Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740-1845 / Edition 1

by Catherine A. Brekus

Overview

Margaret Meuse Clay, who barely escaped a public whipping in the 1760s for preaching without a license; "Old Elizabeth," an ex-slave who courageously traveled to the South to preach against slavery in the early nineteenth century; Harriet Livermore, who spoke in front of Congress four times between 1827 and 1844—these are just a few of the extraordinary women profiled in this, the first comprehensive history of female preaching in early America.

Drawing on a wide range of sources, Catherine Brekus examines the lives of more than a hundred female preachers—both white and African American—who crisscrossed the country between 1740 and 1845. Outspoken, visionary, and sometimes contentious, these women stepped into the pulpit long before twentieth-century battles over female ordination began. They were charismatic, popular preachers, who spoke to hundreds and even thousands of people at camp and revival meetings, and yet with but a few notable exceptions—such as Sojourner Truth—these women have essentially vanished from our history. Recovering their stories, Brekus shows, forces us to rethink many of our common assumptions about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807847459
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	12/07/1998
Series:	Gender and American Culture
Edition description:	1
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.07(d)
Lexile:	1520L (what's this?)

About the Author

Catherine A. Brekus teaches American religious history at the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction. Recovering the History of Female Preaching in America
Part 1. There Is Neither Male nor Female
Chapter 1. Caught Up in God: Female Evangelism in the Eighteenth-Century Revivals
Chapter 2. Women in the Wilderness: Female Religious Leadership in the Age of Revolution
Part 2. Sisters in Christ, Mothers in Israel
Chapter 3. Female Laborers in the Harvest: Female Preaching in the Early Nineteenth Century
Chapter 4. The Last Shall Be First: Conversion and the Call to Preach
Chapter 5. Lift Up Thy Voice Like a Trumpet: Evangelical Women in the Pulpit
Chapter 6. God and Mammon: Female Peddlers of the Word
Part 3. Let Your Women Keep Silence
Chapter 7. Suffer Not a Woman to Teach: The Battle over Female Preaching
Chapter 8. Your Sons and Daughters Shall Prophesy: Female Preaching in the Millerite Movement
Epilogue. Write the Vision
Appendix. Female Preachers and Exhorters in America, 1740-1845
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgment
Index

Illustrations
The Capitol, Washington, D.C.
Harriet Livermore (1827)
Jonathan Edwards's notes on the Bathsheba Kingsley case (1743)
Philip Dawes, A Society of Patriotic Ladies (1775)
Portrait of Jemima Wilkinson by John L. D. Mathies (1816)
Methodist church in Unity, New Hampshire (1823)
A Methodist camp meeting held in Queen Anne's County, Maryland
Title page of Elleanor Warner Knight, A Narrative of the Christian Experience, Life and Adventures, Trials and Labours of Elleanor Knight, Written by Herself (1839)
Salome Lincoln
Abigail Roberts
Sarah Righter Major
Nancy Towle
Rebecca Miller's article on the "Duty of Females" (1841)
Laura Smith Haviland
An advertisement for Harriet Livermore's books (1832)
Jarena Lee
Sojourner Truth (1864)
A Methodist camp meeting (1820)
St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, New York City (1859)
Lydia Sexton
A Millerite chart (1843)
The Millerites' Great Tent (1844)
Martha Spence Heywood

What People are Saying About This

Christine Leigh Heyrman

A worthy contribution to the history of religion and the history of women.

Nell Irvin Painter

Putting preaching women back in their place changes our understanding of the Awakenings and their meaning and empowerment of ordinary Americans.

From the Publisher

A masterful overview that highlights recent advances in the study of religious women and indicts both women's historians and religious historians for failing to notice.—Christianity Today

An important addition to our understanding of women and Christian traditions in the United States. . . . The volume adds such profundity and detail to the particulars of early preaching women's lives that it is a major contribution.—Journal of Religion

Excellent. . . . [This book] is the first to explore a forgotten world of female evangelists, both white and black, who tried to forge a tradition of female religious leadership in early America. . . . A study which should quickly become the standard work on its subject, radically altering our understanding of America's religious past and adding new dimensions to our view of women's lives.—Journal of American Studies

A long-awaited study that does not disappoint . . . Brekus offers a stunning example of 'recovering voices'. . . . Strangers and Pilgrims is necessary reading for students of American religion and any women preachers today who are interested in the rich tradition of which they, perhaps unknowingly, are a part.—Journal of Ecclesiastical History

A valuable accomplishment. Catherine Brekus has put women preachers on the religious map of early America. A reader imagines them climbing the steps to indoor pulpits or open-air platforms, to the joy of some spectators and the disgust of others. It is a compelling picture that deserves to hold the attention of scholars and general readers alike.—Journal of the Early Republic

Brekus shows that female preachers not only participated in the evangelical fervor, but also that as women left an unforgettable mark on American religion. . . . Brekus succeeds in answering a major omission in the previous scholarship. . . . These women deserve to have their stories told again. Brekus makes their struggles compelling, and so her book is a valuable contribution to the field of American religious history.—William and Mary Quarterly

Brekus's pathbreaking study of female preaching both tranforms our understanding of American religion between 1740 and 1845 and reminds us that without a collective memory, women progress only haltingly. Based on painstaking research in religious periodicals, memoirs, and sermons, Strangers and Pilgrims also demonstrates the unexpectedly rich sources available to scholars. . . . Now that Brekus has retrieved their stories, we will be hard put to forget the remarkable history of female preachers.—Journal of Southern History

In addition to the great service this volume provides in recovering the lost history of female preaching in America, it also has the effect of casting some of the more familiar terrain of American religious history in new light.—American Historical Review

Only a historian with a good eye for storytelling could do justice to the extraordinary women who people Catherine A. Brekus's Strangers and Pilgrims. . . . But Brekus is far more than a gifted storyteller, she is an accomplished historian as well, sensitive to both currents of historical events . . . and to the subtle realignments of gender norms and gender roles that accompanied these events. . . . An extraordinarily rich study of three largely forgotten generations of women who labored at great personal cost and little reward to bring their own brand of biblical feminism to thousands of eager listeners on America's expanding frontier. . . . A book worthy of its subjects: full of plain speaking, good sense, and more than a touch of inspiration.—Journal of American History

Truly outstanding. . . . The best account of how women shaped and were shaped by gender ideologies and religious practices in early America. For 150 years, almost all of the 123 preaching women in this book have been lost to history. Brekus powerfully makes the case that this amnesia had impoverished our understanding of American religion and culture.—Reviews in American History

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Editorial Reviews

"A masterful overview that highlights recent advances in the study of religious women and indicts both women's historians and religious historians for failing to notice."
-- "Christianity Today"

ÝA¨dds such profundity and detail to the particulars of early preaching women's lives that it is a major contribution.

"Journal of Religion"

A study which should quickly become the standard work on its subject, radically altering our understanding of America's religious past .

"Journal of American Studies"

Now that Brekus has retrieved their stories, we will be hard put to forget the remarkable history of female preachers.

"Journal of Southern History"

"A study which should quickly become the standard work on its subject, radically altering our understanding of America's religious past .

"Journal of American Studies""

"Now that Brekus has retrieved their stories, we will be hard put to forget the remarkable history of female preachers.

"Journal of Southern History""

"Strangers and Pilgrims" is necessary reading for students of American religion.

"Journal of Ecclesiastical History"

[A]dds such profundity and detail to the particulars of early preaching women's lives that it is a major contribution.

"Journal of Religion"

It is a compelling picture that deserves to hold the attention of scholars and general readers alike.

"Journal of the Early Republic"

From the Publisher

In this well-documented and readable history of a neglected group, Brekus (American religious history, Univ. of Chicago) examines the rise and decline of female preachers among Evangelical churches from 1740 to 1845, with an epilog discussing late-19th-century developments. Brekus follows female evangelism through 18th-century revivals and the American Revolution to its rise during the 1820s. She then covers the growing restrictions on female preaching that started to appear in the 1830s and its brief resurgence among the Millerites. Brekus is especially interested in how these women understood their own conversion, calls to preach, pulpit style, theology, and defense of female preaching within the context of their own times and religious beliefs. Recommended for academic and public libraries.--C. Robert Nixon, Lafayette, IN

Library Journal