Spencer’s compelling, nuanced analysis of women bishops’ rhetoric offers keen and timely insights about intersections of gender, power, religion, and politics. Yet it is his articulation of shalom as a model for peaceful community that takes my breath away—Spencer’s vision offers hope, guidance, and a call for social and political transformation based on the eloquent words of trailblazing women of God. A must-read for scholars and students in rhetoric, women’s and gender studies, and social change!

Laura L. Ellingson, Santa Clara University

Employing methodology that combines the most probative of rhetorical criticism with feminist rhetorical theory, Leland Spencer’s Women Bishops and Rhetorics of Shalom: A Whole Peace locates an intrepid “shalom,” in the sermons of three ground-breaking (and ground-making) bishops in the Christian Church…Spencer reveals how each woman navigates the waters in her singular manner, embodying and advancing a courageous shalom, co-constructed by persons from all religious backgrounds—and from none—as a vision of active and fully inclusive peace, across religious, racial, ethnic, gender, and all lines that would divide us.

Elizabeth Nelson, University of Minnesota, Duluth

Leland G. Spencer invites readers along a path that is at once scholarly and transformational. The feminist rhetorical analysis offered in this study of the language of pioneering women bishops is skillful, integrated, and expansive. Professor Spencer’s re-visioning of the concept of shalom as it uniquely unfolds in their sermons calls forth the strength and hope of shared values in a world that far too frequently battens down the hatches against difference. Each chapter reminds the reader, through compelling display of Spencer’s intellect as he considers the words of the bishops, that feminist scholarship is as propelled by deep desire for learning as it is for social change. The goodness and grace of Professor Spencer’s message, culled from the sermons of the bishops, is not to be missed, either by seasoned or aspiring language and communication scholars.

Carol L. Winkelmann, Xavier University