The Subversive Pulpit: Gender and Religious Authority in the Ministry of Ida Bell Robinson

When the United Holy Church of America moved to curtail women’s ordination in 1924, Ida Bell Robinson broke away to found a church where women would not only preach but lead. The Subversive Pulpit argues that Robinson used her agency and autonomy amid the upheavals of the Great Migration to build a religious enterprise defined by radical gender egalitarianism and socioeconomic uplift for Black women and their communities.

Centering Robinson as founder and first bishop of the Mount Sinai Holy...