“Hidden Women” is a project aimed at recovering meaningful connection to our female Christian ancestors whose stories have largely been erased from collective consciousness despite their persistent presence in apocryphal texts. By bringing their stories back to the forefront of the Christian imagination, I will explore how retelling these women’s narratives might shift our understanding of the past as well as reshape our dreams for the future of the church.

I will research—with mind, heart, soul, and body—the lives of obscure women such as Thecla, Perpetua, Felicitas, Xanthippe, Polyxena, and Rebecca, as well as uncover the lesser known details about the life of Mary Magdalene, using original texts, current scholarship, pilgrimage, and spiritual community to discover what their lives have to teach us about our own Christian origins and how their stories might change our understanding of what it means to be Christian today. From the raw material of my research I will create poetry, artwork, sermons, and essays so that their stories are no longer hidden but readily accessible and retold in various mediums. I will also host conversations around these impactful stories, then finally compile my findings in book form.

I am convinced that this post Roe v. Wade world in which we are now living is the time in which the stories of these early Christian women desperately need to be recovered, proclaimed, and mined for meaning.