Enfleshing the Spirit through Avatar Performance: Objecthood as Resistance in Women Preachers—Rachel Baker,Jarena Lee,and Florence Spearing Randolph

Abstract

In this article, I take up Uri McMillan’s work in Embodied Avatars to rethink the subject–object relationship in women’s preaching. In performance art, the subject (the artist) fashions herself into an object (the art). I stretch the performance art genre to include preachers Rachel Baker, Jarena Lee, and Florence Spearing Randolph, arguing that these women have strategically performed objecthood to navigate gendered and racialized constraints in Christian proclamation. Examining these three women preachers through the lens of performing objecthood opens up theological understandings of how the Spirit works in a world marked by social sin (sexism and racism). Contrary to theologians who describe submission to the Spirit as self-effacement, I show how submission to the Spirit can counter worldly authorities, while enabling women preachers to transform perceptions of gender and race in a liberative way.