Wantagh church shares stories of women of the Bible

The Wantagh Memorial Congregational Church took a weekend to learn about women. Ashley Wilcox is a Quaker minister and Author of the book “The Women’s Lectionary: Preaching the Women of the Bible throughout the year”. Wilcox preaches, speaks, and teaches across the country and internationally and brought her workshop on women in the bible to the Congregational Church.

Pastor Ron Garner has been preaching at the Church for 13 years, after having served churches in England. Garner had read Wilcox’s book and was fascinated with it, so much so that he began using it in his preaches and eventually contacted Wilcox to speak to the church.

During Covid, the church had few activities and Garner decided to begin inviting speakers to come share different workshops at the Church. “No one wanted to get out during the pandemic and that was understandable, but after we began to open up, I decided on a quarterly basis, to start having speakers either come in or speak through Zoom,” Garner said. “Ashley’s workshop was the first of what I hope to be a continuing process of people coming in to speak.”

Wilcox’s workshop was based on her book, which tells the story of different women within the bible. “I think for a long time we have focused on the stories of men in the Bible,” said Wilcox. “There are a lot of stories about women in the Bible, but we don’t always hear them and I think it’s important to hear the stories to give us a better sense of what is in the Bible and our relationship with God. God interacts with women throughout the Bible, and knowing these stories helps us to understand that better.”

Wilcox is originally from Anchorage, Alaska, and currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.  She taught preaching at the Candler School of Theology for five years and is a graduate of Candler School of Theology and Willamette University College of Law. Wilcox has had several workshops spreading the story of women in the bible not only through the country but has also done international workshops to different countries.

“Ashley Wilcox’s thoughtful calendar and luminous commentaries help the church do better.,” said Ted Smith, Almar H. Shatford, Professor of Preaching and Ethics, Candler School of Theology”

The workshop focused on looking at women in the Bible through the lens of fairy tales. “We looked at the story of Sarah and Hagar putting Sarah in the position of a wicked stepmother,” said Wilcox. “Then we looked at the story of Queen Jezebel, seeing her as an evil queen.”

“The idea is to sympathize with these characters, to understand them are using their story to see if they really are evil characters and in the workshop, we use different practices of reading the Bible and imagining ourselves in the story to understand the stories better.”

Many church patrons were familiar with Wilcox’s book through Garner using the book in his preaches.  The church had redistributed Wilcox’s book to Church patrons and the workshop was well received by those who attended.  “I have a core group of mostly women in my church who have been coming since I’ve been here and they received the book very well,” Garner said.