Hugh's News & Commentary

Dr. Kristen Dayle Welch, daughter of Norman and LaDonna Scott, has published her first book on women ministers of the IPHC. The title of her book isWomen With Good News--The Rhetorical Heritage of Pentecostal Holiness Women Preachers.

Kristen focused on women ministers of the IPHC for her doctoral dissertation at Longwood University and has published her book based on that dissertation. I think you will find the interviews a blessing. She feels led to continue her interviews of women ministers. Archivist Larry Jones of the South Carolina Conference graciously set up about five interviews for her during their centennial celebration in July and she hopes to do more in the future.

Here's a book you may wish to purchase. Kristen shares interviews with women preachers of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church (IPHC). She explores rhetoric, gender, and religion in the biographies, autobiographies, and histories that detail what it means to be a Pentecostal woman preacher in Oklahoma. Archival materials provide a picture of Pentecostalism years before Oklahoma became a state in 1907, and a transcribed interview with the former Presiding Bishop of the IPHC, James Leggett, gives a contemporary view of what it means to be Pentecostal in the 21st century.

A Christian scholar who grew up in the IPHC, Dr. Kristen Welch draws upon the field of rhetoric to use Jim Corder’s theory of generative ethos to illuminate the way identity is constructed on individual, collective, and spiritual levels. She shows the role place plays in the development of faith and character in her chapter“We are of this Place: Oklahoma and Ethos.”  She concludes the book with an honest look at the administrative levels of the IPHC and ends with a note of hope for the future.

[Editor's Note: You will be interested to know that Dr. Kristen Welch's grandfather was the late Rev. Dr. Robert L. Rex, a former General Superintendent of the IPHC, executive director of Evangelism USA and World Missions Ministries, founder of the Extension Loan Fund, and vice chairman of our denomination. The publisher of Dr. Welch's book is CPT, 2010. The cost is $12.95. You may order online at Amazon.Com.]