A Brand Plucked from the Fire

It is the memoir of Julia Foote, a holiness evangelist who would not be silenced. Born to formerly enslaved parents, she was converted at fifteen, entered into the experience of entire sanctification soon after, and was called to preach when almost no church would let a woman into the pulpit. Her narrative tells of that call, the opposition she met, and her ministry as one of the first Black women preachers of the holiness movement.

Julia Foote was a nineteenth-century Black American evangelist and one of the earliest women preachers in the holiness movement. Excommunicated from her church for insisting on preaching, she persevered in a travelling ministry and was later ordained a deacon, and then an elder, in the AME Zion Church — among the first women to hold such office.

It comes from a biblical image (Zechariah 3:2) of a brand — a burning stick — snatched from the fire, a picture of one rescued by God's mercy from destruction. Foote takes it for her own life, seeing herself as one plucked by grace and set apart for God's service, and the phrase frames her whole story as a testimony to that rescuing mercy.

Central to the book. Foote testifies not only to conversion but to a definite second experience of entire sanctification — a cleansing and filling of the heart with holy love, in the Wesleyan holiness tradition. This experience shaped her whole ministry and message, and her account of it makes the memoir an important witness to holiness spirituality among Black Christians.

Fierce opposition, even excommunication. When Foote insisted that God had called her to preach, her church leaders forbade it and eventually cut her off. She had to contend with the conviction of her day that women, and especially Black women, had no place in the pulpit — yet she persisted, sure of her calling, and lived to see herself ordained.

Because it is a first-hand testimony from a Black woman who broke through the barriers of both race and gender to preach the gospel, and an important document of the holiness movement. Foote's insistence on her call, and her record of exercising it against excommunication and scorn, give voice to a courage and faith the wider church long overlooked.

An ardent, holiness-shaped faith centred on conversion, sanctification, and obedience to God's call whatever the cost. Foote writes with conviction and fervour, and her narrative is as much a spiritual testimony — of grace, cleansing, and a life wholly given to God — as it is a record of the obstacles she overcame.

At the beginning, with Foote's childhood, conversion, and experience of sanctification, before her call to preach and the opposition it brought. It is a short first-person memoir meant to be read in order, and read that way it carries both the fire of her faith and the courage of a woman who preached against every barrier.