Includes life histories of four women preachers, transcriptions of sermons, and analysis by Lawless of both life stories and sermons.

He has called you to be a holy handmaid, a royal princess, a daughter of the Most High: a fighter alongside your King on the spiritual battlefield for souls. To equip you for this mission, author Julie Onderko here brings you exciting tales about bold female warriors of the spirit, from heroic Old Testament women such as Judith, Deborah, and Esther (who prefigured the most courageous of all, the Virgin Mary) to more recent icons of the Faith, including Saint Clare, Saint Monica, and Saint Faustina. From within their diverse circumstances and vocations, these storied women warriors for Christ will teach you the powerful spiritual tactics that they used in their battles against the devil – and that you can use, too! – tactics that will help you grow holy even as you engage in the profoundest endeavor of all: saving souls for Christ. In the great drama of human history and on a continuing basis, souls are won or lost for eternity. With all the angels and saints – and in particular with the Virgin Mary – you are called to play your part. Open these pages to prepare yourself today!

Books about The Handmaiden of the Lord, Or, Wayside Sketches

Folklorist Elaine J. Lawless has devoted her career to ethnographic research with underserved groups in the American Midwest, including charismatic Pentecostals, clergywomen, victims of domestic violence, and displaced African Americans. She has consistently focused her research on women's speech in these contexts and has developed a new approach to ethnographic research which she calls "reciprocal ethnography," while growing a detailed corpus of work on women's narrative style and expressive speech. Reciprocal ethnography is a feminist and collaborative ethnographic approach that Lawless developed as a challenge to the reflexive turn in anthropological fieldwork and research in the 1970s, which was often male-centric, ignoring the contributions by and study of women's culture. Collected here for the first time are Lawless's key articles on the topics of reciprocal ethnography and women's narrative which influenced not only folklore, but also the allied fields of anthropology, sociology, performance studies, and women's and gender studies. Lawless's methods and research continue to be critically relevant in today's global struggle for gender equality.

Throughout the christian world, women have chosen to lead disciplined lives of prayer and asceticism. Descriptions of early role-models 'Macrina, the two Palas and Melanias, Radagunde 'and others by contemporaries, usually men, provide details of their austerities, their aspirations, and their relationship with the Church and the world, not least with male authority figures.