As sunlight crowded the dining commons at Southern Nazarene University during breakfast on the last day of the Faith and Learning Conference of 1996, Ruth McDowell Cook planted the seed of an idea which is becoming Susanna: A Literary Journal of Wesleyan Women’s Thought. Discussions following seminars led by Linda Beail and Carol Blessing prompted Dr. Cook to suggest that Kay Harkins of Point Loma Nazarene University begin to pray about a journal which might continue the dialogue on the intersection of Wesleyan women’s spiritual, creative, and academic lives. Like many seeds, this one remained in the soil of thought and circumstance waiting for the proper season of growth. The Wesleyan Center for Twenty-First Century Studies provided the necessary conditions for Ruth’s idea to grow, and it is taking its first form as part of the center's website.

We have named our journal after Susanna--the mother of John and Charles Wesley, the most famous of her seventeen children--a woman who lived at the junction of Christian thought and action. Its purpose is to make a place where visions and voices of devotion and discovery may express themselves in creative ways. Its topics will be as diverse as its contributors: women who grapple with the complexities of their inner and outer lives as they are influenced by the science, politics, culture, philosophy, and religion of our time. Susanna offers a province for both cries and whispers, a forum where we may speak for others whose voices may have been silenced, a place to comment and be heard where the light of our earlier conversations may continue to shine. We invite your thoughts on its inception.