Lay Methodist Preacher

A Christian Voice.

Despite the limitations of being both a woman and an African American, Jarena Lee became an important religious voice in early national America. She struggled successfully to become one of the first female preachers in the United States. She later recorded her experiences in one of the first African American spiritual autobiographies to be written, a memoir still in print today. Conversion. Jarena Lee was born in southern New Jersey in 1783. Unlike most African Americans of her day, she did not experience slavery directly, although she was removed from her parents at a young age. She considered herself "born again" after a conversion experience in 1804, and the development of her spirituality became central to her life from that point on. For many years she struggled with the implications of this experience, at times feeling deep, almost suicidal, despair, and...