Chapter Five

Women Organizing for
Mission and Reform

Chapter Summary

Chapter Five introduces us to an area of religious history that is one of the most significant in terms of both content and methodology. The nineteenth century provides a rich source of documentary evidence on American women as well as thematic trajectories that bring us right into the twenty-first century. This chapter focuses on middle-class white Protestant women, including attitudes toward them and their activities, particularly in the voluntary societies. Scholarly study of such women continues to be refined, making us aware of denominational and regional distinctions. But the lens of scholars have also broadened to examine more frequently African American and Native American women and white women who were not part of middle- or upper-class households. The importance of work comparing women's experiences across racial and class boundaries is now recognized, as is scholarship that seriously examines the ways in which women thought about and oriented themselves toward what they considered to be sacred.

You will first be introduced to the ideology of separate spheres or the "cult of true womanhood," which was, in the words of Ann Taves, a "dichotomized view of male and female nature and function." (Religious Studies Review 18 (October 1992): 263.) Men functioned out in the world – the public sphere – while women were taught in a multitude of ways that the home, children, piety, and morality was their sphere. And women were by nature best suited to the private sphere given, for example, their maternal instincts and strong emotions. Read the texts by Unitarian minister George Burnap (5.1) and note how he describes in detail the important but separate work women had to do.

The details of domestic Christianity are now being carefully analyzed by using written materials and physical evidence, such as architecture and handcrafted items. Interest in the impact women had in shaping innovative and significant theologies later developed by those they taught is also emerging. This is related to a concept you will discover in Her Story: that of the feminization of American religion. By this scholars mean that the overwhelming presence of women and their association with Christianity resulted in certain changes in Christian belief. Try to identify specific examples of this kind of feminization.

Think also about the issue of how the ideology of two spheres may have encouraged women to move from the domestic into the public sphere. Rogers is a typical example of this as he encouraged women to be "warm-hearted, active and zealous" in fulfilling their roles. Throughout America, therefore, women began to form a remarkable array of societies at the local and eventually national levels dedicated to the spread of Christianity and the reform of society. The text from the women of New York engaged in moral reform (5.2) should be studied to understand the kind of goals, motivations, strategies, and rhetoric used in some of the female organizations. Compare this account to the 1818 account of the origins of the Boston Female Missionary Society (5.4).

Scholars have recently become interested in discovering the details of how these women's societies formed and what their exact accomplishments were. Parallels are being examined between the organizations of white women and those of African American women. Also, there is interest in exploring the relationship of the local, more loosely organized groups of antebellum America and the national organizations with professional staffs, which appear at the end of the century. How, for example, were the skills and the energy of the earlier groups harnessed for the national efforts?

Previous chapters in Her Story have introduced us to a theme that receives attention in Chapter Five as well. This is the question of how Christianity served to enhance the self-worth and self-determination of women within the private sphere of home and cloister. Certainly the ideology of "true womanhood" gave women important work within the home as wives and mothers and household managers, much as the Protestant Reformation did. The evangelical revival that took shape as the Second Great Awakening sanctioned reliance upon God rather than men and allowed women to engage in, as Nancy Cott calls it, "a sort of holy selfishness or self-absorption" as they examined their lives for signs of God's presence. (The Bonds of Womanhood: 'Woman's Sphere' in New England, 1780–1835, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977, 139–40.)

The nineteenth-century, however, raised more urgently than ever before the questions of how far the Christian community should sanction the move of women into the public sphere, and how to define that sphere. Scholars over the past two decades have revealed the complexity of positions on these issues, urging that they be thought of in terms of a continuum. Some Christian leaders believed that women had no place in public and even frowned upon female societies within the confines of the church. For others, such as Catherine Beecher, women's groups for benevolence and mission were acceptable within guidelines which took male control for granted and saw such efforts as an extension of the domestic sphere. Beecher describes the acceptable boundaries of female behavior. Still other women adopted a moderate Christian feminism nurtured within the context of the voluntary societies. To accomplish their goals, they were forced to engage in certain "unfeminine" activities, such as circulating petitions, conducting publicity campaigns, speaking in public, and preaching. The description of women's mission boards and the anti-slavery societies in Chapter Five and the readings from Helen Barrett Montgomery (5.4) and Sarah Grimké (5.3) are good examples of this evolution.

Many of the women in the post-Civil War societies exercised enormous influence within the American churches; yet at the same time, they tried to honor the ideology of two spheres and minimize objections to their activities. Grimké, however, is an outspoken critic of the doctrine that "there is a distinction between the duties of men and women as moral beings." The argument she makes in her "Letters" is a powerful one; be sure you understand the basis for her claims. Grimké's rejection of a separate sphere for women was shared by a number of more radical later nineteenth-century feminists who advocated an array of political, economic, and social changes involving women. Most of these women eventually found spiritual homes in religious communities outside the denominational mainstream.

Additional Readings

• Berkeley, Kathleen C. "Colored Ladies Also Contributed: Black Women's Activities from Benevolence to Social Welfare, 1866–1896." In Church and Community Among Black Southerners, 1865–1900, edited by Donald Nieman, 327–49. New York: Garland, 1994.
• Bowie, Fiona et al., ed. Women and Missions: Past and Present: Anthropological and Historical Perceptions. Providence, R.I.: Berg, 1993.
• Boylan, Anne M. "Evangelical Womanhood in Nineteenth-Century America: The Role of Women in Sunday Schools." In Unspoken Worlds: Women's Religious Lives, edited by Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M. Gross, 166–78, 2nd ed. Belmont, Calif.:Wadsworth, 1989.
• Epstein, Barbara Leslie. The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism and Temperance 2. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1981.
• Fitzgerald, Rosemary. "A 'Peculiar and Exceptional Measure': The Call for Women Medical Missionaries for India in the Later Nineteenth-century." In Missionary Encounters: Sources and Issues, edited by Robert Bickers, 174–96. London: Curzon Press, 1992.
• Flemming, Leslie A., ed. Women's Work for Women: Missionaries and Social Change in Asia. Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1989.
• Gifford, Carolyn De Swarte. " 'For God and Home and Native Land': The W.C.T.U.'s Image of Woman in the Late Nineteenth Century." In Women in New Worlds, edited by Hilah F. Thomas and Rosemary Skinner Keller, 310–27. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1981.
• Haynes, Carolyn. "Women and Protestantism in Ninteenth-century America." In Perspectives on American Religion and Culture, edited by Peter W. Williams, 300–18. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.
• Hill, Patricia Ruth. The World Their Household: The American Woman's Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870–1920. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985.
• Jacobs, Sylvia M. "Their 'Special Mission': Afro-American Women as Missionaries to the Congo, 1894–1937." In Black Americans and the Missionary Movement in Africa, edited by Sylvia M. Jacobs, 155–76. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982.
• Keller, Rosemary S. "Women and the Nature of Ministry in the United Methodist Tradition." Methodist History 22 (January 1984): 99–114.
• Kirkpatrick, Frank G. "From Shackles to Liberation: Religion, the Grimké Sisters and Dissent." In Women, Religion and Social Change, edited by Yvonne Haddad and Ellison Findly, 433–55. Albany: State University Press of New York, 1985.
• Lagerquist, L. DeAne. From Our Mother's Arms: A History of Women in the American Lutheran Church. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1987.
• McCants, David A. "Evangelicalism and Nineteenth-century Woman's Rights: A Case Study of Angelina E. Grimké." Perspectives in Religious Studies 14 (Spring 1987): 39–57.
• McDannell, Colleen. The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840–1900. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.
• Meckel, Richard A. "Educating a Ministry of Mothers: Evangelical Maternal Associations, 1815–1860." Journal of the Early Republic 2 (1982): 403–23.
• Reynolds, David S. "The Feminization Controversy: Sexual Stereotypes and the Paradoxes of Piety in Nineteenth-Century America." New England Quarterly 53 (1980): 96–106.
• Robert, Dana Lee. American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought and Practice. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1996.
• Taves, Ann. "Mothers and Children and the Legacy of Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Christianity." Journal of Religion 67 (1987): 203–19.
• Tucker, Ruth A. Guardians of the Great Commission: The Story of Women in Modern Missions. Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1988.
• Zink-Sawyer, Beverly A. "From Preachers to Suffragists: Enlisting the Pulpit in the Early Movement for Women's Rights." ATQ 14 (2000): 193–209.

Questions for Reflection

1. What was the ideology of two spheres? Which, if any, of these concepts and beliefs have lasted into the modern world? How have they been perpetuated?
2. In what ways did the specific voluntary societies push women into the public sphere and into positions from which they demanded a growing number of rights? In other words, how did they become "the living energetic beings" of Lydia Maria Child?
3. What themes or continuities related to women's activities do you find between this chapter and the previous chapter on colonial America?
4. Review medieval and reformation ideas on the nature of women and compare/contrast them with what you find in nineteenth-century America.
5. What kind of role, if any, do women's organizations play in contemporary American churches? Do you think they have a positive or negative effect on women's concern for equality and status?
6. What do you think Grimké meant by the claim that while God gave woman to man as a companion, man has adorned her "with baubles and geegaws, turned her attention to personal attractions, offered incense to her vanity...."? Do you agree?
7. Could the voluntary societies have been detrimental to women's search for equality and self-determination?

Related Websites for Chapter Five

• Sources for Women's Studies in the Methodist Archives: rylibweb.man.ac.uk/data1/dg/methodist/methfem.html
• Religious Groups, Benevolent Organizations and American Pluralism: are.as.wvu.edu/kilsdonk.htm
• Appeal of Female Moral Reform: www.binghamton.edu/womhist/fmrs/doclist.htm
• Sources and Readings [The Cult of True Womanhood]: xroads.virginia.edu/~MA97/riedy/biblio.html
• Domestic Fiction: Select Bibliography: www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl311/dombib.htm
• Bibliography: Reforming Women: www.wooster.edu/fys96/ktaylor/bibprob.html
• Votes for Women: Selections from the NAWSA Collection 1848–1921: memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawshome.html