Spiritual Joy: Faith, Spiritual Practices, and Rituals of Celebration

Abstract

This chapter examines joy as a sacred grounding for Black women appointed to connectional churches in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Joy is understood not as emotional uplift but as holy space embracing grief, endurance, resistance, and God’s presence – a counterforce to systems resisting women’s leadership.

Connectional churches hold distinctive importance in AME life, carrying historical memory and shaping denominational priorities. Historically male-dominated, recent appointments of three Black women, including the author, signal meaningful shifts in leadership imagination.

The chapter situates these appointments within a lineage of pioneering AME women – Jarena Lee, Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie, and the Rev. Teresa Fry Brown, Ph.D. – whose ministries expanded the denomination’s vision of call.

Ultimately, joy emerges not as peripheral but as a sustaining practice. It enables Black women in connectional leadership to serve with holy resilience, offering the AME Church a transformative vision of faithful ministry.