for the 2021/2022 academic year pursuing the art/science collaboration Our Disappearing Darkness and Recreating True Night with nocturnal ecologist Dr. Kevin Gaston. She was a Lecturing Fellow at The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University from 2012–2022. She served on the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Nasher Museum of Art and was also a founding member of the Duke Faculty Union.
Courtney Ariel Bowden
Courtney Ariel Bowden is a singer-songwriter, early scholar, and essayist who thinks about, writes about, dreams about, and sings about relational wounding & repair, love, friendship, and spirituality. A graduate of Vanderbilt Divinity School, her curiosities about/and commitments to Black women’s relational healing led her to a doctoral program in Religious Studies. In music and in scholarship she works at the intersections of unlearning and creating. Courtney’s academic writing has been published in the Bloomsbury Religion in North America journal. Her public-facing advocacy writing has been featured by Sojourners (Sojo.net), CNN, The Tennessean, and Harper’s Bazaar. Her original music can be found on streaming platforms, and she is currently working on material for a full length album. An enthusiastic watcher of birds and lover of trees, community & porch-sitting in the Southeastern region of the U.S.—land that she is deeply grateful to call home—Courtney holds the swaying palms, the lull and roar of the pacific ocean at the core of her being, always.