The Rev. Jolinne
Balentine-Downey
Jolinne Balentine-Downey has served as an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church for almost 25 years, and she currently leads two congregations in McNairy County, Tennessee. Jolinne is a native Memphian who studied journalism and sociology at Memphis State University and earned a master’s in theology at Memphis Theological Seminary. After college, she worked at a number of publications and received two Tennessee Press awards. Since then, she has authored a Lenten devotional, one novel, a country song, and a handful of poetry. She has been a member of the VOTS Writers Cabaret since 2020.
Voices of the South Testimonial
My grandmother told beautiful stories that no one ever wrote down. My mother wrote beautiful poetry that no one will ever read. That won’t happen to me because I have the support of the Voices of the South Writer’s Cabaret. I joined the Zoom group shortly after it formed in the spring of 2020. I had been telling myself stories for 50 years and had even begun to write one down, but I lacked discipline and encouragement. The weekly meetings provided the incentive I needed to sit down and do the work. Their encouragement gave me confidence, and their successes, both as actors and as authors, gave me hope in the midst of a very dark time personally, not to mention globally. For 20 years, I had choked on the ignorance and intolerance that can be found in the Bible belt of the rural south, but in the cabaret, I rediscovered the freedom of putting pen to paper. I found my voice and learned to trust it.
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And then, when this amazingly talented group of actors spoke my words, breathed life into characters I had created, and elicited laughter and tears and even disagreement from an audience by communicating my thoughts…. I learned what power is.