WOMEN IN AMERICAN RELIGION

by Janet Wilson--Ed. James ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 18, 1980

The title's a bit presumptuous--how could any one book cover so vast a topic?--but this collection of 13 scholarly essays is remarkable for its breadth, balance, and readability. It deals not with the outstanding personalities (Anne Hutchinson, Ann Lee, Elizabeth Seton, etc.) of American religious history, but with the masses of little known, if not quite literally nameless, ""sisters"" who made up the subordinate majority of most congregations. In the ministerial literature of colonial New England, as Laurel Thatcher Ulrich observes, women became ""legitimately visible"" only by marrying, giving birth, or dying. Still, she detects an interesting conflict between repressive ""Puritan polity"" and the more egalitarian ""Puritan piety."" Similarly, Barbara Welter points out that the influx of (Protestant) women into missionary careers in the 19th century led to all sorts of liberating experiences--though this was the last thing missionary societies had in mind. The lot of women who gave their lives to religion--whether in parsonages out in the bush or the parochial schools of Boston--was generally a grim one, as they did work that men couldn't (minister behind the purdah) or wouldn't (nurse, teach children), for wretched wages. One of the refreshing features of the articles James has gathered together is their unusually broad scope. In ""Eve, Mary, and the Historians,"" for example, James J. Kenneally surveys the last 100 years of American Catholicism in his analysis of the theological foundations of sexism. Even Alan Graebner's engaging ""Birth Control and the Lutherans,"" though limited to the Missouri Synod, succeeds in thinking big within a narrow compass by outlining the way a conservative, male-dominated group blundered down the path to modernity. A few dull pieces mar the ensemble, but otherwise an exemplary job.

Pub Date: Aug. 18, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION