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.
Marya McNeish
A long-time small nonprofit development consultant, Marya McNeish is also a massage therapist, and is ever curious how we can best work with these imperfect bodies of ours to find more ease and comfort. She is helping to build a local adaptive hiking program and spends her free time in the woods or digging in her garden.
Pronouns: she/her/hers.
Rachel Sauls
Rachel Sauls, a lifelong Tar Heel, graduated with her BA in English and Comparative Literature from UNC-Chapel Hill in May 2020. She is currently a student at Yale Divinity School, where she will graduate with her Master of Divinity in spring 2024. Rachel’s interests include theology, reading memoirs, spending time with human and animal friends, and running.
Pronouns: she/her/hers.
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.
MJ Sharp
MJ Sharp will be the 2024 Artist in Residence for The Resource Center for Women in Ministry in the South. Co-sponsored by the RCWMS and The Fruit event space in Durham, MJ will be working with previously unseen material from past decades as well as continuing to explore her 2021/2022 Fulbright work from the UK, “Our Disappearing Darkness,” which addresses issues of contemporary light pollution through the prehistoric monoliths of Cornwall at night. The residency’s public programming will include both pop-up exhibits and lectures over the course of 2024. More about MJ here.
Tanya Best
Tanya Best, MDiv, is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. She serves as the Associate Pastor of Mission Support of Mt. Calvary UCC. She retired from the Department of Social Services. She received her bachelor’s degree in accounting and theology and a master of divinity. She is a Certified Intentional Transition Leader and specializes in outreach and helping individuals who are experiencing difficulties with life challenges. She enjoys traveling and spending time with her family.
Solita Denard
Solita A. Denard, MSW, IHC, partners with clients as they create and activate a vision for better personal health. Each day she is reminded that supporting clients in the process of behavior change is sacred work. Her current and previous professional work includes grant & contract administration, program development, research and training. Learn more about Solita here.
Liddy Grantland
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.
Cris Rivera
Marion Thullbery
Marion Thullbery, MDiv, PhD, is a retired Episcopal priest who has served parishes in Florida and North Carolina and has served as Chaplain and Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Supervisor at five Triangle area hospitals. Marion is a certified Healing Touch Practitioner and has taught the Enneagram for many years. Other interests Marion enjoys are writing, reading, movies, canoeing, quilting, gardening, fishing and camping.
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. 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.