Lisa Marie Gring-Pemble and Martha Watson Win the Religious Communication Association's 2026 Book of the Year Award for Your Daughters Will Prophesy

October 5, 2026 | by uscpress

The Religious Communication Association selected Your Daughters Will Prophesy: Religion and Rhetoric in the Nineteenth-Century Woman's Movement for the 2026 RCA Book Award.

In Your Daughters Will Prophesy, Lisa Marie Gring-Pemble and Martha Watson explore how nineteenth-century women used the Bible to claim their voice on the moral questions of their day. Caught between their identity as Christians and social norms that silenced them, American women used scripture to claim moral and then rhetorical agency. They reinterpreted familiar biblical passages, recovered previously ignored stories about women, and contested passages used to circumscribe women's activities. By strategically adopting a rhetorical posture of dissent, these women became prophetic voices in American society. In Your Daughters Will Prophesy, Gring-Pemble and Watson analyze the argumentative resources four women—Jarena Lee, Sarah Moore Grimké, Lucretia Coffin Mott, and Frances Willard—used to counter gendered restrictions and gain access to platform and pulpit, catalyzing what became known as the woman's movement.

Gring-Pemble and Watson will be honored at the Religious Communication Association’s annual conference, November 18, 2026 in New Orleans.