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. (Kirkus Reviews)
Cotton Mather called them "the hidden ones." Although historians of
religion occasionally refer to the fact that women have always
constituted a majority of churchgoers, until recently none of them
have investigated the historical implications of the situation or v
the role of woman in the church. But the focus of church history
has been moving toward a broader awareness, from studying religious
institutions and their pastors to studying the people--the
laity--and the nature of religious experience. This book explores
the many common elements of this experience for women in church and
temple, regardless of their differences in faith.
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